Medinol founder Yehudit Richter: 'I know they say I'm a bitch'
Yehudit Richter built a medical device empire that won a $750 million settlement, broke the glass ceiling in a male-dominated world, and explains why she always wants more than her husband and partner.
From a young age, Dr. Yehudit Richter, founder and chair of the company Medinol, grew up with a sense of mission stemming from her family's experience of revival. She was born in 1947 and grew up in the shadow of the memory of the Holocaust. "Victory over the Holocaust was expressed in my achievements. If I was a good girl, my mother would say, 'Here is my victory over the Germans.' I grew up with a distinct experience of victory, I lived from victory to victory, I worked at the university, but it wasn't enough for me."
She recalls job interviews: "In every job interview, they would ask me what my husband says about it. I didn't have a model of a woman who has a career, but they told me I was like Golda Meir," she details in the program 'Their Money' on Kan 11, about the way her identity was shaped and the personal drive that pushed her forward.
Her major breakthrough began in 1993, when she founded the medical device company Medinol together with her husband, Dr. Kobi Richter, alongside the software company Medcon. Medinol revolutionized the field of cardiac catheterization worldwide thanks to the development of groundbreaking patents for the production of stents, with Yehudit serving as CEO leading the strategy and management, and Kobi serving as chief technologist and chair.
As Richter described it, "The idea was to help blood flow in the arteries. The product itself is only my husband, I only create the economic infrastructure. There were situations where people would ask why she came and not her husband, maybe it's not serious. When we both came to meet a manager and he said to me, 'We came here to talk business,' I told him, 'That's exactly why I'm here.'"
Richter's determination in the global business world, which is mostly dominated by men, also led Medinol to one of the most famous legal battles in history. Following a long and protracted conflict with the American medical equipment giant Boston Scientific, which marketed its products, Medinol won a huge compensation of $750 million in 2005 for patent infringement.
At the same time, the couple recorded other impressive exits, including the sale of Medcon in 2005 for about $105 million and the sale of their holdings in Orbotech to KLA-Tencor in 2018 (a deal in which she received about $29 million), alongside the establishment of the companies Microtech and Valve Medical.
As a trailblazing woman who also explores the balance between home and work, as she expressed in her book 'Communicating Vessels - Between Career and Family' published in 1992, Richter encountered gender stereotypes more than once. Despite this, she chose not to let these obstacles stop her, but to focus on action and achievements. "I was discriminated against because I am a woman, but I didn't fight because I did what I wanted," she reflects on her approach, and points to the managerial and personality differences between her and her partner in life and business: "There are differences between me and Kobi regarding the economy. He is more modest than me, I always want more. It's hard for them to believe that I am the one who runs more or fought for it, and I know that they call me a bitch more."
Today, as she and her husband live in Arsuf, are parents to three children, and hold a fortune estimated at billions of shekels, Dr. Richter's work is recognized and appreciated around the world. Over the years, she has served as a director in leading companies in the economy such as Bezeq, Bezeq International, Amital, and Spankrit. Her contribution to industry and medicine has earned her prestigious awards, including a breakthrough award from MIT in 2019 and the 'Industry Award' from the Manufacturers Association of Israel in 2024.
