Safra Catz

Safra Ada Catz (Hebrew: צפרא עדה כץ; born December 1961) is an Israeli-American billionaire business executive. Born in Holon, Israel, she immigrated to the United States at age six and grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. Catz earned a bachelor's degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1983 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. After practicing law and working on Wall Street for 14 years analyzing the software sector, she joined Oracle Corporation in 1999 as vice president of corporate finance. She ascended to chief financial officer, joined the board in 2001, and became CEO in 2014, a position she held until September 2025, when she was appointed executive vice chair. Under her leadership, Oracle executed over 130 acquisitions, including the $10.3 billion purchase of PeopleSoft, and shifted from a database-centric firm to a dominant player in cloud infrastructure and software services.

Safra Catz was born in December 1961 in Holon, Israel, to Jewish parents whose origins traced back to Eastern Europe. Her father, an immigrant from Romania, worked as a physicist, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after the family's relocation. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor, contributing to a family background marked by resilience amid historical trauma and displacement.

At the age of six, in approximately 1967, Catz immigrated with her family from Israel to Brookline, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where her father pursued professional opportunities in nuclear physics. This move positioned the family within the United States' academic and technological ecosystem, influencing Catz's early exposure to an environment emphasizing innovation and achievement. The immigration reflected broader patterns of Jewish families seeking stability and economic prospects post-World War II and amid Israel's early statehood challenges, though specific motivations for the Catz family's decision remain undocumented in public records.

Her early influences stemmed from her family's immigrant background: born in Holon, Israel, in December 1961 to Jewish parents, including a nuclear physicist father who secured a position at MIT prompting the move to the United States, and a mother who was a Holocaust survivor originally from Romania.