iwalker21@nul.org

Growing up with an entrepreneur as a father, Irene was taught the value of how to grow a business as well as how to support your community. For the past 20 years, Irene has devoted her career to leveraging the power of education, training and technology. Born in the Virgin Islands and raised in LA with her Black-Korean heritage, she studied Economics at the University of California Berkeley, volunteered with nonprofits, and developed education programs for local communities of color. Irene expanded her understanding in online advertising after working as senior director at Yahoo!, Pandora Media and other major companies. In 2016, she joined Facebook to head education strategies for teams in ads, engineering and product marketing. Irene founded Elevate in 2018 and leads this bold company-wide program as Program Director to support diverse-owned organizations, nonprofits, community leaders, students and job seekers in growing their brand and business.