New Pirate with a lengthy career. He started in the mid-1970s working for New York government, then worked as a consultant, and moved into finance in the late 1980s. His longtime focus is alternative energy and clean technology of all kinds. He worked for two decades in finance in New York and came to Prague to pursue regional and global opportunities in 2005. He moved permanently to the Czech Republic in 2009, becoming a citizen about 5 years ago. He still works in finance with both Prague and California-based firms. He loves the energy that founders and innovators bring to their businesses and he try to help them succeed. Ira works at Czech Technical University in Prague as the Mentor for Technology Transfer. He also initiated The Innovation SPOT at Pragovka, intended to be the largest co-creation facility for entrepreneurial companies in Central Europe. And Ira provides internal advise to a company focused on helping science-based startups to get to success.