Irene is the founding CEO and a board director of the ScaleUp Institute, a private
sector, not-for-profit company focused on making the UK the best place in the world
to scale up a business.
She is a former senior banker at Standard Chartered where she held both European
and global managing director roles. She set up, ran and scaled several of the bank’s
key client and product businesses across its corporate and institutional bank and led
several global M&A activities. Working internationally across Europe, the Americas,
Middle East and Asia, living in Singapore for a period of time.
During the height of the financial crisis was seconded to work across the banking
industry where she led the Business Finance T askforce and Better Business Finance
which was responsible for, amongst other initiatives, the founding of the Business
Growth Fund, SME Finance Monitor, and leading on developments in Open Banking,
and the Small Business Act.
She is a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University and holds a
variety of non executive director and advisory roles across the creative, business
and finance communities.This has included participating in the Fintech Strategy
review; the Life Sciences Scaleup T askforce; Creative Industry Councils and sitting
on Canada's National Research Industrial Advisory Council.