Irene is a Design Partner at Khosla Ventures, working with startup CEOs across all stages to elevate the value of design and user research through better practices, leadership, and talent. She mentors designers to build empathetic, user-inspired products and experiences. With extensive experience in technology, Irene has built and led user experience teams at Google, Yahoo!, and Udacity, and began her career as an interaction designer at Netscape, contributing to the internet’s first commercial web browser.
She is an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, teaching product design, and a trustee for the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Museum of Design. Irene is also a published author, frequent speaker on design and mindfulness, and has been featured in Wired, Fast Company, and Mindful magazine. She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering, magna cum laude, from the University of South Carolina, and a master’s in human-computer interaction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
