Staff

Irina studied economics and political science at the University of Cologne (Volkswirtschaftslehre sozialwissenschaftlicher Richtung) from 1992 to 1998. She began her professional career as a scientific assistant to the former Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung)—Professor Wolfgang Streeck—when he was elected as a member of the Benchmarking Group of the Alliance for Jobs, Training and Competitiveness (Bündnis für Arbeit, Ausbildung und Wettbewerbsfähigkeit) to the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. After two exciting years, she left for the private sector and worked for another ten years as a consultant for a business consultancy specialising in the healthcare sector. This professional step formed her budget planning and controlling skills as well as her conceptual and analytical know-how, especially in writing business reports.  
 
As the mother of a then 5-year-old boy, she founded anakonda—Analyse Konzepte Daten—in 2011 and worked as a freelance adviser. Since then, she has always had larger engagements. In 2013 /2014, she worked as Head of Administration of the European Academy of Technology and Innovation Assessment in Ahrweiler (now Institut für qualifizierende Innovationsforschung und –beratung), and from 2015 until 2020, she worked for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Prävention und Rehabilitation von Herz-Kreislauferkrankungen in Koblenz focusing on conceptual work.
 
Before starting at bicc in January 2023, between 2021 and 2022, Irina worked as the Head of Administration of the Rhineland Study, a population-based study in Bonn, under the aegis of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen, DZNE) aiming to detect causes for neurodegenerative diseases and discover biomarkers for early diagnostic purposes.