Member

Irina Balan is an accomplished Technology Executive and Entrepreneur with 15+ years’ experience devising strategy and leading transformational change for IT B2B/B2C leaders – Hewlett Packard and Microsoft. Irina brings a powerful digital experience and provides boards with an understanding of how business disruption, operations, strategic alliances, inclusion and representation impacts customer experience, new revenue streams, and business profitability.
Irina is the EMEA ERP Director for Customer Success at Microsoft, leading 300+ global employees and a 20M$ budget, owning a portfolio of top corporate and enterprise customers. During her tenure, Irina created the organization’s EMEA strategy and led a multiphase reorganization across all entities and 300+ employees. She represented inclusion and equity within the organization and led the Academic strategic inclusion initiative.
As EMEA Cloud Lead, she created one of the first engines in the world to drive cloud acceleration and development. She disrupted the traditional business model by scaling self-driving teams that served as the basis of SAAS growth and customer consumption.
Irina served as Leadership Development Advisor as part of the Microsoft Site Board. She created the strategy to grow Cloud Business Support Services across EMEA supporting 20M euro growth, 1M accounts and 100+Partners. She also led and implemented key strategic initiatives to drive growth and development of the Romania Microsoft Site from 400 employees to 1200, from 10 managers to 45 managers.
In 2021, Irina decided to share her experience for building innovative organizations that scale rapidly with startups and she created her Consulting Company that is advising several European startups.
She is a talent developer, an energetic leader able to influence across the organization and an advocate of Inclusion, and Women’s Empowerment. Irina is proud mother of Iris who loves travel and adventure, reading and exercising.