Irene Yachbes is a founding board member of The Mentor Project and led the Planning Committee for the first-ever Mentor Project hackathon in 2020.
Irene Yachbes has been a tech professional in the robotics and digital industries since 2000. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Virginia and M.S in Technical Management from Johns Hopkins University. As a Spacecraft Engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, she performed integration, testing, and launch site support for four spacecraft that studied the Earth’s atmosphere, planets, and comets. On the Messenger mission to Mercury, she was the Lead Engineer for all electrical wiring of the spacecraft. Following this, Irene became the Director of Business Development at Honeybee Robotics. Working with world-renowned scientists and engineers, she brought in tens of millions of dollars of research and product development funding for robotics projects for NASA, defense, utilities, and mining applications.
In 2013, Irene began working at digital start-ups as a project manager and account manager by helping big banks, retailers, hospitality and health care companies to make the most of internet technologies, especially with creative video and mobile apps.
Today Irene works at IBM Research as product owner for one-of-a-kind secure digital apps that allow IBM scientists and engineers all over the world to collaborate virtually. These scientists and engineers are changing the world of computing through research in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and cloud computing. Irene manages a team of web designers, software developers, and user experience researchers.
