Testimonials

“During my tenure as both the Chief Technical Officer and President of Kennametal’s Strategic Business Groups I worked closely with Irene with a focus on developing new “out of our core” growth initiative opportunities to drive top line growth. Irene was our key strategist and driver behind creating our Innovation Venturing Program that allowed Kennametal to innovate outside our core. She is a masterful innovation strategist with a broad unique skill set that when applied, motivates cross-functional teams to create business value from technology.”

“Irene is a masterful collaborator with a great insight into innovation strategy and business know-how. Her knowledge and insight combined with her practice and theory of applying is one of the best I have seen. Working with her on couple different projects and seeing how she put all of those skills together into practice, brought direction, motivating and inspiring other’s ideas to create actions and achieving execution in a very short time frame was fascinating. And more importantly to see her deliver the team success was outstanding. She is truly an expert of observation, adaptation and implementation creating the future.”

“Irene has a deep understanding of the underlying drivers of various forms of innovation. Her strong analytical skills, combined with her deep technology and business experience, enables her to turn ideas into real opportunities. She knows how to communicate her vision and create tactics that support cross-functional teams. Irene would be a deep resource to any organization looking to improve their innovation performance.”

“Irene is a masterful innovation strategist who has a keen insight on how to implement innovation programs in an organization and create business value from integrating internal and external technologies. She develops practical leading edge solutions that promote the engagement of key stakeholders. In addition, she gathers support cross-functional teams to achieve the results. The Strategic Technology Scouting program that she designed and led at Kennametal is benchmarkable.”

“Irene has a great combination of technical depth, intellect and business acumen, and her leadership has enabled Kennametal to implement a leading industrial innovation system. She has great vision and has successfully led projects from ideation through technical &market development to commercialization. Irene is customer focused and excels in matching customer value with technology development and execution. She has set the gold standard in innovation practices and it has been a great pleasure work with her.”

“Irene has exceptional skill in combining her strong technology and material science background and strong business knowledge. Irene and I worked on several strategic technology platforms with business case development, market analyses, channel strategy and go-to-market business plans. Her attention to detail and organizational skills are an asset to any organization with a focus and priority on innovation and developing new market spaces to increase growth and corporate capabilities.”

“Irene is a masterful innovation strategist. Her knowledge and insight on the concepts of innovation, the practice and theory of applying it in Fortune 500s is probably the best I have seen in corporate America. She has demonstrated a powerful command and understanding of what it takes to innovate new products, and introduce new manufacturing processes. She has a keen understanding of the challenges of innovation and is truly a bonafide expert of adopting and implementing innovation.”

“I worked with Irene for many years where her contributions led to the successful development and commercialization of next generation technologies. Irene has an outstanding ability to create a vision for a technology path, translate it into road maps and executing a solid IP strategy. Her ability to break complex problems into building blocks of a working solution and to motivate the development team is above all her greatest strength. Her skills and determination in applying technology solutions make Irene a deep asset to any organization.”

“Irene was the primary driver behind the introduction of Design for Six Sigma to Kennametal. She managed the development of the training material, delivered part of the training personally, and fully integrated DfSS into our Product Development process.”

“One of Irene’s key strengths is her ability to find a structure to analyze and make sense of any chaotic situations. She is an outstanding technologist and business strategist, and has provided vital input to strategic technology planning at Kennametal. She is a visionary and has played a leading role in leveraging the open innovation approach to create business value.”

“Irene is a practiced strategist whose core skills are strong technical background and business savvy. Her ability to quickly process complex information and well-research landscapes allows Irene to construct fluid frameworks that are easily adaptable to changing business conditions.”