Ira Saul Rubenstein is Senior Advisor, Business Development & Capital Formation, with Pipette & Chart, s.r.o. He began his lengthy career in the mid-1970s working in government in New York. He then consulted to both large companies and government agencies before entering the finance arena in the late 1980s. His long-time focus as a financier has been alternative energy and clean technology; after spending two decades working in finance in New York, he also began working Prague in 2005 to pursue regional and global opportunities. He became a permanent resident in 2009 and a Czech citizen in 2015. Ira still works in finance as Senior Advisor – International Business with Prague-based Traficon Advisors, s.r.o. and as Senior Investment Banker (holding multiple FINRA licenses) with Berkeley, California-based Starlight Investments, LLC. Ira loves the energy that founders and innovators bring to business, and he works in various ways to help them succeed. He has served as a senior consultant at Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), the largest and oldest technical Czech university, and was the key initiator of the Innovation SPOT at Pragovka, intended to be the largest co-creation facility for entrepreneurial companies in Central Europe. He also served as Chief Catalyst for the recently-formed Czech Battery Cluster. Ira also serves as a Trustee of the Defense & Security Innovation Hub (Nato’s official Innovation Hub for the Czech Republic).
