Irene Joo

Irene  is a Talent Director at Khosla Ventures, where she partners with portfolio companies to help build exceptional leadership teams and scale organizations from their earliest stages through periods of rapid growth.

Before joining Khosla Ventures, Irene led talent across high-growth technology companies, specializing in executive, engineering, AI, infrastructure, and go-to-market hiring. She began her startup career at NexHealth, initially joining as the company's first female enterprise account executive before being asked to build the recruiting function from the ground up. She helped scale the go-to-market organization, expanded recruiting into technical and executive hiring, and partnered with leadership on key executive searches as the company grew to unicorn status.

She later joined Brain Co. in stealth as employee #12, where she helped grow the engineering organization from 10 to more than 55 employees, with a focus on AI and infrastructure talent. Working closely with founders and executive leadership, Irene also partnered across the business to build out commercial teams and strengthen organizational leadership as the company scaled.

Irene began her career in healthcare after earning a combined bachelor's and master's degree in Occupational Therapy from Boston University. Her background in healthcare shaped her approach to talent: identifying organizational needs early, building the right teams to solve them, and helping companies scale thoughtfully.

‍