Irena Chaushevska is the CoFounder of NewMan’s Business Academy and Accelerator, a leading start up incubator in Macedonia. For five years, they have been organizing NASA’s Earth and space innovation competition -- “Space Apps Challenge” in Macedonia, across Europe and in Silicon Valley. Over the years, Chaushevska has held various C-level positions in regional software and technology companies headquartered in Macedonia. In 2014, she was selected as a Women Entrepreneurial Leader by the International Council for Small Business based in Washington, D.C. and in 2015 she became the first speaker invited from Macedonia to “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” at Stanford University. Chaushevska is a co-holder of a U.S. patent for a layered space suit with a liquid cooling pressurization called Space Aurora that she created in 2016 at Singularity University at the NASA Ames Research Center as part of a three-month global program for entrepreneurs for which she won a Google scholarship. In 2017, Irena was selected as a U.S. State Department Young Transatlantic Innovative Leaders Initiative Fellowship (YTILI) Fellow.

Chaushevska has a Master’s Degree in Business and Marketing from Sheffield University and a Certificate from the Kennedy School of Government from Harvard University for Executive Education in Negotiations.