Irina Shifrin is the Principal Consultant and Founder of Nonprofit HR Space, and is an HR professional with over 20 years of experience building best-in-class organizations in senior HR roles. While Ms. Shifrin’s experience spans across sectors, industries, and countries, her consulting practice, Non-Profit HR Space, founded 7 years ago, is dedicated to providing HR support and consultation to not-for-profit organizations. Ms. Shifrin’s client roster features organizations of various sizes, industries, and missions, including the American Museum of Natural History, Congregation Beth Elohim, Ford Foundation, Hilton Foundation, Green-Wood Cemetery and Historical Fund, Hudson River Museum, JASA (Jewish Association for Services for the Aged), and Union of Concerned Scientists. In 2021, Ms. Shifrin was engaged by Shakespeare and Company to conduct an independent professional review of the HR services offered to staff.
Throughout her career, Ms. Shifrin has been valued by senior management for her ability to become their trusted partner, sounding board, and facilitator in implementing organizational change and establishing advanced HR practices, programs, and systems. Ms. Shifrin is also particularly skilled in engaging – with tact, diplomacy, respect, and understanding – highly accomplished, discerning, and diverse audiences of both staff and leaders to achieve organizational results.
Before founding her consulting practice, Ms. Shifrin worked as the first global Chief People Officer at Phillips Auctioneers, the leading auction house for modern and contemporary art. At Phillips, Ms. Shifrin provided HR leadership, change management, and global alignment during the company’s aggressive transformation and built an HR function in New York Headquarters from the ground up. Before that, Ms. Shifrin served for 13 years as the head of organizational effectiveness, change management, talent development, and employee relations functions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A native of St. Petersburg, Russia, Ms. Shifrin received her BA from the Russian State Pedagogical University in the name of A. I. Herzen and her MA in Leadership and Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University.
