Irina Lusby has worked in City Light’s Regulatory Affairs division for four years. As a Sr. Compliance Analyst, Irina focuses on North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) and critical infrastructure protection (CIP) for the utility. “I work on cyber-security standards across the utility to ensure that all of our critical assets are protected, “Irina said. “We read and interpret regulations to make sure they are implemented quickly and correctly.” Irina enjoys her work because there isn’t any routine to it—she has new and different projects all the time.
Hailing from Rostov, Russia, Irina has lived in Washington for over 20 years. “In about a year, I will have been here longer than I was in Russia,” she shared with a laugh. Though she graduated with a degree in psychology from a university in Russia, Irina found herself working in the compliance world. “I used to work for the State of Washington as a Program Manager for federally qualified health centers and that was my first involvement with compliance. I continued in healthcare with Kaiser Permanente as a Compliance Analyst, and then I came here! It’s definitely a different field of work from healthcare.”
In this week’s (spot)Light, read about Irina’s journey to the United States, traveling with her family, and their active, outdoorsy lifestyle.
Irina with her family
“I grew up with my mom in Russia. We lived in a big city, so it was a completely different pace when I moved to Olympia; it was a culture shock! My husband Brian is from Washington and I met him when he was opening a new office in St. Petersburg for Boeing. We dated long distance, got married and I’ve been here ever since. I still have extended family in Russia, but my mom moved here when we had kids. We have an 11-year-old son named Nicholas and a 13-year-old daughter named Sasha.”
“Most of my time is occupied with my kids because they’re heavily involved in sports. My daughter plays club and school volleyball and my son plays football and lacrosse. As a family we travel a lot. We went to Europe for a few weeks in the spring and we’ve gone to Mexico and Hawaii as well. We also like to hike and do RV camping in the summer. We’ll go out to the lakes and do watersports. We really like Banks Lake in eastern Washington. This year will be our eleventh year going there. My kids love wakeboarding and surfing, so we do those a lot. When we travel we try to incorporate outdoors activities like ziplining!”
“I like to run, bike and practice yoga. I’ve checked off two items on my bucket list: run a marathon and skydiving. Last year, I ran a marathon in Victoria B.C.; it was a gorgeous setting. I decided on that location because it was listed as one of the best marathons for beginners. I also went skydiving in Las Vegas. I’ll continue running half marathons but probably not full ones. I’m doing a couple of cycling races soon! As for traveling bucket list items, I want to visit Australia and go on an African Safari.”