Ms. Margaret Irons

Margaret Irons is the founder of Salt & Butter Marketing, a boutique agency that partners with startup and growth stage companies to develop and implement focused marketing strategies that enable their next evolution.    Prior to starting Salt & Butter, Margaret was the Vice President and global head of Marketing and Communications for 3Pillar Global. Under her leadership, she built the marketing team from early stage to mature, paving the way for 4x growth and 2 exits in 2020 and 2021.  

Margaret was a founding team member and Senior Vice President of Growth and Strategy at Union, a digital platform to connect innovation communities. She also was a Managing Director and startup mentor at 1776, a leading U.S. startup incubator disrupting highly regulated industries. Prior to that, she served as Executive Director of Communications and Strategy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  

Before her move into the startup and technology world, Margaret was leading agency teams that oversaw the development of marketing, media and public relations campaigns for corporate and association clients. In 2015, she was named to PR Week’s 40 Under 40, an annual publication recognizing professionals who are redefining the role of communications, PR, and marketing.  

Margaret graduated cum laude from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, majoring in international studies and Spanish. She holds a Masters of Business Administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and three children.