Her mother had avoided being deported to Siberia with the rest of her family because the authorities were told that she was dead.

Irma's first language was Latvian and her parents gave her lessons in the culture of Latvia.

She wanted to be a doctor but her father decided she wasn't clever enough and told her to be a teacher.

[2] She was working in the Latvian embassy in Washington when Anatolijs Gorbunovs was appointed as an ambassador to the United Nations.

[1] In November 2024 she was in Montreal as a member of the Latvian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.