[1][2][3] Irola co-founded a National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians branch in San Francisco in 1969, and was a founding member of the short-lived Cine Manifest film collective in 1972.

[4] Her parents, Barbara and Johnny Irola, were sheep farmers, and her grandparents had emigrated to the United States in 1917 from the Basque region of Spain.

In 1965, she joined the Peace Corps and, after three months training in the US, spent two years in Niger where she helped improve water and sanitation systems, build schools and provide vital health education.

She started to work in their film department at the weekends, and was eventually hired by them as a full time camera person.

[1] Whilst in the KQED-TV film department, Irola co-founded a Bay area branch of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians.

Irola co-founded Cine Manifest, a Marxist film collective, with Gene Corr, Peter Gessner, John Hanson, Stephen Lighthill, Rob Nilsson and Steve Wax.

[1] Irola left Cine Manifest after shooting Northern Lights and moved to New York City where she shared a loft in SoHo with Sandi Sissel and Joan Churchill.

She was interviewed in the book Women Behind the Camera - Conversations with Camerawomen by Alexis Krasilovsky (1997) and was also in the documentary Cinematographer Style (2005, directed by Jon Fauer).

From 2005 she also held the Conrad Hall Chair in Cinematography and Color Timing, a position endowed by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.