General Counsel and Executive Vice President, Corporate Development

Ira Parker is the General Counsel and Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for AOL. As EVP, Corporate Development, Parker oversees the organizations that drive mergers and acquisitions, new investment opportunities, strategic transactions and relationships for the company and evaluates new business opportunities. As General Counsel, Parker oversees the company's legal affairs, manages the AOL legal department and counsels senior management on a wide variety of issues. Parker also oversees AOL’s government and industry relations, as well as the company’s Consumer Advocacy and Privacy office, which focuses on how AOL interacts with consumers and protects their privacy.

Parker joined AOL in 2006 from Polaroid Corp., where he served as Vice President and General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Compliance Officer. In that role, he was responsible for all legal, regulatory, and compliance matters.

Before joining Polaroid in 2004, Parker served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Genuity, Inc., an Internet infrastructure services provider formerly known as GTE Internetworking. Earlier at Genuity, he was Executive Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Compliance Officer.

Parker also worked for GTE Corp. as Vice President and Deputy General Counsel and was a partner in Washington law firm Alston & Bird. Before that, he spent nearly 10 years with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) in Washington in various legal positions including Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of the FDIC's Resolution Trust Corp.

He earned his law degree from Emory University School of Law in Atlanta and received a bachelor of arts degree from Brooklyn College at the City University of New York, where he was a magna cum laude graduate.