Ira is President EPM, a division of Business Valuation Resources, and Publisher/Executive Editor of The Licensing Letter and other newsletters, research studies, and directories.

Among other licensing and consumer research publications, Ira oversees the annual "Licensing Letter Royalty Trends Report," which provides royalty rates for consumer products licensing for trademark, entertainment, sports, fashion, and other property types, as well as for product categories encompassing apparel, toys, gifts and novelties, and more; and a directory of IP owners and manufacturers of licensed consumer products, "The Licensing Business Sourcebook."

Ira conducts on-site seminars and has delivered speeches and spearheaded consulting projects for clients including Nickelodeon, General Mills, Toys R Us, McDonald's, Reader's Digest, and McKinsey & Co.

Ira's career as a professional journalist began in 1970 as a contributor to the Village Voice's Riffs column of pop music criticism. He was chief pop music critic for the New York Post for 12 years,. He wrote "The Electronic Mailbox," a book about the wonders of e-mail, in 1987, and is an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University.