Our Values

Our Values

These values guide how we do our work and how we work with each other. They help define our organizational culture. We hold ourselves and our coworkers accountable to them every day. We’ve focused on the values that make IREX unique, though there are some values common to many organizations that we also strive to uphold: honesty, integrity, professionalism, respect, and a spirit of openness.

Doers

We are passionate about the work we do, we embrace tough challenges, and we take initiative to find new opportunities. We not only think about the best solution to a problem, we dive in and do the work. We follow through on our commitments so our partners and coworkers have what they need to perform at their best and serve our beneficiaries effectively.

Impact-driven 

We care about the end results of the work. We adopt approaches that deliver big results—whether a tried-and-true method, or a risky new one. We create high-quality programs and products that deliver impact to beneficiaries, staff, and donors. We challenge ourselves and others to do our best work. 

Empathetic

We listen to those we support and design solutions in partnership with them. We adapt approaches based on the feedback we get to ensure what we do is responsive to the environments in which we work. We strive to understand our colleagues’ points of view, assume they have good intentions, and adapt our approaches and styles to ensure effective collaboration and outcomes. We design systems that are responsive to employee needs and flexible, while ensuring that the work gets done.

Forward-looking

We learn from our successes, our mistakes, the experience of others, and the latest research. We constantly strive to put this knowledge into practice with bigger, better, and bolder solutions to the challenges we seek to solve. We challenge ourselves and others to improve and adapt to the growing needs of our staff, beneficiaries, and donors to ensure our continued success.

Inclusive

We seek to hire staff as diverse as those we support and we ensure that our beneficiaries are inclusive of all backgrounds, particularly marginalized groups. We take all points of view into account when making decisions. We take an interdisciplinary approach to our work—bringing together ideas from different fields to find comprehensive solutions to tough challenges in global development. We don’t assume we have all the answers; we seek out guidance and new ideas from others, within and outside of IREX—people who may work in different issue areas but may bring unique and valuable insights.

Do you share these values? Join our team »