“Within the past year several of her team members including women of colour have quit due to her racism and hostile work environment.”
(IRC Staff Experience)
[ . . . ] the regional director of innovations in IRC’s MENA [International Rescue Committee’s Middle East and North Africa] office based in Jordan is racist, abuses her power, engages in favoritism, and is corrupt which leads to detrimental impact not only on IRC’s reputation, but also on the morale and mental health of the team that she manages, and the clients that are supposed to benefit from her programme. [The regional director] also favors some staff and constantly provides them opportunities that not only are they not qualified for, but are handed to them without any transparency. She has also created hostility in engaging with IRC Donors, such as GIZ [German company] due to her lack of professionalism and severe mismanagement of work. She has subsequently misrepresented the situation to IRC to cover for herself. She has subverted transparency in communication between the donor and IRC, and also antagonized her team members who have tried to speak up on this issue. For work related contracts to external partners as well she favors her preferred vendors and ensures that they get contracts by preventing a transparent process.
[The regional director] treats several national staff, as well as international staff who are POC with extreme prejudice. She beats down on any staff that may even remotely have independent thinking or risks outshining [her]. She frequently uses derogatory and loaded terms such as “these people” when referring to national staff, clients, or POCs [People of Color] and frequently refers to them as a monolith, as is usually done by racists. She is hostile especially to other women, and women of colour [sic] who she either manages, co-manages, or has a hierarchical relationship with. Within the past year several of her team members including women of colour [sic] have quit due to her racism and hostile work environment.
Several of these women, and some men have also filed extensive complaints against [the regional director] within IRC including at HQ [Headquarters] level with the Ethics and Compliance Unit (ECU). Despite several of these formal complaints, and even after interviewing several of the complain[an]ts who came forward, no action has been taken against [the regional director] till date. [ . . . ] the chief research and innovations officer at IRC HQ in NY [New York] — who is well aware of these complaints and is also [her] manager has not taken any action despite being fully aware of these complaints in an in-depth manner since almost a year.
One of the donors — GIZ, has also filed an ECU complaint against [the regional director], and yet she continues to be protected, and acts with impunity against more IRC staffers.
