IRD 4.44

With over 500 staff operating in seven countries, IRD has become a regional resource for innovative global health research and delivery.

Founded in Karachi in 2004 and now based in Singapore, IRD has regional offices in Dhaka, Dubai, Ho Chi Minh, Jakarta, Johannesburg and Karachi. Our teams support and operate global health delivery programs in Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Malawi, Nepal, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uganda, South Africa, Timor Leste, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Zimbabwe.

IRD was founded in Karachi where a lack of well-trained researchers and development professionals, unrealistically low salaries in academia and the non-profit sector, and working environments that do not support innovation presented real challenges to overcome. Our solution lay in attracting back to Pakistan as many recent graduates as we could from some of the best global health and development training programs in the world.

To achieve this, IRD established an operational model where all Directors are 100% grant-based and are primarily responsible for bringing in funding for themselves and their teams. In exchange for the risk they undertake for this responsibility, IRD Directors benefit from a professional environment that supports innovation and experimentation, while being compensated salaries that are comparable to academia and the non-profit sector in North America and the EU.

We have taken the IRD model to where we work – bringing the best-trained nationals back to their countries for meaningful and rewarding work. Our managers and associates have world-class training, and access their local and global networks to develop and implement innovative new solutions to health and social problems.

Our pioneering work in areas where global health, behavioral economics and information technology converge have provided an exciting impetus for growth. In 2012 and 2013, IRD spun off two project teams as independent enterprises operating completely on business principles. IRD's health informatics team became Interactive Health Solutions, our first for-profit enterprise, and our global health delivery team targeting the private sector became Community Health Solutions.

While our growth has been remarkable by any standards, it is the people that work here that truly stand out. Because no matter where we work, our team brings the same drive for innovation and commitment to saving lives.