Irene Kaushansky

Irene Kaushansky (she/her/hers) is the Senior Director of Integrity and Compliance at Global Fund for Women.

Irene is deeply committed to promoting gender justice within the realm of business ethics and integrity. She has spearheaded Integrity and Compliance Programs aimed at proactively addressing and resolving operational challenges that may arise in the pursuit of charitable missions, with a strong emphasis on ensuring accountability for both action and response.

Drawing on her background in legal, operational, and ethical organizational management, Irene is a certified operational compliance and contracting professional with over 18 years of experience navigating regulatory and contractual requirements associated with varied donor funding. She adeptly administers both assistance and acquisition-type awards, along with commercial contracts, from the solicitation phase through post-award implementation and closeout.

Irene has a wealth of experience in establishing Safeguarding practices with a gender justice lens, bringing together diverse stakeholders to develop and implement safeguarding standards. Currently serving as the co-chair for the InterAction Safeguarding Investigations Working Group, Irene was previously a Co-Chair of the InterAction Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Working Group. In this capacity, she played a pivotal role in crafting one of the first global training programs focused on building capacity for INGO personnel to empower program participants and establish guardrails to protect staff and participants from harm resulting from interventions.

Before joining Global Fund for Women, Irene was the Global Compliance Director at Project HOPE, a global health and humanitarian organization that works to improve health outcomes and provide medical care to communities in need around the world. Irene developed and operationalized a safeguarding framework and standards to support global health interventions in support of emergency and humanitarian responses worldwide, among other compliance initiatives. Irene also served as the Associate Director of Integrity and Compliance at the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery. In this role, she built their Integrity and Compliance Program from the ground up, overseeing policies and procedures, training initiatives, whistleblower reporting channels, incident response, investigations, remediation, learning, risk assessments, audits, third-party relationships including contracts and procurement, as well as organizational governance and ethical leadership. Prior to this, she held various roles at international non-profit organizations operating in the development and humanitarian assistance sectors globally.

Irene holds an MA in International Communication from the School of International Service, American University, and a BA in History and International Relations from AU, where she graduated cum laude and with university honors. Recognized for her outstanding contributions, Irene was a finalist for the Women in Compliance Awards in 2019 and 2020, and she co-chaired the International Development Ethics Practitioners Working Group.