International Food Policy Research Institute Employee Reviews

Prevalence of employee motivation and therefore employees give out their best on the job. Its an equal opportunity employer and interested in the person growth of employees.

Pros

Free lunch.

Cons

High risk.

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Excellent organization, but hard to advance

Administrative Coordinator (Current Employee) - Washington, DC - December 8, 2021

IFPRI is a great place to work - great benefits and competitive salaries, but it's hard to advance here unless you have an advanced degree.The One CGIAR transition has put a pause on many careers and made it hard to advance over the past 2 years or so. It's a noble goal and seems overall worth it, but at the cost of our work-life balance and stagnation of professional development opportunities.

Pros

Great benefits

Cons

Work life balance isn't great

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Antiquated Management Views and Struggling HR

Manager (Former Employee) - Washington, DC - October 27, 2021

My role frequently brought me in contact with the HR team during my 10 years with the organization. HR was critically under resourced and some team members found it difficult to think outside of the box and try new tools/approaches (of course that's difficult to do when struggling to keep up with the mountain of work piled on your desk). The management at IFPRI tends to think they're the smartest people in the room, and HR never seemed able to present a compelling business case to effectively influence management awareness/support for desperately needed resources and initiatives. Additionally, HR team members were rarely seen outside their offices, and thus were disconnected from employees - no doubt this was due in part to how critically under resourced they were. IFPRI's senior management team needs to wake up and recognize that the demands of the modern work environment require a strong investment in talent.

Pros

Benefits

Cons

Inept management

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Overall a good place to work

MANAGER GENERAL ACCOUNTING (Former Employee) - Washington, DC - February 16, 2019

Overall a good place to work. Ideas for improvements are taken seriously and implemented. The staff are amazing. And the international culture is a great perk.

Pros

Great Benefits/Greate People

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Very diverse company

Administrative Coordinator (Former Employee) - Washington, DC - January 16, 2019

The company was a very nice company to work for. Very friendly people. You meet new and interesting people daily. I enjoyed working and collaborating with the employees.

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Your experience really depends on the department you're in

EDITOR (Former Employee) - Washington, DC - August 24, 2018

The benefits provided vary depending on your supervisor. A change in supervisor completely changed my experience at the company for the worse, but overall the benefits are good and the pay is decent.

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Team leader Chauffeur

Chief of party's Chauffeur (Former Employee) - Dhaka, Bangladesh - March 22, 2018

I was responsible to drive Chief of Party and to and from other office staff. I was lead driver and supervised motor pool driver and maintenance motor pool vehicle.

Pros

Cons

Short break

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Efficient and Friendly

Consultant (Current Employee) - Washington, DC - May 26, 2017

Nice supervisor. Fun learning experience. Learned a lot about research design, survey design, analysis, policy interpretation and writing. Decent culture.

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Great place to work

Research Analyst (Current Employee) - Washington, DC - December 24, 2016

It's a great place to work for researchers who are interested in economic development issues. The research funding is quite stable but high demand on publication. The institution also offers great benefit and reasonable salary compare to other institutions in the surrounding area.

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experience with IFPRI

Research Assistant (Internship) (Former Employee) - Washington, DC - June 14, 2016

A typical work day at IFPRI is all about research. Working with IFPRI has been a great experience because it has improved my writing and research skills. The management of IFPRI comprises the most experienced group of people i have ever work under based on their expertise. The hardest part of the job, i will say was the first time i was given a project on Nigeria capacity strengthening in agriculture while the the enjoyable part of the job is always during the monthly meetings where we all come together to discuss what we achieved on the job.

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Great benefits package, non-competitive Pay

Conference And Meetings Coordinator (Current Employee) - Washington, DC - October 27, 2015

A typical day at IFPRI starts at 9AM and ends promptly at 5PM. Since the company cannot match the salaries in the private sector they promote a great work-life balance lifestyle and encourage you to use your vacation time.

Pros

Free lunches at events

Cons

Lack of business mindset when running the company.

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Good opportunity for professional development

Senior Administrative and Financial Coordinator (Current Employee) - Washington, DC - October 4, 2015

Great people and good benefits. Still working to catch up with recent growth in terms of operations managment and dedicated investment to operations.

Pros

good pay for operations staff

Cons

limited vertical movement

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Great Research Experience

Junior Research Officer (Former Employee) - Accra - May 4, 2015

IFPRI is a great place for research. It exposes you to different scenarios where you can gain a lot of experience. You get a lot of opportunities to work in different countries- it is very multicultural.

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Interesting work as research needs to be communicated to donors/ partners

Information & Knowledge Management Coordinator (Current Employee) - Dhaka, Bangladesh - May 3, 2015

I have explored my designing, writing skills and PR the most and working with a huge team in Washington, DC- HQ, is a learning process. I have designed multiple policy briefs, websites, organized events with partners. I enjoy working under pressure and believe that I perform the best when challenged. I had a hunch that research organization will not be fun but I was so wrong. The team- work is remarkable. The appreciation I have received so far from everyone is overwhelming and the feedback I receive is something I prioritize to avoid future improvements. The hardest part of this job is promoting research work and the best part is when you are learning how to work with the Government body and the donors.

Pros

Everyday is interesting while learning

Cons

No work from home

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Great place to work with highly intelligent research fellows

Research Associate (Former Employee) - Washington D.C. - July 23, 2012

I was helping as an intern to clean and manage data for the research fellow in that institution. The raw data was sort of messy before I worked on it, but afterwards it looked cleaner. Then I tried some initial models using the data for the projects we were doing.

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