Trey Beck Named IPA Board Chair

Trey Beck Named IPA Board Chair

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We are pleased to announce that last week IPA's board voted to elect a new chair, Trey Beck, who joined our board earlier this year after having supported IPA for several years. Trey has almost a decade of experience on non-profit boards, including a three-year stint as the Chair of the non-profit Turnaround for Children, and he retired after twenty-two years of leadership in finance at D.E. Shaw, a New York-based investment firm that is among the world’s largest and longest-established alternative investment firms and widely regarded as a pioneer of quantitative finance.

Trey is a dynamic leader who is passionate about everything from advancing IPA’s mission to building on our organizational culture. In his existing board role, Trey has been working closely with us over the past year as we reshape the organization to be more efficient and resilient – he has been helping us to recruit the new Chief of Finance and Administration Officer (CFAO) and has been collaborating closely with the fundraising team as we expand our unrestricted funding base. He has also been helping the board think strategically about the organization’s growth and how we take IPA to the next stage operationally.

In sharing this news we hope to convey two important things: 

  1. Dean remains extremely committed to and involved in IPA and on the IPA board. This should in no way be seen as his lowering his engagement, but rather as the prior success of IPA, despite its hiccups, being exciting enough to entice someone like Trey to take on this role. Dean’s voice as our founder and a leader of the rigorous evidence movement remains steadfast, and his commitment to IPA is as strong as ever – he even just made a significant unrestricted financial contribution that spans the next three years.  He will work closely with Trey and Annie on all aspects, wherever he can be of value. At the board level this means continued work recruiting new board members and core funding, and as a researcher he of course remains committed to helping guide IPA to improve its ability to service the needs of researchers. Of course, he will always remain an active researcher and program leader at IPA as well.
  2. This transition is, however, a strong signal that IPA has reached a maturity as an organization that our board is no longer what the management literature calls simply a “founder’s board.” Some management literature suggests that maturing organizations, in fact, thrive most when the founder steps aside from the lead governance role, and that is what we expect from this transition. 

The entire board and executive leadership are thrilled to welcome Trey into this role with full confidence that the transition helps lead IPA’s growth in financial acumen, corporate management, and board governance. Trey is joined in leadership by Vice Chair (a new position on the board) Steve Toben, President of the Flora Family Foundation and a wise and seasoned board leader with expertise in foundations and international security and peace. Steve has been on IPA’s board for more than eight years, is the Chair of the Governance Committee, and was actively involved in recruiting Trey as a Board member and Chair. Building this base under this new leadership will allow IPA’s mission to thrive, propelling IPA into the next phase as an efficient, resilient, and sustainable organization that moves rigorous evidence into tangible impact for the poor around the world.

We look forward to working closely with Trey, our incredible staff and research network, and with our many partners and supporters around the world to continue to grow our mission and to build a world with more evidence and less poverty.

December 08, 2016