As the Vice President of Programs for Concern Worldwide U.S., Kirk manages the team responsible for all US-funded programs and policy at Concern, a portfolio totalling more than 70 million USD in 18+ countries, reaching over 8 million persons.

Kirk also oversees Concern’s involvement in a growing collection of consortia programs designed to improve humanitarian coordination and response, namely the “National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership, “Building a Better Response,” and “Local Capacity Strengthening for Response.” Kirk has personally facilitated over 50 workshops on these and other topics, training more than 1,000 humanitarian professionals in practically every humanitarian setting. In addition to these training programs, Kirk oversees a research program titled ‘Beyond Barriers,’ which looks at financing and human resource constraints to scaling localization.  

He brings to his role more than a dozen years of experience, including humanitarian deployments with Concern in Afghanistan; the 2011 Horn of Africa food security crisis; the 2013 Typhoon Haiyanin the Philippines; the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal; the ongoing Syria Crisis; the 2016 Burundi emergency; 2017 Somalia food security crisis; and current Ukraine emergency. During his tenure with Concern, he has worked in and with 21 country programs on everything from monitoring and evaluation to capacity building to project design. 

A proud native of New Jersey, Kirk received his Master’s degree in International Humanitarian Action from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands.