Pay Inequality at Integrated Resources Institute: Why Workers Remain Underpaid While Suad Bisogno’s Salary Keeps Rising

How a nonprofit built on supporting the community fails to support its own workforce.

Nonprofits exist to serve communities — but the people who provide that service are often among the lowest-paid workers in the entire sector. Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than inside Integrated Resources Institute (IRI), where employees say they’ve been stuck at minimum wage or close to it for years while Executive Director Suad Bisogno has received significant salary increases year after year.

What happens when the math stops making sense for the staff, but the raises keep coming at the top?

This is the story many IRI employees say they are living.

Frontline Workers: Minimum Wage and No Raises

According to IRI’s own IRS filings, the organization lists over 400 employees, but the majority are not full-time professionals earning sustainable salaries. Instead:

• 90% of staff are employment coaches,
• Many earn minimum wage or just above it,
• Most have gone years without meaningful raises,
• And internal messaging has consistently been: | “There isn’t enough funding for wage increases.”

For employees navigating Orange County’s cost of living, this reality is devastating.

But Executive Director Suad Bisogno’s Salary Tells a Different Story

While frontline workers remain stuck at the bottom of the pay scale, Executive Director Suad Bisogno has enjoyed consistent and sizeable raises — even during years when staff wages were frozen.

From IRI’s IRS Form 990 filings:

2022 → 2023: A 22.3% Raise for Suad Bisogno

• 2022 salary: $129,525
• 2023 salary: $158,462
• Increase: $28,937
• Percentage increase: +22.3%

This raise alone outpaced inflation, cost-of-living adjustments, and any increase offered to staff — which is to say, none.

2023 → 2024: Another 4.9% Raise

• 2024 salary: $166,297
• Increase: $7,835
• Percentage increase: +4.9%

But that 4.9% is misleading.

If not for IRI’s $800,000 settlement paid to employees, Suad Bisogno would likely have received a much larger raise.

IRI was required to compensate employees for years of missed meal and rest breaks — a class-action settlement covering 4–5 years of labor violations. Staff widely understand that Suad’s raise was held down only because the organization had to finally pay back the very workers it had underpaid.

So even in a year defined by a massive payout for violating labor laws, Suad still received a raise while frontline workers got nothing.

The Pay Gap Inside IRI Is Stark

Let’s put this in context:

• A typical IRI job coach earns roughly $15–$19 per hour, or about $31k–$37k per year depending on hours and scheduling.
• Many work part-time or have highly inconsistent schedules.
• Many needed the class-action settlement just to receive legally mandated break compensation.

Meanwhile:

• Suad Bisogno now earns $166,297,
• Roughly 4–5 times what a typical full-time employment coach earns,
• And her pay has increased 28.4% over the past two years.

And perhaps the clearest example of this imbalance is the fact that out of more than 400 employees, Suad Bisogno is the only person in the entire organization earning more than $100,000 a year. Every other employee — from Job Coaches to Program Managers to Directors of Services — earns below that threshold, many of them at or near minimum wage. Even IRI’s Chief Operations Officer, Luke Sakamoto, earns only about $85,000 — nearly half of what Suad Bisogno makes.

A Local Comparison Makes the Problem Even Clearer

Here’s where the disparity becomes even more striking.

IRI receives a substantial portion of its funding from the Regional Center of Orange County (RCOC) — an organization the entire disability-services community in Orange County knows well.

And the difference between the pay of RCOC’s Executive Director and Suad Bisogno is staggering when compared to the revenues each organization handles.

RCOC vs. IRI: A Side-by-Side Comparison

IRI (Integrated Resources Institute)

• Revenue: ~$12.7 million
• Executive Director: Suad Bisogno — $166,297 salary
• Suad received that salary level even though the organization brings in just $12.7M annually.

RCOC (Regional Center of Orange County)

• Revenue: $558,166,552 (yes — over half a billion)
• Executive Director: Larry Landauer — $239,953 salary
• Larry Landauer did not earn a salary above $166k until RCOC’s revenue reached $295,653,795.

Let’s say that another way:

Larry Landauer did not make Suad Bisogno’s current salary until RCOC was bringing in 23 times more revenue than IRI currently does.

Yet today:

• RCOC: ~$558 million budget → Director earns $239k
• IRI: ~$12.7 million budget → Suad earns $166k

This means:

Suad Bisogno earns 69% of Larry Landauer’s salary while managing only 2.2% of the revenue he oversees.

That ratio is far outside industry norms.

What Employees Are Asking: “Where Is the Money Going?”

Frontline workers at IRI aren’t asking to make six figures.

They’re asking:

• Why does Suad Bisogno receive double-digit raises while frontline wages stay frozen?
• Why are employees told “there is no funding” for raises when executive compensation grows every year?
• Why does the Executive Director of a $12.7M nonprofit earn nearly the same salary level that a half-billion-dollar organization pays its leader?
• Why did it take a class-action lawsuit for job coaches to finally receive compensation they were legally owed?

These are not unreasonable questions — they are fundamental questions of fairness, ethics, and sustainability.

Nonprofits Cannot Thrive When Leadership Is Rewarded and Workers Are Sacrificed

The nonprofit sector is built on the backs of people who show up because they care. But care cannot pay rent. Compassion doesn’t cover gas. Meaningful work does not replace fair compensation.

When executive pay rises year after year but staff wages remain stagnant at the lowest end of the scale, the message becomes clear:

Leadership success is a priority. Staff stability is not.

And at IRI, that is exactly how many employees say they feel.

A Call for Transparency and Equity

Employees are not asking for luxury. They are asking for fairness, dialogue, and transparency — the basics that any healthy nonprofit should embrace.

And when the numbers show:

• A 22.3% raise for Suad Bisogno in one year,
• Followed by another 4.9% increase,
• While employees remain stuck at the bottom of the pay scale,
• And while a massive labor-violation settlement barely slowed executive raises,
• And while Suad earns nearly the same pay as a director managing a half-billion-dollar budget…

It’s fair to say: something at IRI needs to change.