Tent Partnership for Refugees

The minute a refugee gets a job is the minute they stop being a refugee. Such was the belief Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya had when he founded Tent Partnership for Refugees, an initiative that helps refugees integrate into the job markets in their new countries. Since 2016, Tent has galvanized hundreds of businesses to commit to hiring nearly a quarter-million refugees across a dozen countries. The effort is as valuable for the host countries and companies as it is for the refugees gaining employment. In Mexico, where Tent launched in February, the initiative estimates there are more than 1 million job vacancies—a gap that, with the help of 50 companies including Amazon, Walmart, and Microsoft, it hopes to fill with the hundreds of thousands of refugees and migrants who have moved to Mexico in recent years. “It’s such a simple equation,” Tent CEO Gideon Maltz says. “It’s better for the refugees, it’s better for the businesses, and it’s better for the country because that allows for economic growth.”