Representing EMM, Sila Boz — Senior Program Officer for Matching Grant — recently attended the Second U.S. Business Summit organized by Tent Partnership for Refugees. (Sila is pictured above, in red, between Tent founder Hamdi Ulukaya and Tent U.S. Director Yaron Schwartz, along with several attendees from Amplio Recruiting.)

Tent Partnership for Refugees was founded by Hamdi Ulukaya, Chairman and CEO of Chobani. You may have tasted the company’s delicious yogurt and other dairy products. Ulukaya grew up in a Kurdish dairy-farming family in Turkey, and brought his knowledge of how to make high quality yogurt to the U.S., founding Chobani in 2007.

After witnessing how much his own company gained from hiring refugees in upstate New York, Ulukaya became an advocate for providing newcomers support through employment: not only hiring, but also training and mentoring refugees to ensure growth in their skills, goals, and social integration over time. As Ulukaya puts it,

The minute a refugee gets a job is the minute they stop being a refugee.

In 2016, Ulukaya created the Tent Partnership for Refugees to encourage other business leaders to do their part to offer newcomers opportunities for professional growth, economic self-sufficiency, and social integration.

Tent works with leading companies around the world to connect refugees to jobs – at scale – harnessing what employers do best to overcome refugees’ pervasive exclusion from the workforce. The organization’s focus is on hiring, training, and mentoring refugees, through participating companies around the world. Tent has been a preferred partner of EMM since 2021 and has helped our affiliates connect with 20+ companies in the past three years.

At this year’s Tent business summit, Sila attended panel discussions followed by a networking meeting at Pfizer’s New York City headquarters. The panels were moderated by CNN anchor Julia Chatterley. Key panel participants included the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas (pictured below right) and the CEOs of many companies, such as Amazon, Pfizer, and GAP, along with inspiring refugee speakers. The summit concluded with many companies stepping up and making commitments to hire and train more refugees.

   

At Tent’s first U.S. Business Summit, in 2022, 45 companies collectively committed to hiring 22,000 refugees and training 13,000 refugees in the U.S. over three years. According to Yaron Schwarz, Tent’s U.S. Director, these companies have already fulfilled 70% of their collective hiring commitment and exceeded their collective training commitment. Learn more about Tent’s work in the U.S. here.

If you have questions about how the Tent partnership may be helpful for finding employment in your local context, reach out to Sila Boz ([email protected]).