Hamdi Ulukaya built Chobani from a shuttered yogurt factory in New Berlin, New York, but his biggest operational challenge wasn't the milk supply—it was the people. Decades after arriving in the US in 1994 without a word of English or a single contact, Ulukaya watched hundreds of local refugees struggle to enter the workforce due to language and transport gaps. His solution was blunt: Chobani would provide the interpreters and shuttles. The plant filled up. The workers stayed.
That single-site experiment evolved into Tent, the Partnership for Refugees, which Ulukaya founded in 2016. The goal was never charity; it was labor economics. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Tent now connects with more than 400 major employers across a dozen countries in the Americas and Europe. These aren't small startups. They are corporations seeking to solve workforce diversification and fill skilled roles.
The mechanism is practical, not sentimental. UNHCR reports that Tent produces country-specific hiring guides for markets like Spain, Mexico, and France. They host job fairs and train HR departments on navigating work-permit regulations. The barrier isn't just language; it’s the lack of local references and the sheer confusion of a foreign labor market. Tent bridges that gap.
Ulukaya’s own history fuels the network’s aggression. He left Turkey in 1994 after facing questioning over his writing supporting Kurdish rights. He arrived at 22 with no money. He worked a dairy farm. He learned the system from the bottom up. He knows that a first job is often the only ticket to social belonging. Chobani has hired hundreds of refugees, offering English classes and multi-lingual translators on-site. The loyalty he cites as a result is a business metric, not just a moral victory.
The next phase involves policy. At the 2023 Global Refugee Forum, Tent and its partners pledged to expand economic inclusion frameworks. The ambition is to make refugee hiring a standard line item in corporate ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reporting. The next step is scaling the 400-company model to include mid-sized firms, ensuring the network outpaces the inflow of displaced workers seeking economic stability.