Nigeria Magazine | Business & Philanthropy
Some of the most powerful business stories begin far from the boardroom. Hamdi Ulukaya’s starts in a small dairy-farming village in eastern Türkiye🇹🇷, where he grew up part of the country’s Kurdish minority. As a university student, he ran a newspaper that spoke up for Kurdish rights — a choice that landed him briefly in police custody and convinced him it was time to leave home. He arrived in the United States with little more than the discipline of a farming family and an outsider’s hunger to build something of his own.
That “something” turned out to be Chobani. Founded in 2005, the company grew from a single yogurt cup into one of America’s best-selling yogurt brands within five years, later expanding into coffee, creamers, and oat milk with the 2023 acquisition of La Colombe Coffee Workshop. But it’s not just the balance sheet that has made Ulukaya a name worth knowing — it’s what he chose to do with the success.
Turning His Story Into Opportunity for Others
Ulukaya built Chobani on employee-first principles rarely seen at scale: profit-sharing that has turned factory-line workers into shareholders, paid parental leave, and hourly wages well above the federal minimum. But his signature contribution to business and philanthropy has been his commitment to refugees.
Hiring refugees at his New York factories, Ulukaya discovered they were some of his most loyal and hardworking employees. The insight stayed with him: “The minute a refugee gets a job is the minute they stop being a refugee.” In 2016, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he turned that belief into a movement, launching the
Tent Partnership for Refugees — a nonprofit built to mobilise the private sector, not just governments and NGOs, to help refugees rebuild their lives.
Tent has since grown into a coalition of hundreds of major global employers — from Amazon and Hilton to Mastercard, IKEA, and Pfizer — working together to hire, train, and mentor displaced people across a dozen countries in the Americas and Europe. In under a decade, the initiative has helped tens of thousands of refugees find real jobs and real footing in new countries. In 2015, Ulukaya went further still, signing the Giving Pledge and committing the majority of his personal wealth to ending the global refugee crisis.
Why It Matters
Ulukaya’s journey is a reminder that wealth creation and generosity are not opposites — they can be the same engine.
The recognition has followed: a spot on Fortune’s “Change the World” list, the United Nations Global Leadership Award, an Eminent Advocate title from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and a place among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People.
