Hamdi Ulukaya

Hamdi Ulukaya was raised along the Euphrates River on a mountain in Eastern Turkey. After moving to the United States, he founded Chobani in 2005 with the mission and vision of making high-quality food more accessible. Five years after selling the first cup of yogurt, Chobani was a billion-dollar brand, and today is the No. 1 yogurt brand in the U.S. In 2023, Chobani acquired leading coffee roaster La Colombe. In 2025, Chobani acquired Daily Harvest, a company making it easier for people to eat more sustainably-grown fruits and vegetables.

As a leader in the food and beverage industry, Ulukaya built Chobani on the foundation that it would do well by doing good. Since 2022, Chobani has donated over 6.4 million pounds of food to combat hunger in America. Ulukaya is well-known for his employee-first policies, including instituting innovative profit-sharing and paid parental leave programs for Chobani’s 3,000-plus employees, and implementing competitive hourly wage increases well above the federal rate. He has been at the forefront of the movement to hire refugees, having discovered through his own experience hiring them that “the minute a refugee gets a job is the minute they stop being a refugee.”

This inspired him to start the Tent Partnership for Refugees in 2016, with the mission of mobilizing the world’s biggest businesses to integrate refugees. In under a decade, Tent has expanded its operations to a dozen countries across the Americas and Europe and grown its network to more than 500 major companies – including Amazon, Hilton, Marriott, and Pfizer – that are committed to hiring refugees and helping them become job-ready. In 2024, Tent was recognized as a TIME100 Most Influential Companies honoree. Ulukaya also signed the Giving Pledge, committing the majority of his personal wealth to help bring an end to refugees’ crisis.

For those efforts, Ulukaya was named an Eminent Advocate by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and received the United Nations Foundation Global Leadership Award, among other recognitions. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has also named him as a Sustainable Development Goals Advocate. Ulukaya has received the Oslo Business for Peace Award and George H.W Bush Points of Light Award, is a Global Citizen Prize winner, and was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World for his work on the refugee crisis and his innovative approach to business. In 2025, Ulukaya was recognized by NatGeo as an inaugural member of the “National Geographic 33” for his bold leadership and founding of Tent.