Mission and vision

What if we could help millions of refugees, simply by recognizing their skills?

The scale of the global refugee crisis demands that we look beyond traditional responses. Today, more than
100 million people have been forcibly displaced, among them doctors, engineers, software developers, skilled tradespeople, and many others whose careers have been interrupted, but whose expertise remains.

Many of these professionals live in countries where they cannot work legally and are locked out of skilled migration systems designed without them in mind. Their skills go unused while employers in other countries face critical shortages, and a solution is waiting to be scaled.

Talent Beyond Boundaries exists to close that gap.


Our mission

We are transforming skilled migration systems for refugees by removing barriers, creating new opportunities, and rewriting the story of displacement.

Our vision

Our vision is a world where displaced people can safely migrate for work, using their skills to rebuild their lives with dignity and purpose.


The result is win-win: for refugees and their families, for employers and local economies, and for under-resourced host countries.


What we do

We work at the intersection of humanitarian need and global workforce demand. We do this by:

  • Matching displaced people with international employers in need of their skills, providing end-to-end support throughout the recruitment, visa, and relocation process. 

  • Advocating for displaced people to be included in labour migration pathways, employment opportunities, migration financing, and training and certification

  • Building the evidence base and ecosystem needed to scale refugee labour mobility globally,   sharing our learnings, developing partnerships, and making the case to policymakers that this model works.


To date, more than 2,500 displaced individuals, including displaced professionals and their families have relocated through TBB’s pathways across thirteen countries.

 
 
 
 

Video: Our UK Director, Marina Brizar, reflects on her own lived experience of displacement, and the promise of labour mobility for refugees.

 

How we got here

In 2014, US attorneys Mary Louise Cohen and Bruce Cohen began exploring labour mobility for refugees as Fellows with the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative. They refined their ideas through consultation with refugees, advocacy organizations, and UN agencies in Beirut.

Around the same time, Australian tech entrepreneur John Cameron created a proposal for an international 'refugee jobs marketplace' which Amnesty International presented to the Australian government of the time. His inspiration was a meeting at an Amnesty event with a Kurdish refugee working for them on the Turkish Syrian border. Following a positive reaction to his proposal he organized a taskforce of experts to explore and promote the idea.

When they learned about each other, Mary Louise, Bruce, and John joined forces and the global nonprofit Talent Beyond Boundaries (TBB) was born in 2016. 

 
 

Pictured: Founders John (left), Mary-Louise (second from right), and Bruce (right), with the first refugee candidate to relocate through TBB’s programme - Syrian Software Developer, Tarek (second from left).