Our 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 like aid and humanitarian resettlement.
Refugees are an untapped wellspring of talent and skills but lack opportunities. Refugees are doctors, engineers, skilled trade workers, software developers, and more. Yet many find themselves in countries where they don't have the right to work locally and are locked out of skilled migration systems.
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.
TBB was the first organization in the world to focus on refugee labor mobility as a complementary pathway, but we believe that a collaborative approach is the fastest and best route to a more equitable system. That’s why we’re committed to sharing resources and supporting governments and others in replicating and expanding on this critical work.
Video: Our UK Director, Marina Brizar, reflects on her own lived experience of displacement, and the promise of labour mobility for refugees.
Our strategy to scale displaced talent mobility
We know displaced people have the skills that employers desperately need, and that governments can make practical adjustments to their skilled migration schemes to make them accessible to refugees.
With more than 100 million forcibly displaced people in the world today, scaling this solution is both a moral imperative and an incredible opportunity to unleash potential.
Our Global Strategy 2023-2027 details how we will help thousands of people to benefit from skilled migration over the coming years, while establishing the foundations for the sustainable growth of this solution beyond 2027.
How we change systems
Spotlight on TBB
How did we get 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 organisations, 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 organised 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).