Henrietta H. Fore and Hamdi Ulukaya Join Kent Program Advisory Board
Henrietta H. Fore, former executive director of UNICEF, and Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder and CEO of Chobani and founder of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, have joined the advisory board of Columbia SIPA’s Kent Global Leadership Program on Conflict Resolution.
The Kent Program was established in 2019 to develop and pursue innovative approaches to the prevention, mediation, and cessation of conflict by harnessing the power of public institutions, civil society, and business, which collectively form a “Golden Triangle” for conflict resolution.
Each summer it welcomes selected applicants from governments and intergovernmental institutions — the peacemakers of tomorrow — to New York City. Participants build a broad array of practical skills through an executive training seminar that is highlighted by case studies, simulations, and the active participation of leaders from the public, private, and nonprofit sector.
Other program components include on-campus programming, an annual visiting professorship, and fellowships for outstanding Columbia SIPA graduate students.
The Kent Program is led by Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Columbia SIPA’s Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of Practice in International and Public Affairs, who also serves on the advisory board.
“I’m pleased to welcome to our advisory board Henrietta Fore and Hamdi Ulukaya, distinguished visionaries who display the cross-sector achievement that marks our program,” Guéhenno said. “They have worked to achieve creative, collaborative solutions to pressing issues ranging from food insecurity to equal access to education and work, and I know they will draw on their stores of both ingenuity and perspective to help guide the Kent Program.”
Henrietta H. Fore has worked to champion economic development, education and health, nutrition, and water and energy infrastructure; to provide both humanitarian and disaster assistance; and to pursue long-term development in all of the world’s nations. As UNICEF’s global executive director from 2018 to 2022, she helped lead the world’s largest procurement and delivery of childhood and COVID vaccines and fought to connect every school and learner to distance learning and the internet. Before that Fore served as chairman and CEO of Holsman International; as administrator of USAID; as director of U.S. foreign assistance and under secretary of state for management for the U.S. Department of State; and as director of the U.S. Mint.
Hamdi Ulukaya was raised in a dairy-farming family in a small village in eastern Türkiye and, after moving to the United States, launched Chobani in 2007 with the mission of making good-quality food more accessible. As a leader in the food manufacturing industry, Ulukaya built Chobani on the foundation that it would do well by doing good, and quickly gained recognition for his employee-first policies and for becoming a leading voice in the movement to hire refugees. Inspired by his refugee employees, Ulukaya started the Tent Partnership for Refugees in 2016, a global nonprofit that mobilizes the business community to connect refugees to work. Its network of more than 300 companies and counting around the world - including Amazon, Blackstone, Hilton, PepsiCo, and Pfizer – are committed to including refugees through hiring, training, and mentorship. Ulukaya has since been named an Eminent Advocate by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and 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 addition to Fore, Ulukaya, and Guéhenno the advisory board also includes as members the program benefactor Muhtar Kent, who is the retired chairman and CEO of the Coca-Cola Company; Merit E. Janow, Columbia SIPA’s dean emerita; Luis Alberto Moreno, a former president of the Inter-American Development Bank; Sam Nunn, the former U.S. senator from Georgia; and Clyde Tuggle, a partner at the investment firm Pine Island Capital Partners.