The Colleague You Don't Know Enough About: Refugees, the Workforce, and What Belonging Actually Builds
Start With This Number
1 in 5 U.S. workers was born outside the country.
That's your team. Your classroom. Your campus. Your community. The person in the meeting who hasn't spoken yet. The student who finished high school in three years because she had no other option. The colleague who rebuilt an entire identity (language, culture, profession, sense of self) before most of their coworkers had finished their first cup of coffee.
The refugee workforce is already here. And the organizations, schools, and communities that understand it are building something the others aren't.
Chantale Zuzi knows exactly what that something is. Because she lived the other side of it.
What the Data Says About Refugees and the Workforce
The research on refugees and workforce contribution is consistent, and largely underreported. Refugees start businesses at higher rates than the native-born population, fill labor gaps across sectors from healthcare to manufacturing to tech, and according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services analysis, contributed $63 billion more in government revenues than they received in services over a ten-year period.
Beyond the economics, they bring something harder to quantify and more expensive to develop: cross-cultural fluency, adaptability under pressure, multilingualism, and the kind of resilience that no leadership development program can manufacture. Organizations spend billions trying to build those traits. Refugees arrive with them.
What Happens to a Community When Refugees Arrive
When refugees are resettled into a community, the full picture takes time to see. There are genuine challenges around language, housing, schools, services, and skipping past those doesn't serve anyone. But there's a longer arc worth paying attention to.
Schools get more interesting. Classrooms that include refugee students introduce every other student in the room to a wider definition of persistence and what it means to build a life from scratch. Teachers who learn to reach a student who arrived speaking no English develop skills that make them better educators for every student they'll ever teach.
The communities that have done this well, such as Utica, New York; Clarkston, Georgia; Minneapolis, Minnesota, have built civic infrastructure around belonging that ends up serving everyone: more responsive local government, stronger community organizations, richer cultural life. Belonging, practiced seriously, raises the ceiling for a whole community.
The Gap Worth Closing
There is a difference between being present and belonging. Refugees can be resettled, employed, enrolled and still not be in the conversation. Still invisible to the culture around them.
That gap doesn't close on its own. It closes when leaders decide to understand the full range of human experience in their organizations and build conditions where that experience is genuinely valued. Chantale makes that gap visible, and then she gives audiences the language and the will to close it.
When she speaks to corporate audiences, teams leave with a wider definition of inclusion—one that accounts for colleagues whose path to that conference room looked nothing like the dominant narrative. For educators and teachers, she leaves them with a framework for seeing students they may have been looking past. When speaking to civic and community organizations, leaders get a more honest picture of what belonging actually requires.
Who Is Chantale Zuzi?
Chantale Zuzi is a refugee, a TED speaker, a founder, and one of the most powerful voices on resilience and global belonging working on the keynote circuit today.
Her story begins in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At 13, she lost both parents in a massacre in her village and fled with her nine siblings to the Rwamwanja Refugee Settlement in Uganda. As the oldest girl, she became primary caregiver for her siblings while simultaneously advocating for girls and people with albinism in the camp.
She went on to work with the United Nations, complete high school in three years with highest honors, resettle in Worcester, Massachusetts, and earn her place at Wellesley College. She founded Refugee Can Be, a nonprofit providing secondary education, life skills, and leadership training to girls in Rwamwanja — the same settlement she once called home. She spoke at TEDWomen 2023, has been mentored by Hillary Clinton and Angelina Jolie, and was photographed by Platon for the Cultural Leaders as a Catalyst of Change campaign at the World Economic Forum.
Every chapter of that story is present when she speaks. And it changes what audiences are capable of understanding.
What Audiences Say
"I left that talk with a completely different understanding of what belonging means. I kept thinking about my colleagues and what stories I've never thought to ask about." — Conference attendee
"Chantale made the room feel something. Not just inspired — accountable. In the best way." — Event organizer
Give Your Audience the Eyes to See
The person whose story could change your organization's entire definition of belonging is already in your city. Already on your team. Already in your classroom.
Chantale Zuzi helps audiences truly see their value and all become better because of it.