Person Open DS/UK/23220 Ulukaya; Hamdi (26 October 1972); Turkish Kurdish billionaire businessman and philanthropist Ulukaya Hamdi 26 October 1972 Turkish Kurdish billionaire businessman and philanthropist Male (cisgender) Iliç, Turkey (born)

New Berlin, New York, United States (residence)

Turkish Business Person Asian Son of a Kurdish family who owned and operated a sheep, goat, and dairy farm near the Euphrates River in Iliç. Heterosexual Hamdi Ulukaya is a Turkish-Kurdish billionaire businessman and philanthropist, based in the United States. Ulukaya is the owner, founder, chairman, and CEO of Chobani, the #1-selling strained yogurt brand in the US. According to Forbes, his net worth as of June 2019 is US$2.0 billion. In 2016, Ulukaya announced to his employees that he would be giving them 10% of the shares in Chobani. Born to a dairy-farming family in 1972 in Erzincan, a small village in Turkey, Ulukaya immigrated as a young man to the U.S. in 1994 to study English and to take a few business courses. In an interview with CNN Money, Ulukaya said that he was very serious about Kurdish rights and left Turkey due to the Turkish state's oppression of its Kurdish minority group. In 2002, he started a modest feta-cheese factory on the advice of his father. His larger success came from taking a major risk: Ulukaya purchased a large, defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York in 2005, in a region that had been the center of a dairy and cheese industry since the mid-nineteenth century. With no prior experience in the yogurt business, he has created a yogurt empire, Chobani, with facilities in several states. It achieved over $1 billion in annual sales in less than five years after launch, becoming the leading yogurt brand in the U.S. by 2011. The popularity of his Greek-style yogurt was associated with rising interest in the protein-rich, low-fat style yogurt; Greek yogurt's market share in the U.S. rose from less than 1% in 2007 to more than 50% in 2013. The success of his yogurt empire has made Ulukaya a billionaire; he has developed new employment centers in several regions, adding to the economy of relatively rural areas. Awards, Honours and Legacy; Ernst & Young named Ulukaya as the World Entrepreneur of the Year in 2013. In 2014 he was named by President Barack Obama as an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship initiative – 11 business leaders who encourage entrepreneurship. Charity and Philanthrophy: In 2014 Ulukaya pledged to donate $2 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He has also donated to many Muslim charities associated with Iraq and Syria and has explored philanthropic avenues for helping refugees around the world. In 2015, Ulukaya was honored with a humanitarian award by the American Turkish Society (ATS) for his personal work in helping to relieve the suffering of Syrian refugees. In 2017, Ulukaya launched the Hamdi Ulukaya Initiative (HUG) to train Turkish entrepreneurs who are running existing startups or planning on starting a new venture. HUG has a $500 million budget over five years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_Ulukaya (2019) International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) 2nd edition - ICA 2004 ISBN 2-9521932-2-3 National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 Yes RAHAKirkbride 12/16/2019 RAHAKirkbride 11/29/2022 c17ab047-47b3-47b4-8b88-65f7af448f2d