Tomorrow Talks | From Refugees to Entrepreneurs: How Communities can Bank on Belonging

Around the world, more than 100 million people have been displaced by war, persecution, and instability. The dominant conversation asks how governments and humanitarian organizations can support them. This Tomorrow Talk asks a different question: What is possible when refugees are recognized not simply as recipients of aid, but as entrepreneurs, employees, investors, and economic partners? Drawing on years of research, fieldwork, and investment experience, authors John Kluge Jr. and Christine Mahoney explore how refugee entrepreneurs are creating businesses, generating employment, and revitalizing communities around the world. They introduce the emerging field of Refugee Lens Investing—a framework for directing capital toward refugee-led enterprises, companies employing displaced people, and the places helping newcomers establish new lives. This Tomorrow Talk examines a broader concert of “belonging,” not only a social or moral aspiration, but something communities can actively build through access to capital, employment, networks, and opportunity. Charlottesville is significant because it has been a home to refugees for decades, and this conversation asks how our financial institutions, businesses, universities, philanthropies, and residents can help create an economy in which newcomers do not merely arrive, but participate, contribute, and prosper. Half the proceeds from the tickets will go to Kiva’s World Refugee Fund, which makes micro-loans to refugee entrepreneurs. ______ John and Christine are the co-authors of Banking on Belonging: Why Investing in Refugee Entrepreneurs Benefits Everyone. In partnership with New Dominion Bookshop, books will be available for purchase and signing. Following the Talk, Thistlerock Mead Company will offer an inaugural tasting of its newest mead, which is made with refugee-grown coffee beans and produced by a company that provides employment for resettled refugees in the United States.