2025 Prize Laureate
Gideon Maltz
Tent Partnership for Refugees, CEO
“Tikkun olam – ‘repairing the world’ – is at the heart of Tent’s work. At a time when refugees are fleeing conflict and persecution in historically high numbers, I’m privileged to be leading Tent’s work in helping hundreds of thousands of refugees find decent work, stand on their own two feet again, and flourish in their new lives.”
Gideon Maltz is the CEO of Tent Partnership for Refugees, an organization mobilizing the world's largest employers to hire refugees at every skill level into their workforces. With more than 43 million refugees fleeing their home countries due to persecution, conflict, and violence, refugees critically need decent employment to restart their lives, yet they struggle to find work despite their skills and qualifications due to barriers like language gaps, transportation challenges, and lack of professional networks. This crisis unfolds amid severe labor shortages in high- and middle-income countries with declining birth rates and aging populations—the United States has around 8 million job openings, Germany has 1.7 million unfilled positions, and in Mexico, 75% of employers struggle to find workers. Under Gideon's leadership, Tent has galvanized over 500 of the world's biggest employers—including Amazon, Marriott International, McDonald's, and Pfizer—to pledge help for hundreds of thousands of refugees, with commitments to employ over 240,000 refugees and provide job preparation for over 180,800 more across the Americas and Europe.
Tent's laser-focused mission is based on the understanding that employment is the most important milestone for refugees to restart their lives and that integrating refugees into labor markets at scale lays the groundwork for countries to welcome more refugees. In 2024, Tent was named to the TIME100 Most Influential Companies list, becoming one of the smallest organizations and the first refugee-focused organization to earn this honor—a reflection of how Gideon has created a unique, compelling, effective, and scalable model. A native of South Africa who came to the United States in 1996, Gideon earned a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School. He has served in both the Obama and Biden Administrations and worked at Hogan Lovells and McKinsey. He has published widely on refugees, human rights, and business in outlets including CNN, Politico, Fortune, and the Journal of Democracy.
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