Madeline Holland, longtime staff member and Co-CEO of TBB since 2019 will step back from the organisation from this week, passing the baton to Steph Cousins, who will continue as sole CEO.

Here, Madeline reflects on five and a half years dedicated to unlocking labour mobility for refugees:

“When I first heard about TBB in the spring of 2016 it was a brand new organization with a simple and galvanizing mission: let refugees move internationally for work.

Once I heard about it, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.

On one side of the world there were refugees with every skill and ability imaginable but no permission to put them to use and rebuild their lives. On the other side of the world there were companies, communities and countries screaming out for talent but unable to find the skills they needed.

On the news every day we watched displaced people forced into unthinkable decisions because there were too few safe and legal options for them to reach security. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people were moving around the world for work each year, business as usual. The foolishness of it all enraged me. I felt the urgency to try something different.

When I first started at TBB, there was a small and passionate team beginning to put into place the building blocks we thought we’d need to start moving the needle, bit by bit.

In those early days, we encountered a number of circular problems. Employers couldn’t tell us if they would be interested in recruiting refugees from abroad until they knew their specific skills. Other organizations were reluctant to help us collect data until they knew that employers were on board. Governments wanted to hear directly from employers about the barriers they were facing to hiring refugees. Employers wanted assurance from governments that barriers would be addressed before they invested in recruitment.

We recognized early that we could help to break this costly cycle of inaction. We set a goal to connect ten people with international jobs and migration – not because our ambitions were so modest, but because we understood that as long as the conversation was left theoretical rather than grounded, we would never dismantle those persistent obstacles that made it difficult for refugees and international employers to find one another, and for refugees and their families to move to new countries on the basis of their skills.

Our work to connect refugees with jobs and to support them to relocate as workers became the engine of our learning – challenging our assumptions, sharpening our convictions, and refining our advocacy.

Our guiding belief was that ten families who moved today would pave the road for the thousand to move tomorrow. We hoped that everything we learned would be of use to others who might see the same foolishness and opportunity that we saw, and join in the work of expanding opportunities for displaced people to rebuild their lives through labor mobility.

There were many times in those early years I thought we’d never help even one person move – that inertia, skepticism and silos would rule the day. As I get ready to depart from TBB, I’m under no illusion that the work is done. I see that in many ways it is just beginning. But as I sit here five and half years down the line, I’m filled with confidence that the road is indeed widening, and that the barriers that once seemed intractable are in fact giving way.

In 2019, the tenth family touched down in a new country. Today, more than 300 people have moved or are in the process of moving through TBB. Some of the world’s largest employers are building recruitment pipelines of international displaced talent, and mom-and-pop shops across continents have been lifted up by talented workers who once were displaced. Three of the world’s largest skilled migration programs are piloting efforts to welcome talent regardless of their displacement status.

Labor mobility is now seen as an essential complementary pathway for refugees; an additional solution in a world that desperately needs more of them.

Looking back, I’m struck most by the incredible power of those who said, “Ok, let’s try it,” even when the outcome was uncertain. I’m moved by the partners, the philanthropists, the employers, the policymakers, and most of all the people living in displacement who had imperfect evidence that their efforts would bear fruit, and even so, decided to give it a go with us.

To the many thousands of people and partners who have gotten us here through that inexplicable willingness to try – thank you. You genuinely made all the difference.”

Looking forward…

Our CEO, Steph Cousins, reflects on Madeline’s legacy and outlines the next steps for TBB:

“Madeline’s contribution to TBB’s mission cannot be understated. From our earliest days as a tiny nonprofit with an oversized goal – through to the global presence, partnerships, and expansion that characterize our organisation today – Madeline’s brave heart and analytical mind have been a constant, driving force.

On a personal note, working alongside Madeline has been a highlight of my career. I’m grateful to know that, whatever comes next for Madeline, she’ll always be in TBB’s corner; enthusiastically cheering us on. Her work at TBB will echo throughout time as more and more refugee families are able to leverage labour mobility pathways as a ticket to a new life.

But as Madeline says, the work is not done. Far from it.

Our team has doubled in size in the past 6 months and we’ve attracted some incredibly accomplished individuals to join this exciting mission. Together, we’re ready to take on this next phase of scaling labour mobility as a solution to displacement.

We’ll be focusing on a number of strategic goals, including:

• Assisting more than 1,000 forcibly displaced people to rebuild their lives in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom over the next two years, utilizing the employer-sponsored skilled pathways we have negotiated.

• Empowering other refugee-serving nonprofit organizations to learn and execute our approach, enabling them to secure job placements for refugees and position this solution for transformative scale.

• Unlocking opportunities for more refugees to secure job placements in a growing number of destinations, including the United States and Europe, through policy and systems change.

As always, thank you to our partners, donors, employers and supporters who make this work possible. And – for the last time – thank you to Madeline: we’re so excited to continue what you started and make you proud!”