Hamdi Ulukaya (born 26 October 1972) is a Turkish[6][7][8] billionaire businessman, activist and philanthropist of Kurdish ethnicity based in the United States.

His major success came when he purchased a large, defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York in 2005, located in a region with a history in the dairy and cheese industry since the mid-nineteenth century.

[16] In July 2022, UN Secretary General António Guterres appointed him as an additional advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

[17] Hamdi Ulukaya was born to a dairy-farming Kurdish[18][19][20] family in 1972 in İliç, a small village in Turkey's Erzincan Province.

He had six siblings and his family owned and operated a sheep, goat, and dairy farm near the Euphrates River in İliç, Erzincan Province, where they made cheese and yogurt.

[27][7] Although he initially threw the flier away,[7] Ulukaya toured the plant the following day and decided to buy it, against the advice of his attorney and business advisor.

[26] To manufacture strained yogurt, Ulukaya needed a million-dollar commercial machine called a milk separator, which the American-style Kraft factory did not have.

[23][26][29] Since he could not afford advertising, he invested time and money on the product's packaging, using a distinctive new bowl-style shape to differentiate the brand.

[31] Lacking the budget for traditional marketing, after hearing customers phoning in to say that they loved Chobani, Ulukaya had his small team reach out to bloggers, Facebook, and Twitter to have constant and direct communication with consumers.

[35] In December 2012 the company opened the world's largest yogurt factory in Twin Falls, Idaho, a $450 million investment.

[46] In an interview with Ernst and Young Global chairman & CEO Mark Weinberger, Ulukaya said that businessmen should promote a sense of purpose in their corporate culture to create a climate of positive change in business and the world.

[48] In March 2017 The New York Times reported Ulukaya's efforts to work with Idaho colleges to offer technical training for workers to solve the area's labor shortage.

The Chobani yogurt plant in Twin Falls is the largest in the world and pays its workers in the area on average twice minimum wage.

[51] In 2017, Chobani started offering six weeks of paid leave to new parents as a result of Ulukaya's own experience when his son was born in 2015.

The policy ensures that Chobani employees have the needed time to bond with their newborns, and it covers adoption, foster care and same-sex couples as well.

[53] Later that spring, Ulukaya was featured by CBSNews' 60 Minutes on 9 April 2017, in a segment called "Chief of Chobani" that focused on his approach to business and philanthropy.

Ulukaya stated that businesses were more than happy to raise prices during inflation but slow to bring them back down when costs drop.

[62][63][64][65] Donations have included major grants to support famine relief efforts in Somalia,[63] and to underwrite the New York City Pianos project launched by Sing for Hope.

[71] At Chobani's plants in Upstate New York and Idaho, Ulukaya has long hired refugees from around the world from regions across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

[128] In 2012, Hamdi Ulukaya's Turkish ex-wife Dr. Ayşe Giray sued him for a 53 percent stake in the company claiming her family lent him $500,000 for the business.