Chantale Zuzi

Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chantale Zuzi became a refugee at the age of 13 after her parents were murdured during a paramilitary attack on her village. She and her nine siblings fled to Uganda, then on her own she went to Kenya before being granted asylum in the United States in 2019. A graduate of Wellesley College, she is the founder of Refugee Can Be, a non-profit whose mission is to educate and empower refugee girls, a recipient of a 2024 Moonshot Award, and her TED Talk on the search for home has been viewed by more than half a million people. Born with albinism and legally blind, she speaks frequently at such venues as the United Nations and the Omega Institute’s Leadership Conference, the Skoll Foundation and the Memorial Foundation for the Blind, the Clinton Global Initative Annual Meeting and Ford Global as well as colleges and universities, including the University of Washington, Clarke University, and Wellesley College.