From Refugee to CEO: How Dzana Homan’s Fearless Drive Helped Her Overcome The Most Challenging Odds

For a short time, Dzana Homan, the CEO of School of Rock*, referred to her hometown of Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia) as a utopia. It was a place where education was free, and people were fueled by the belief that anything is possible. Her father was a journalist, and her mother was a psychiatrist. Both of them had big dreams for their family. Homan was encouraged to study physics and piano, and she eventually received a bachelor’s degree in both from a small college in Ljubljana.

Then, with a promising future on the horizon, Homan’s life took a detour. After graduating college, she returned home to Sarajevo to convince her parents to leave. There were signs that war was coming, and she hoped her family would leave the city before tensions escalated. But Homan’s timing was off—war broke out, and the city fell under siege. The economy was in shambles, and residents were held hostage in their own homes by relentless shelling and the threat of snipers. Homan would be stuck in Sarajevo for four-and-a-half years.

It was during this time that she first discovered her love for teaching children.

“It was a bleak existence then. I was young and so eager to make some kind of difference—to encourage some kind of positivity. I decided to volunteer at the local hospital, and I ended up working mostly around kids. Teaching kids was always something that felt natural to me. Kids make me feel comfortable in my own skin, and I feel very optimistic around them,” Homan said. “I think that really helped to keep my spirits high during that time.”

By 1995, Homan had the chance to move to the United States as a refugee. With only $1,200 in her pocket, she set out for Los Angeles. She worked odd jobs just to make ends meet—from babysitting to playing music in a bar. Within six months, she talked her way into a graduate program at New Mexico State University-Las Cruces. She cold-called nearly every university she could find that offered a program similar to the physics she studied back home. She made headway when a professor picked up his phone instead of his assistant. He accepted Homan in the middle of the year, giving her teaching and research assistantships at the same time to help her pay for classes. With a little bit of luck and a lot of hustle, Homan had gotten her first big break in the U.S.

“I believe that it was the experience I went through back in Sarajevo that gave me insight into what we’re truly capable of when things get really bad—how heroic we’re capable of being, and how far we can stretch ourselves,” Homan said. “You get to a point in your life where it feels like no job is too hard. As long as you’re rooted in the right values and celebrate the right things, nothing can take that dream away from you.”

After graduating, she started working on research projects in deep space communications—a collaboration between New Mexico State, Los Alamos and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s research and development center. It was there that she ran into another roadblock—as a native of a communist country, she didn’t have the level of clearance needed to complete any of the jobs she was tasked with. It would take nearly six months to get the authorization she needed. Unwilling to sit idly by, she returned to Los Angeles to once again work odd jobs.

“I had to start over so many times, and at some point, you feel like you’ve run out of opportunities for new beginnings,” Homan said. “My mother recommended I spend my time volunteering with kids, remembering that that’s what got me through tough times once before. So, I literally walked into this business called FutureKids—a company dedicated to teaching technology literacy to young children. They had an opening for a robotics teacher. And just like that, I started."

Within two months, she became the director of the FutureKids center, then a partner. Within four years, she helped to grow the organization from one zip code to spanning from Santa Barbara to San Diego. She became CEO by the time she was 35—seven years after coming to the United States. Eventually, she was recruited to Huntington Learning Centers as CEO, and recruited again to Goddard Preschool Systems. It was during this time that she had her first encounter with School of Rock.

“I was attending a kids’ recital for a friend of mine at a major L.A. rock-and-roll venue called The Knitting Factory, and I couldn’t believe what I saw,” Homan said. “This boy had been attending School of Rock’s program only eight weeks, and he was completely owning the stage. I remember feeling this sense of exhilaration coming from those young kids. It was one of those moments when I knew I was in the presence of something truly incredibly. I thought to myself, ‘One day, I want to run that company.’”

That opportunity came seven years later—in 2014, Homan was named School of Rock’s CEO. This new role wasn’t just a testament to her love for teaching children—it also solidified her belief in a system that had given her so much during some of her toughest years: franchising.

“I love the notion of franchising. It gave me the chance to be a part of something meaningful, and I found that very liberating,” Homan said. “I came to the U.S. as a refugee. I didn’t know English, and I didn’t have a network or support system to fall back on. Franchising opened the door for me to be a part of more and greater things. At a time when I felt like so many things were out of my control, franchising allowed me to determine my destiny.”

Today, under Homan’s watch, School of Rock has grown to more than 191 units throughout the world. She’s motivated thousands of young, aspiring musicians to excel and be more confident in life. She’s also helped School of Rock emerge as a powerful entertainment company. Most recently, the company has collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber for the "School of Rock Musical" on Broadway. The company’s students even play major festivals like South by Southwest and throughout some of the best rock-and-roll venues in the country.

“Education is home for me. I once was working minimum wage jobs, wondering how I could get ahead here in the U.S. Education was always the answer to success,” Homan said. “No matter where I am in life 10 or 20 years from now, this will always be my cause.”

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons that Homan has learned over the years is that nothing worth celebrating in life comes easy. There will always be obstacles; there will always be naysayers; and there will always be people trying to hold you back. What truly matters is how you choose to respond to those challenges—and that, Homan says, is what will ultimately define who you are.

“As young people, as entrepreneurs, as men and as women, we have to understand that if you own your decision and your beliefs no matter what, people will get out of your way and the seas will start to part,” Homan said. “We have to be able to dare. And we also have to be able to fail. We have to be comfortable with the reality of messing up. Sometimes you’ll have incredible wins. Other days it’s nothing more than the daily grind. But you have to keep showing up every day and be willing to run that extra mile. When you keep pushing for what you believe in, good things will undoubtedly happen.”