Mosaic Steering Committee member Anna Crosslin-International Institute featured

Anna Crosslin, president and CEO of the International Institute of St. Louis, notes that St. Louis can be particularly daunting to a nonnative. She’s struck by the homegrown St. Louisans: people who have grown up here in families that have always lived here, and still have friends from high school. “That’s very off-putting to people who come from other places, because they don’t have that same sense of community and they’re looking for ways to be invited in. It’s not that St. Louisans are being mean or anything. They just don’t think about it.” In 1850, the city had a population that was around 50% foreign-born. Today, Crosslin says, the foreign-born population here is only about 4.5%.

Read more here.