Refugee support nonprofit Welcome Neighbor STL names new leader

Welcome Neighbor STL, a nonprofit that supports refugee and immigrant families resettling in St. Louis, has named a new leader.

The nonprofit's board of directors named Ann Wittman, who in the past three years has held leadership roles in its family support, program management, transportation services and other service areas, as its new executive director.

She succeeds Jessica Bueler, the founder and former executive director, who left the organization in September to "pursue other ventures," a spokesperson said Tuesday in an email. Bueler, who didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment, in 2025 co-founded Fork in the Road Foundation, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that provides culinary training and work for refugees and immigrants through catering, supper clubs and cooking classes.

Wittman worked for a decade in corporate consulting with Deloitte & Touche and as an IT auditor with Abbott Laboratories prior to transitioning to nonprofit leadership, officials said.

She began with Welcome Neighbor in 2021 as a family-partner volunteer matched with an Afghan refugee family. Wittman in April 2022 founded Humankind STL to provide reliable used cars for refugees when more than 1,000 Afghans arrived in the St. Louis region following the evacuation of Kabul. Humankind was merged into Welcome Neighbor in 2023.

Wittman also has led Welcome Neighbor's START (St. Louis Teens Aid Refugees Today) program for the past several years, officials said. The program provides St. Louis teens with opportunities to raise funds and provide hands-on help to refugee families.

Welcome Neighbor STL also hosts supper clubs and catering events that directly benefit refugee cooks who prepare the meals; English classes; and a mother's support group. It's based at 4170 Delor St. in the city's Bevo Mill neighborhood, a former school building owned by the Archdiocese of St. Louis that's adjacent to St. John the Baptist Church.

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