International Institute of St. Louis CEO Arrey Obenson parted ways with the organization late last week—but they aren’t saying why, issuing a statement this afternoon saying only that Obenson is “no longer with the organization.”
Blake Hamilton, a 15-year agency veteran, has been tapped to serve as its interim president and CEO, the statement said.
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“The International Institute of St. Louis has been serving this community for more than 105 years,” Hamilton said in a statement. “I joined this organization as a front-line staff member in 2009 because I care about this work and get the opportunity to live out my values every day in this line of work. I am proud to have been part of the organization’s legacy and am working with our team and Board of Directors to lead the organization during this time of transition, ensuring we continue to serve our immigrant and refugee neighbors and help them thrive because we know that when immigrants thrive, our region thrives.”
Obenson took the reins at the organization in February 2021, and had famously big shoes to fill. Anna Crosslin had led the International Institute since 1978. Yet Obenson, who had moved to St. Louis from Cameroon in 2002, had lived experience as an immigrant—and a sense of mission.
“We have an enormous opportunity to make the case that the immigrant is vital for the survival of the American economy, to tell the story of immigrants, and to have a conversation about the kind of America we want,” he told SLM at the time.
But as a designated federal resettlement agency, the organization has been subject to the whims of presidential administrations with very different views on how many refugees should be in the U.S. (The agency receives a set fee for every refugee it sponsors.) IISTL struggled to ramp up when President Joe Biden increased refugee admissions after several lean years under Donald Trump. And while its income grew significantly as admissions ramped up, so did expenses, tax records show. Its most recent tax return, from 2022, shows the IISTL lost $131,000 that year after turning a $3.2 million profit in 2021.
Last summer, IISTL asked the public for more help, saying federal stipends for refugees were not enough to cover the costs of resettlement. And the director of Welcome Neighbor STL, which works with many refugees in the area, publicly aired frustrations that some other organizations have expressed more quietly when she told SLM in August, “The International Institute is a $25 million powerhouse with many organizations picking up the pieces when they are unable to fulfill their obligations to the clients they serve.”
Even so, the agency received permission to resettle 1,900 refugees in the fiscal year that began in October. That’s a big increase from the 1,300 it helped last year—and it’s work that should continue even under the first year of Trump’s second administration. (After that, however, all bets are off, as Obenson acknowledged to SLM last week.)
Obenson did not respond to a message seeking comment earlier today, but on his personal LinkedIn on Thursday, detailed a list of accomplishments without referencing his departure. He wrote that IISTL’s budget had gone from $8.5 million in 2021 to $26 million in 2024 and that it had gone from serving 1,200 people during his first year to 4,600 this past year.
A petition posted at Change.org urged the International Institute to reinstate Obenson. “We, the undersigned, are deeply shocked and disheartened by the decision to separate Arrey Obenson from the International Institute of St. Louis, an organization he has so passionately and effectively led,” it reads.
Obenson earned $202,540 in compensation, according to the IISTL’s 2022 tax return.
