Jason Baker

Executive Director, Bilingual International Assistant Services, St. Louis, MO

Jason began volunteering in 2010 as an ESL/citizenship instructor for Bosnian concentration camp survivors in St. Louis. He joined Bilingual International’s staff two years later and accepted directorship from the agency’s founder in 2016. In that year, he oversaw a merger with two partner organizations to relaunch the St. Louis Partnership for Survivors of Torture, an integrated, holistic services program with strong roots in the American torture treatment movement. Jason has worked to expand mental health programming for foreign-born/LEP populations in St. Louis - as well as the capacity of other community providers to serve these clients. He has built out trauma-focused, school-centered counseling programming for migrant and refugee youth in the St. Louis region and pushed to establish responsive network bodies comprised of area universities, health systems, direct providers, and government offices. Jason holds a Ph.D. in Languages and Literatures from Washington University and serves on the board of the Behavioral Health Network of Greater St. Louis.