Imo Momoh was just a teenager when he came to the United States from Nigeria to attend college and join his older sister, a student at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Three months later, in the Fall of 2000, his sister left, and Imo was on his own. “It was hard,” he says. “I was by myself.”
For Momoh, those early years were difficult. At one point, as a student at California State University-East Bay in Hayward, things got bad enough that he confided in a school nurse. “We had built a friendly relationship and I told her I was stressed,” he says. “I just expressed the challenges and she listened. Sometimes you just want to vent and speak.”
He stuck it out through those tough times, and has used those experiences — and the trials of coming from another country and culture — to create a well of empathy and understanding that has informed his work as a leader in community mental health programs up and down the state.
“I know the challenges that exist when you try to assimilate into a new culture,” he says. “I understand the struggles people have in trying to understand a new system and feed your family. I understand not being able to pay rent, and what do you do? It can affect your mental stability, your emotional health. And if your mental health is affected, it affects your physical health.”
Momoh used the self-reliance he learned at an early age when he was sent off to boarding school at 11. He pushed through, completing his bachelor’s degree in 2005 and rolling straight into a master’s program, all at the Cal State campus. Two decades later, Momoh would receive a 40 under 40 award from Cal State, recognizing him for his contributions in health care.
“Mentally I’m conditioned to be independent,” he says. “I was away from home early. Coming to the States, I had a level of independence that maybe others didn’t have. I learned that I should just accept who I was and embrace my culture, where I really come from, as opposed to trying to be what I’m not, or trying to act as someone else.”
He fell back on his religious beliefs and did a lot of poetry writing, a process he finds comforting. He also channeled his discipline and work ethic into the profession he fell into by chance — mental health administration. He was completing his master’s program and working for a temp agency when he was placed at Contra Costa County’s mental health offices. He enjoyed the work and was soon brought on to a permanent position working on quality improvement.
He left for a while to return to Nigeria, working in the finance department for Chevron Nigeria Limited and honing his skills in financial planning and administration. When he returned to California after a year, he went back to work for Contra Costa County, this time managing workforce development and diversity programs.
By then, he’d spent more than 10 years in the Bay Area and was ready for a move, if not a career change. He was hired as the cultural competency officer for San Bernardino County’s behavioral health department and spent the next three years there.
He spent most of his time connecting and meeting with community and ethnic organizations representing the Latino, African American, Asian, Native American and LGBTQ communities. His office had 12 different cultural committees, and most of them met monthly.
“I was constantly in the community representing the department, even on weekends,” he says. On behalf of his agency, Momoh gave support to community groups as they hosted events that often included their own unique traditions of wellness and healing.
“A lot of communities have their own community-defined practices that bring them healing or gives them hope,” Momoh says. “We try to encourage them, and we also say: ‘Celebrate your culture, and at the same time, the county does offer mental health services including therapy.’”
Placing mental health programs in health clinics and community centers has advantages, he says. “We want to embed mental health within those programs, like a one-stop shop,” he says. “If you have locations that only provide mental health services, people might hesitate to use them because of stigma. However, if it’s embedded within a cultural center, a community resource center that offers an array of social services, people may be more open.”
As the primary liaison to the communities of San Bernardino, Momoh also was tasked to hear concerns and complaints from different groups. At the time, an Asian American group “was expressing frustration that the department wasn’t being responsive to their needs,” he recalls. He began meeting with its representatives and drafted a proposal to the county’s behavioral health director for a pilot program that would address some of their needs.
“She gave me her blessing, and just like that, we had a mental health program at an Asian American community center,” Momoh says. The department provided funds that enabled the community center to bring on clinicians and offer psychotherapy to users of the community center. The program continued even after the pilot period ended, he says.
In the years since, Momoh has continued his tour of county behavioral health departments. He spent three years in San Francisco, directing the county’s $34 million Mental Health Services Act program and later leading its Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education. When he left, he was honored with a Public Health Hero award from his old department. Since the end of last year, he has served as Alameda County’s deputy director of behavioral health services.
For half of his short tenure in Alameda, he’s been dealing with the realities imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. “It’s a lot,” Momoh says. “Some days, it seems like we’re in crisis mode, and by midweek, you can feel drained.”
Fortunately, he has lots of motivation — and a long history of overcoming obstacles.
