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Victoria Ngo is an Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), Director of the Center for Innovation in Mental Health (CIMH) at CUNY SPH, Director for Global Mental Health in the Center for Immigrant, Refugee, and Global Health, and an adjunct behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation.
Also a clinical psychologist, she has expertise in developing, evaluating, and implementing evidence-based treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, for depression, anxiety, and trauma in diverse communities in the United States and abroad. Her research pays particular attention to understanding and promoting implementation strategies that can increase access and quality of evidence-based mental health services for ethnic minorities and underserved populations worldwide. Ngo specializes in implementation strategies, such as use of community partnerships, task-shifting evidence-based practices, and integration of mental health care into more accessible service settings, including primary care, maternal health, and HIV services.
Ngo earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Vanderbilt University. Her passion and commitment to working in ethnic minority and other underserved communities comes from her own experience as a Vietnamese refugee.
Research Fellow
Dr. Restrepo has over 18 years of extensive experience in mental health, specifically within low-income communities, where she focuses on children and youth. Her work investigates the detrimental effects of violence on mental health and includes the design of impactful programs aimed at supporting child development and preventing violence and mental health problems in both preschool and school-aged children. Also, she has led multiple global mental health initiatives to intervene in psychosis and other mental health problems. In her research, she employs innovative causal inference methods to assess the mediating mechanism in mental health.
She has led a series of cluster randomized control trials that effectively prevent mental health issues and promote resilience in these communities. With her strong expertise in qualitative and quantitative research in low-income settings, Dr. Restrepo coordinates research projects at the Center, ensuring rigorous data collection and comprehensive analysis.
Dr. Restrepo believes that evidence-based public mental health interventions, developed with active community involvement, can dramatically improve mental health outcomes for low-income populations.
Project Manager – Harlem Strong
Srividhya Sharma holds a Ph.D in Neuroscience, as well as a Master’s in Public Health, specializing in Health Policy and Management, from the CUNY School of Public Health. Her public health interests focus on health disparities within vulnerable populations. Dr. Sharma previously worked as the Program Director-Interim/Senior Supervisor with the CUNY Recovery Corps as a part of the Test and Trace program, where she led the data and evaluation wing of the Aftercare initiative conducting routine performance reviews and supervised the community-based organization’s entire team comprising of Supervisors, Admin staff and Navigators in support of H+H Test & Trace’s Aftercare component of the Citywide COVID-19 response. She also worked at the Department of Homeless Services as the Contact Tracing and COVID data lead for the shelter system across NYC. She has previously worked at the Office of School Health, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and the Center of Innovation in Mental Health at the CUNY School of Public Health and published several papers in peer-reviewed journals. In her free time, Vidya likes to draw, cook and travel with her daughters.
Project Manager – Project Dep
Quan Anh Vu is a Project Manager at CIMH. He has a background in school social work, psycho-oncology, and mental health. Prior to CIMH, Quan was a behavioral health clinician for the Mental Health Service Corps and was placed at Transitional Services of New York PROS program, where he provided individual and group counseling, psycho-education, and care coordination to people with severe and persistent mental illness in Jamaica, New York.
Quan received his Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Brandeis University and his Masters of Social Work from the Silberman School of Social Work at CUNY Hunter College. He is excited to support building the capacity of depression care in Vietnam.
Project Manager – Jobs Plus
Project Manager – Building Resilience in Youth
Victoria Sunseri is a Project Coordinator at CIMH and obtained her MPH in Health Policy and Management from the CUNY Graduate school of Public Health and Health Policy. She began her career in public health as an undergraduate at The University of Tampa, where she graduated in Spring 2018, with a dual degree in Psychology (BA) and Public Health (BS) with a concentration in behavioral health. Her involvement in developing and leading interventions as an undergrad., as well as her experiences carrying out a Fulbright research grant in Sicily, Italy (2018-2019), reinforced her passion for applying public health approaches to address mental health needs, especially within under-resourced communities.
Project Manager – International Collaborations
Communications Coordinator
Vivian Le is a Communications Coordinator at CIMH. Prior to CUNY, Vivian spent the last semester of her undergraduate career completing a fieldwork internship at CIMH where she was able to discover her passions in mental health research, determined to play a role in expanding mental health care to low-income countries and communities where it is needed most.
Vivian obtained her Bachelor’s of Science in Health Promotion and Behavior from the University of Georgia in Spring 2020 and her Master of Public Health from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy in Winter 2022.
Outreach Coordinator – Harlem Strong
Spencer Washington is a native New Yorker with a wealth of experience in public advocacy and social equity. Spencer graduated with honors from John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he was both a Vera and Pinkerton Community Fellow. Post-college, Spencer has explored work in education, advocacy and mental health counseling. Spencer currently works as the Outreach Coordinator with the Harlem Strong Project of the Center for Innovation in Mental Health at CUNY. Outside of work, he is a martial arts/fitness instructor as well as a neo-soul musician.
Research Coordinator
Farhan completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at New York University (NYU) and earned his Master of Public Health (MPH) in Epidemiology from the NYU School of Global Public Health. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Community Health and Health Policy track at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy.
Contributions to CIMH:
At CIMH, Farhan manages data for the Harlem Strong project, ensuring data quality and integrity. He also coordinates research activities, including participant recruitment, data collection, and analysis.
Goals for CIMH and Community Impact:
Farhan is dedicated to enhancing mental health services in underserved communities. Through his work on the Harlem Strong Project, he hopes to integrate mental health support into affordable housing, primary care, community-based settings, promote mental health awareness and increase access to resources in Harlem.
Research Coordinator
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Data Manager
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Trainer
Tarik Endale is a Training Consultant at CIMH, supporting training and implementation for the Harlem Strong and Building Resilience in Youth projects. Tarik is also a PhD student in Clinical Psychology and member of the Global Mental Health Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University where he has coordinated mental health intervention training, implementation, and task-shifting projects for COVID-affected adults in New York City; refugees in Tanzania, Peru, and Bangladesh; and mothers in Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Kenya. During this time, he has had the opportunity to provide evidence-based therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal psychotherapy to the diverse populations of Upper Manhattan and the Bronx as a junior clinician at the Dean Hope Center and NYC H+H Jacobi Medical Center. He has also been certified by the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPSi) as a Sawubona Healing Circle facilitator, creating safe spaces using culturally grounded healing strategies to cope with anti-Black racial trauma, stress, and community violence.
Tarik earned his MSc in Global Mental Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Kings College London in 2017 and BS in International Health and Psychology from Georgetown University in 2016. His background in public health and experiences as a Black man from an Ethiopian refugee family inform his commitment to equity and justice as both a clinician and researcher. Prior to joining CIMH and beginning his doctoral studies, Tarik was the Program Manager for the Kovler Center Child Trauma Program, which provides trauma-informed culturally responsive services to refugee youth in Chicago, as well as the Mental Health Coordinator for Kings Sierra Leone Partnership in Freetown. His research interests include the adaptation, evaluation, and implementation of mental health programs and interventions with underserved populations, especially in Black, immigrant, and refugee communities in the US and humanitarian-crisis affected populations abroad.
Trainer
Susana Sosa, MA (she/her/hers) is currently a 4th year PhD student in Clinical Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. Before her PhD program, she received her BS in Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research aims to understand how to harness various socioecological contexts (e.g., parents/family, schools, community, and sociopolitical climate) to advance mental health equity among newcomer youth. Her research explores 1) psychosocial stress (i.e., acculturative stress among parents and secondary traumatic stress among school staff) within the socioecological context of newcomer youth and 2) the role of systems and oppression that uphold harmful structures for mental health equity among newcomer families. The implications of her research are to develop, evaluate, and sustainably disseminate tailored culturally responsive mental health interventions for newcomer youth and their families. Susana has held clinical externship placements at Advocate Masonic’s Pediatric Developmental Center conducting neuropsychological evaluations for Spanish-speaking families and at the University of Illinois-Chicago Department of Psychiatry (Pediatric Mood Disorders Clinic and the Pediatric Stress and Anxiety Disorders Clinic) providing outpatient evidence-based treatment.