When Yemi Mobolade ran for mayor of Colorado Springs in 2023, he seemed like the ultimate outsider candidate. A Nigerian immigrant with no experience in elected office who professes to hate politics, Mobalade bested a former Colorado Secretary of State by fifteen percentage points in a runoff to become the city’s first elected Black mayor.
A political independent who describes himself as a “radical collaborator,” Mayor Mobolade cites Abraham Lincoln, with whom he shares a birth date, as a role model. His philosophy is to bring citizens together so they can “attack problems instead of attacking each other.”
Mobolade emigrated to the United States at the age of seventeen. He earned degrees in business administration and computer information systems from Bethel University in Indiana, a master’s degrees in management and leadership from Indiana Wesleyan University, and a divinity degree from the A.W. Tozer Theological Seminary in Redding, California.
In 2010, he moved to Colorado Springs, where he helped start a church affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. He then served as director of outreach for the First Presbyterian Church, before co-founding a nonprofit organization that works with local churches to coordinate community service efforts.
He was vice president of business retention and expansion at the Colorado Springs Chamber & Economic Development Corporation before taking a job with the city as a small business development administrator.
During his first year in office, the Mobolade created the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs to establish partnerships with community groups, neighborhoods, and the military; to organize town hall meetings, forums, and local initiatives; and to serve as a direct link between the mayor’s office and city residents.
Public engagement, the mayor says, determines “who we are and what we do…My plans, my action items, are a direct reflection of the feedback we are hearing from the community.”
National Civic League President Doug Linkhart interviewed Mayor Mobolade in January of 2025.
