Mercedes E. Ebanks, Ph.D., is co-founder of The MECCA Group LLC.  As chief financial officer, she  manages the agency’s financial activities. As a clinician, Ebanks is a certified parent coordinator as well as a bilingual evaluator who conducts services in Spanish.

Ebanks is a graduate of Georgetown University with a major in psychology and a minor in Spanish. She received her master’s and doctorate degrees from Howard University in counseling psychology. Ebanks completed a clinical internship with Kennedy Krieger Institute of John Hopkins University and their partnership with Marcus Institute and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She also has conducted research in applied behavior analysis to treat severe behavior disorders within a pediatric treatment center to address feeding aversiveness, self-injurious behavior, and noncompliance.

Ebanks has an extensive background as a crisis counselor with educational settings and mental health facilities. She has worked with public, private, and alternative schools in addition to serving several years with social service organizations in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. She has served on boards and committees of nonprofit organizations and been a long-standing member of local and national professional organizations.

She serves as associate professor in the Department of Psychoeducational Studies in the School of Education at Howard University. She also serves as the director of School and University Partnerships for the School of Education. Currently she provides doctoral training in a Counseling Psychology APA approved program and formerly served as the program coordinator for the master’s program in Counseling Services for over a decade. Ebanks has published articles on the effects of corrective feedback to treat destructive behavior, the impact of race and school environment that influence teacher’s attitudes and behavior, and evaluating test preparation programs for minority students. Her research now focuses on factors to improve co-parenting relationships, identifying problems and solutions of parental conflict with never married and divorced parents, father involvement in child rearing, and the social emotional and behavioral development of children.

Ebanks is of Cuban descent and a native of New Jersey. She is a proud mother of two young daughters and resides in Prince George’s County, Maryland.