Ebony Watson is the Vice President for Youth Leadership and Transition Initiatives at the Institute for Educational Leadership. Ebony is the National Program Director of the Ready to Achieve Mentoring Program (RAMP), a career-focused mentoring program for court-involved and at-risk youth with disabilities. For the last sixteen years, Ebony has provided counsel, assistance, and guidance to youth and families involved in the juvenile justice and foster care system, collaborated with schools to improve attendance and graduation rates for system-involved youth, and mentored youth in goal-setting and decision-making skills. For the last eight years, she has worked at IEL to streamline best practices for mentoring youth with disabilities to include recruiting and training mentors, mentor-mentee match support, engaging families, case management, and records review. Additionally, Ebony has developed and facilitated trainings sharing the learned strategies and best practices of the RAMP program to assist in the development of peer mentoring programs across the country.
Ebony holds a Master of Social Work degree from Walden University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from Augusta State University. Ebony is also a graduate of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Leadership Development Institute.
Areas of expertise: Juvenile Justice, Program Design/Implementation/Support, Event Planning and Logistics, Disability Inclusion, Mentoring