Dr. Mari-Luci "Mari" Cerda
Mari-Luci "Mari" Cerda, PhD, is a board-certified behavior analyst, owner of The Lighthouse Learning Center, and co-founder of The LEAP Institute. She earned her bachelor's degree in psychology from Baylor University in 1999 and her master's degree in Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Walden University in 2015. During this time, she also completed her graduate certificate in Special Education with an Emphasis in ABA at Penn State. In 2018 she began her doctoral program in Special Education with an Emphasis in ABA at Texas Tech University, graduating in August of 2021. With over two decades of experience in education and therapeutic services, Mari began her career as a special education teacher in the tiny town of Bay City, Texas in 2003 where she was first introduced to the science and principles of behavior analysis by a wonderful woman named Marie. In 2017 Mari stepped outside of the classroom to take on a role at her local Region Service Center as an educational consultant, training teachers to better serve students with disabilities.
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In December of 2021, she made the difficult decision to leave public education and opened The Lighthouse Learning Center, a trauma-responsive ABA clinic. Her mission was to create a model for compassionate, culturally safe, and responsive therapeutic services in the West Texas region. She also co-founded The LEAP Institute in 2021 to provide equitable access to continuing education, supervision, and testing support for marginalized students in ABA and related fields.
As a MesoAmerican Indigenous woman, Dr. Cerda’s professional advocacy focuses on merging Indigenous Research Methods with Western Science in her professional work. Diagnosed as Autistic and ADHD in college, her lived experiences deeply inform her advocacy, therapeutic practices, and writing.
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Mari is also a wife and mother to three spirited children who keep her schedule jam packed. When she’s not juggling all of the responsibilities of clinic owner, Mari enjoys running with her husband, gardening, being repeatedly discovered by the cat distribution system, play a variety of games (Magic, Mario Kart, Minecraft, Risk, and Texas Hold Em to name a few) with her husband and children, cooking, baking, and SLEEPING.
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