Larry Hayes is a License Clinical Social Worker. He is a graduate of Xavier University where he received dual degrees in Sociology and Social Work. He received a Masters of Social Work from Southern University at New Orleans. He has been in private practice for the past twelve years providing culturally sensitive individual, group and family therapy.   He was one of the first clinician to provide Domestic Violence Intervention Groups for perpetrators within Metropolitan New Orleans and is nationally recognized as an expert in the field. He has been the Executive Director of the Sankofa Center For Community Development and Change, Inc., since 1995. His responsibilities as the Executive Director are staffing, planning evaluating and securing funding streams for the organization. He began in his career 1981, working as a social worker with New Orleans City Welfare Department’s Juvenile Treatment Program. He provided community based counseling to youth and their families who were on probation or parole. 

He resigned from the Juvenile Treatment Program to become a Clinical Correctional Social Worker at Louisiana Training Institute. He worked as a Clinical Correctional Social for one year before becoming the Correctional Manager. He designed and implemented the Short Term Offender Program (STOP) which has become a national model for juvenile corrections facilities. 

Following his tenure with at the Louisiana Training Institute, he pursued an innovative behavior program within Orleans Parish School Social Work Services “Second Chance”.

He provided individual, group and family therapy as well as job development and a host of innovative services for at risk students and their families. He worked with the Second Chance Program for one year before moving on to become the School Social Worker for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired. His job duties were to provide therapy while employing sign language when counseling deaf students and linking hearing impaired student to needed community resources. 

His need to develop community base organizations lead to the development of Ma’at Counseling And Therapeutic Services, Inc. A therapeutic agency that provided community based intervention for children, youth and families.   He serviced as CEO and Group Therapist for 18 months before starting the Sankofa Center for Community Development and Change, Inc.