Board of Directors

Board of Directors (alphabetical by first name)

Austina De Bonte (President) lives in Woodinville. She has had a passion for understanding the highly capable (HiCap) population ever since her oldest daughter neared kindergarten 9 years ago, when she helped to inaugurate the Northshore School District’s HiCap Parents Council. Austina De Bonte is the current President of the Northwest Gifted Child Association (www.nwgca.org), the Washington State support and advocacy organization for families with gifted children. Founded in 1963, NWGCA is the oldest gifted organization in Washington state. A dynamic and engaging presenter, Austina speaks regularly at conferences, as well as conducts parent education talks and professional development workshops for educators. She is a parent advocate who is passionate about speaking about the unique social and emotional development of highly capable (HiCap) or “gifted” children. Austina's signature style combines her experience as a parent and parent coach along with synthesized research and cutting edge neuroscience. Austina is a certified SENG Model Parent Group facilitator.
Click here to contact Austina. Download Austina's resume.

David Berg (Coalition Liaison, Social Media Co-Chair) lives in Puyallup where he has been an active member and past president of the Academic Booster Club, the Puyallup parent group serving families with kids in the QUEST (elementary) and PAGE (junior high school) programs. David is very involved in the work of the Washington Coalition for Gifted Education and was honored with the 2011 Leadership Award from the Washington Association of Educators of the Talented and Gifted (WAETAG) for his statewide advocacy efforts. David is also a SENG- Model Parent Group certified facilitator and serves as SENG’s Washington liaison. Working with NWGCA gives David the opportunity to bring information about giftedness to more families and help them connect with others who have faced and overcome the same challenges. David and his wife have three sons, an 8th grader, a 5th grader, and a 1st grader. Click here to contact David.

Deborah Simon (Governance Chair) has been involved with gifted advocacy and support ever since she and her husband first encountered the “G” word in relation to their oldest daughter. After teaching for ten years, Deborah is now homeschooling her own gifted children and obtaining an M.Ed. in Gifted Education. She is President of West Sound Gifted, Talented and Twice Exceptional, writes on gifted topics, works with local school districts’ gifted programs, is a previous administrator for a national gifted organization, and, just for variety’s sake, has a rare breed chicken farm. Click here to contact Deborah.

Denise Anderson (Website Chair) lives in Lake Stevens and became involved in gifted education in 2005. In 2009, with the help of other parents, the NWGCA and the cooperation of the Lake Stevens School District, she restarted the Challenge our Children (CoC) parent group to advocate for gifted children in the school district. Denise is now on the Lake Stevens HiCap Advisory Committee and is a SENG-Model Parent Group certified facilitator. Denise enjoys helping families celebrate their gifts; foster intellectual, creative, and emotional growth; and strengthen interpersonal relationships. To further her ability to help individuals and families live meaningful and rewarding lives, Denise is currently working on a masters in couple and family therapy. Denise is married and has a teenage daughter who supplemented her public-school education by attending community college starting in eighth grade. Click here to contact Denise.

Elizabeth Williamson (Social Media Co-Chair) lives in Bothell and is married to her best friend. Together, Elizabeth and her husband strive to learn all they can about the needs of gifted children, advocate for the gifted, and recently participated in a SENG Model Parent Group. They have two beautiful, unique, teen-aged children (one boy and one girl). Her children’s educational experience has included: self-contained gifted classrooms in the public school system; Honors, “High Cap”, and IB classes; a short stint in private school; home schooling; and radical acceleration through the Robinson Center at the UW. Elizabeth currently serves on the Edmonds School District's Gifted Advisory Board, has served extensively in PTA leadership roles, and has also been a NorthShore Highly Capable Advisory Board member. She has done extensive study on the topic of gifted and raising gifted children, as well as on personality temperaments, communication and relationships. Elizabeth has traveled the country to attend NAGC, SENG, CAG, WAETAG, and NWGCA conventions and has also attended numerous other seminars and classes to learn as much as possible to help her children. Elizabeth is passionate about supporting the emotional intensities and needs of gifted children. She believes that this support is as fundamental as the need for an appropriate educational experience - that, in fact, an appropriate educational experience cannot be fully had without that emotional support. Click here to contact Elizabeth.

Judy Levine - More information coming soon!

Kathlynn Sloop - More information coming soon! Click here to contact Kathy.

Marcella Appel - Marcella Appel (Parent Group Chair) works as a limnologist in West Richland, WA where she lives with her husband and two children. She became involved in gifted advocacy after a three-year journey of intensively researching and synthesizing information pertaining to the needs of gifted/2e children. Her research has taken her to both Colorado and California to meet with experts and identify how to best support and advocate for her own 2e children. Armed with knowledge and an enthusiasm for all gifted/2e children, she joined the NWGCA board to work with families and parent organizations across the state. Marcella also enjoys working with rural and smaller communities where services for gifted children may not always be available. Marcella is passionate about parent groups and the powerful role they have in their community. She is co-founder of Mid-Columbia 2e a parent group for families of twice-exceptional children. Marcella is also trained as a SENG-Model Parent Group Facilitator. Click here to contact Marcella.

Marcia Holland (Past President, Secretary) lives in Renton and has been involved in supporting excellence in education for children since her sons were students in the Renton School District in the 1970’s and 80’s. The Renton School District had an outstanding gifted program that served one son well and the other one, who was gifted and dysgraphic, not at all. Marcia served eight years as a school board member, where she honed her advocacy skills. Her late husband, Bruce Holland, was elected to the state legislature. He was ranking minority chair of the House education and finance committees for eleven years. In those combined roles, the Hollands continued to advocate for gifted education funding and support. Marcia has served on the board of Northwest Gifted Child Association on and off for 30 years. Her focus has always been educating others – parents, educators, administrators and legislators – about the unique learning needs of children who learn at markedly faster and deeper rates than their chronological peers. Having been an unserved gifted child herself, she remembers the sense of frustration, isolation and “marching in place” of her K-12 experience. Click here to contact Marcia.

Nicci Stewardship (Membership Chair) - More information coming soon!

Pauline Bowie (Treasurer) lives in North Seattle. Her passion for gifted education was sparked when her son entered fifth grade and was no longer challenged. She served for two year as the Chair of the Parent & Community Network of NAGC (National Association for Gifted Children). She enjoyed organizing Parent Day for the NAGC annual conferences. She started a parent group in Scottsdale, AZ in 1999 and with the help of many parents, educators and administrators built a comprehensive K-12 gifted program in their school district. She was on the Board of AAGT (Arizona Association for Gifted and Talented). While on the AAGT Board, she was instrumental in pulling together a team to write legislation and campaign for passage of a state-wide increase in gifted funding. It was the first increase of gifted funding in Arizona in twenty years. Her passion is to connect leaders in the gifted community to help build strong support for gifted children. Click here to contact Pauline.

Satnam Pureval (Newsletter Chair) - More information coming soon!

Sara Kamla (website co chair) lives in Renton and works within the Renton School District. She has one son who is 2E in the Highly Capable program. Sara has been involved in PTA and a PTA board member for many years. She has spent hers sons elementary school career learning about Gifted children and advocating for them with in her district. She started enrichment programs for primary highly capable kids. Sara is in her first year on the NWGCA board. Having struggled to get services for her son, Sara wants to make sure help is there for any parents who want it.

Sue Wilson-Schmitz (WAETAG Liaison, Regional Events Chair) lives in Lynnwood. Sue left her elementary teaching position when she realized that her children needed much more from her than she had ever expected. Many years later she finally recognized why that was: with three children, and every over excitabilities (OE) imaginable, they run the gamut between extremely left brained and totally visually kinesthetic; profoundly gifted and twice exceptional; introverted and Extroverted with a capital “E”. Sue knows more than ever that she hasn’t even scratched the surface of their life-long needs. Her family has made three cross-country moves and experienced varying service models including partial home schooling and radical acceleration (her eldest was admitted early to UW through the Robinson Center). Along with her background in education, Sue brings a history of social service and mental health experience and has started working on a gifted and talented teaching certification. Sue is currently teaching and providing parent education workshops at Bellevue Discovery Center for Early Education. Sue is a Certified SENG-Model Parent Group Facilitator and one of her goals is to help mitigate the pain of other gifted families. Sue has spent the past nine years in three states, four counties, five districts, and eight schools working to advocate at the local and state levels and is happy to be in a place that is enjoying progress and success. Sue spent two years as Co President of the Edmonds School District’s Challenge Parent’s Association, and currently serves on that district’s Gifted Education Task Force. Sue is also a member of the UW Robinson Center Board of Directors, and an ex officio member of the Washington Association of Educators of Talented and Gifted (WAETAG) board of directors. Click here to contact Sue.

Susan Jackson lives in Bellevue and is has served elementary students in the Northshore School District as a teacher and summer school administrator for 26 years. Susan currently serves on the board of the Northshore Schools Foundation. She is a nationally trained SENG (Social and Emotional Needs of the Gifted) Parent Group Facilitator. She has also worked with preschoolers and families through Bellevue Community College as a Parent Education Instructor. Susan has a Master’s Degree in Special Education and studied Gifted Education as a doctoral student through the University of Phoenix. In addition, Susan serves as a Western Regional trainer for a youth organization. She is the parent of two gifted adult children and is currently involved in discovering the gifts of her three grandchildren. Click here to contact Susan.

Tracy Montcrief (OSPI Liaison) - More information coming soon!

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Northwest Gifted Child Association, PO Box 30134, Seattle, WA 98113
info@nwgca.org