Board of Directors (alphabetical by first name)
Austina De Bonte (Past President) lives in Woodinville. She has had a passion for understanding the highly capable (HiCap) population ever since her oldest daughter neared kindergarten, when she helped to inaugurate the Northshore School District’s HiCap Parents Council (www.hcparents.org). 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 regional and national conferences, as well as conducts professional development workshops for educators through her consultancy, Smart is Not Easy LLC (www.smartisnoteasy.com). 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. She has a Masters degree from MIT, and did her thesis work in the MIT Media Lab's Epistemology and Learning Group, where Lego Mindstorms was invented.
Austina's talks: What Educators and Parents Need to Know about Smart Kids (Slides), Peeling the Onion: Equity in HiCap (Slides), Peeling the Onion: Equity in HiCap (Research Paper). Click here to contact Austina. Download Austina's resumé.
**Austina is no longer doing free NWGCA community talks, in order to focus more on professional development for educators. Many other NWGCA board members are glad to visit your community to do a free parent presentation. Please see the board bios below to find a speaker that will fit your needs, or fill out the Speaker Request Form.**
Austina's talks: What Educators and Parents Need to Know about Smart Kids (Slides), Peeling the Onion: Equity in HiCap (Slides), Peeling the Onion: Equity in HiCap (Research Paper). Click here to contact Austina. Download Austina's resumé.
**Austina is no longer doing free NWGCA community talks, in order to focus more on professional development for educators. Many other NWGCA board members are glad to visit your community to do a free parent presentation. Please see the board bios below to find a speaker that will fit your needs, or fill out the Speaker Request Form.**
Elizabeth Williamson (Vice President) is a long-time board member of NWGCA (Northwest Gifted Child Association). Elizabeth was identified as a gifted student in 2nd grade in the Phoenix Unified School District and both there, and in southern California, was able to participate in pull-out hi-cap programs during her elementary school years.Elizabeth lives in Bothell and is married to her best friend. Together, she and her husband strive to learn all they can about the needs of gifted children and advocate for these special children. They have two beautiful, unique, young adult children. 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 University of Washington. Elizabeth has served on the Edmonds School District's Gifted Advisory Board and the Northshore School District HiCap Parents Council, and has also served extensively in PTA leadership roles. She recently became a SENG (Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted) Model Parent Group Facilitator. Elizabeth has done extensive study on the topic of gifted and raising gifted children, as well as on personality temperaments, communication and relationships. She has traveled the country to attend NAGC, SENG, CAG, WAETAG, and NWGCA conferences and conventions and has also attended numerous other seminars and classes to learn as much as possible to help her children. She is passionate about supporting the emotional intensities and needs of these unique and special 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.
Jennifer Allen (Board Member) lives in Kennewick and is a school district special education administrator who has dedicated her career to meeting children’s individual needs. Jennifer’s interest in neurodiversity began in a ninth-grade psychology class. Jennifer graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in psychology from Washington State University, earned her master’s degree in teaching from Whitworth University, completed her principal certification from Seattle Pacific University, added her gifted education specialty endorsement from Whitworth, and earned her Ed.D. in leadership and professional practice from Trevecca Nazarene University. Jennifer’s dissertation explored educational equity, financial adequacy, and how legislation impacted students with specialized needs. Dr. Allen is an experienced teacher, assistant principal, and special education director. She is also the parent of two gifted children. A fun fact about Jennifer is that she and her family lived in South Africa for five years. In an effort to meet her children’s schooling needs, Jennifer has experience with Montessori school, private school, homeschool, and public school. Supports that were helpful included cognitive and academic testing, grade skipping, Mensa, talent search, after-school enrichment, self-contained gifted classes, camps for gifted children, Davidson Young Scholars, a 504 plan, honors and AP high school classes, and working with a variety of specialists. As a board member with NWGCA, Dr. Allen enjoys raising awareness of this special needs population and connecting parents to resources.
Karen Thornton (President) has been part of the Northwest Gifted Child Association community as a board member focused on communications and programming, and now shares her collaborative leadership and creative energy as President. Karen is a SENG-trained facilitator of discussion groups for parents of gifted kids and loves sharing resources and ideas with other parents, particularly resources related to executive functioning, intensities and deep emotions. Karen’s professional career spans outdoor and experiential education, business consulting, and now she is the owner of a corporate event planning company. She has served on several non-profit boards over the last two decades, including Northwest Girls Coalition, Alliance for Black Legacy, and the Association for Talent Development. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Karen has lived in the Pacific Northwest for nearly 20 years and currently resides in Woodinville. She and her husband, Kelly, enjoy sports, travelling, and the outdoors with their school-aged kids, Ella and Shane.
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.
Michael Postma (Board Member) Dr. Michael Postma is a teacher, administrator, consultant, speaker, and author dedicated to the holistic development of both gifted and twice-exceptional children through his company Gifted & Thriving, LLC. During the last two decades, Dr. Postma has worked in the field of gifted/talented education as both a teacher and administrator in the public and charter school system in Minnesota and North Carolina, and, was the architect of the Minnetonka Navigator Program, a magnet school specifically designed for highly gifted and twice-exceptional students.
Satnam Pureval (Newsletter Chair)
Susan Jackson (Board Member) lives in Bellevue and served elementary students in the Northshore School District as a teacher and summer school administrator of special needs and neurotypical students for 28 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 and facilitates groups in the Bellevue area. She 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. She is the parent of two gifted adult children and is currently involved in discovering the gifts of her four grandchildren. Susan's special interest is advocating for 2e children at home and in the school situation. Her presentations include Gifted 101, Knowing your 2e Chil, and Advocating at School and Home, Perfectionism, and Executive Functioning. Click here to contact Susan.
Sheryl Harshberger (Programs Chair) lives in Yakima, Wa. She was identified as gifted in third grade and participated in a pull-out program in elementary and a self contained English/History program in Jr. High. A teacher’s offhand comment in upper elementary about how her children would be just like her sparked her interest in doing something better for the next generation than what she had experienced. She is married with one 2e child who spent five months in public kindergarten, two and a half years in a private school, four years homeschooling, and then began college at thirteen. Sheryl enjoys talking to other parents about gifted and 2e challenges and helping them find resources to improve their understanding of the options to better meet their children’s needs. She also enjoys attending opportunities for parents to discover what gifted means and to build supportive relationships and is working to create some of these opportunities in central Washington.
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Northwest Gifted Child Association, PO Box 2752, Woodinville, WA 98072-2752
Tax ID: 91-0781776
info@nwgca.org
Tax ID: 91-0781776
info@nwgca.org