Biographical Information
for our Speakers

Penny Choice, M.A., M.Ed., is Coordinator for Gifted Education and Fine Arts for Lake County Educational Services Division of the Regional Office of Education, Grayslake, IL. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Speech and Drama, a M.Ed. in Gifted Education and an M.A. in Educational Administration. Penny’s areas of expertise include curriculum development, staff development, gifted education, social science, problem-based learning, and fine arts education with a focus in integrating the arts and the use of process drama, a classroom instructional tool. An international consultant, Penny has spoken extensively and conducted workshops for teachers, administrators, counselors, and parents since 1985. She has received numerous awards and is listed in several editions of Who’s Who including Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers and Who’s Who in the World. Penny is honored to be included in the 2001/2002 America’s Registry of Outstanding Professionals, granted to individuals who have demonstrated leadership and dedication in their profession or industry. Dynamic and outgoing, Penny exemplifies her areas of expertise as she presents essential information to participants.

Michael Davis, Ph.D., has been a counselor at the Gifted Development Center since 1981, working successfully with gifted underachievers, adults, young gifted children, and families. Certified in Neurolinguistic Programming and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Michael has taught communication skills and conflict resolution at the graduate level at the University of Denver. He provides personality assessments for individuals, couples and families, and facilitates group seminars on understanding personality and working creatively with personality differences. Michael's work with couples and families has helped people to transform their relationships. He also assisted Macintosh Academy in crisis intervention. Michael's gentle demeanor and relaxed style invites attendees into a comfortable place to drink in the wealth of knowledge he has in store for them.

Bobbie Gilman, M.A., A longtime veteran at the Gifted Development Center in Denver, and author of Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy the Works, Bobbie has assessed and written detailed reports on several hundred gifted children, conducted phone and office consultation with families from around the world, served as the Director of Staff Development, training new testers and editing staff reports and is currently our Associate Director.  She has had articles published in Highly Gifted Children, Kaleidoscope (a publication of the Colorado Association for the Gifted and Talented), and Understanding Our Gifted.  Bobbie has served on and chaired school and district-wide gifted committees and currently conducts teacher in-services and presentations about the gifted.  Her previous experience includes work in mental health, testing and social work, having earned degrees in Psychology from Duke and Child Development from Purdue.  As a parent of highly gifted sons, she has shared the heartbreak of the high school dropout and the challenges of the 16-year-old college junior.  Bobbie brings warmth and understanding sharing her life’s experience in parenting and counseling gifted students.

Julie Gonzales, M.A., is employed by Cherry Creek Schools in Colorado as the Parent/Community Liaison for the district Gifted and Talented Resource Team.  She presents workshops to parents and educators throughout the state and consults on special gifted education projects.  A passionate advocate for the gifted and a mother of four gifted children, she is serving a three-year term as one of the first parent members of the Board of Directors of the National Association for Gifted Children.  She is Past President of the Colorado Association for Gifted and Talented and a longtime member of the Colorado State Advisory Committee for Gifted and Talented.  Very personable, yet serious about the business of gifted education, Julie has experience and vision from both sides of the parent/administrator coin.

Steven C. Haas, M.A., M.P.A., has worked in education for the gifted in several aspects: as a mentor, classroom teacher, advanced placement instructor, school administrator, and researcher. He developed curriculum for a charter middle school for high ability learners and served as its principal in its first year of operation. Steve is our project director for the Visual-Spatial Identifier. A member of the Visual-Spatial Resource Access Team, Steve procured funding from the Morris S. Smith Foundation for the development and validation of our Visual-Spatial/Auditory-Sequential Identifier. Steve is the Gifted and Talented Coordinator for Jefferson County, Colorado and is a superb mentor for highly gifted students. A lively presenter who needs plenty of room to dramatize his ideas, Steve appeals to visual-spatial learners. While others claim they can see the math in music, Steve says he can find "the music in math."

Diana Howard, Ph.D. is principal of The Polaris Program, a public school for highly gifted and high achieving students in Denver. She has been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uruguay and a Fulbright scholar in Ghana, bringing her love for diverse cultures and their arts into her school and presentations.  With an MLS from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in gifted education from the University of Denver, Diana has written numerous articles and presented nationally on the socio-emotional development of young gifted children, literature to nurture the intense sensitivities of the gifted, gifted girls, and the creation of programs to identify and serve ethnically diverse students.  She has raised four diversely gifted children including a daughter with cerebral palsy, and is a strong advocate for serving the needs of exceptional children in gifted programs.  Her presentations are enriched with delightful children’s literature, inspiration for the creation of arts-infused, inclusive gifted programming and very evident empathy for the needs of gifted children, their parents and teachers.

Barbara Hutton, M.A. is co-founder of Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative and serves as President of the Board of Directors. For over thirty years, she has been involved in non-profit organizations. Barbara holds an undergraduate degree in Sociology and Social Work from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the University of Northern Colorado.

She has presented at the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) annual conferences in Tampa, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Denver as well as at the Hollingworth Center for the Highly Gifted conference in Boston. Other national presentations include the SENG (Supporting the Social and Emotional Needs of the Gifted) in St. Paul and the New England Conference for Gifted and Talented Educators in Massachusetts. She has made local presentations at the Colorado Association for the Gifted and Talented Annual Conference, the Beyond Giftedness conference and the Intensitivities 25th Anniversary Conference of the Gifted Development Center. She served as co-chair of the Global Awareness Division of NAGC and is active in the Special Schools and Program Division. In 2005, Barbara was an education delegate to the People’s Republic of China where she presented a session on asynchronous development at the Beijing Gifted Education Institute. She is the chair of the National Consortium of Schools for the Gifted. Barbara has written articles about gifted children, parenting and education models for gifted schools that have appeared in national journals and local newspapers.

Michele Kane, Ed.D.,  has been involved in gifted education for over twenty years. Currently she is the Gifted Education Program Coordinator for the Antioch #34 school district in Illinois. She is a member of the adjunct faculty at Northeastern Illinois University in the Master of Arts in Gifted Education program where she will begin a position as an assistant professor in Gifted Education department in the fall. She is a current board member of the Illinois Association for Gifted Children and she has held leadership positions in the Counseling and Guidance and Global Awareness divisions of National Association for Gifted Education. Michele is also a part-time Career Counselor at College of Lake County, Grayslake, IL  She holds advanced degrees in Counseling & Guidance and Educational Administration and a doctorate from Loyola University, Chicago in Curriculum and Instruction.  Michele is a gifted education consultant who has a keen interest in the social-emotional needs of gifted people as well as services that enhance the whole child. Specifically, her focus is on emotional and spiritual giftedness as well s the affective aspects of educational programming for gifted students. Along with her husband Dan, she is the parent of six gifted adult children.

Kathi Kearney, M.A. Ed., currently teaches gifted students at the Noble VI School in Berwick, ME and is also a Professional Associate with the Gifted Development Center. Founder of the Hollingworth Center for Highly Gifted Children, Kathi also served as an instructor in talented and gifted education at Iowa State University. An expert on homeschooling, Kathi has worked with children as a teacher and administrator in a wide variety of settings. She is the Past Chair of the Conceptual Foundations Division of NAGC, and has contributed scholarly journal articles on such topics as assessment, the highly gifted child, rural and distance learning, minority groups in gifted education, and Leta Hollingworth’s work on children with IQ scores above 180. Recently, she conducted validation studies of the fifth edition of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale.

Linda Leviton directs the West Coast office of the Gifted Development Center, in Granada Hills, California. She is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist in private practice since 1996, specializing in gifted children and adults and visual-spatial learners of all ages.  A member of the Visual-Spatial Resource Access Team, Linda provides teacher in-services, parent workshops, email and phone consultation, guidance in school selection, observation and mediation, and support for visual-spatial learners and their families.  

Nicky Marone obtained her Master's degree in Education of Gifted Children at the University of Denver under the direction of Dr. Linda Silverman. Nicky is the author of How to Father a Successful Daughter (McGraw-Hill 1988), Women & Risk (St. Martin's Press 1992), What's Stopping You? (Simon & Schuster 1993), and How to Mother a Successful Daughter (Random House 1998). Currently she is the Executive Director of the Colorado Business and Professional Women's Foundation, the Director of Empowerment Programs at the YWCA of Boulder County, and Consultant to girl-serving organizations.

Nicky taught gifted students at Lakewood Junior High School for eleven years. Nicky also served as the Gifted/Talented Lead teacher at her school. She has been leading workshops at schools, hospitals and corporations across the country since 1984.

Michael M. Piechowski has a Ph.D. in molecular biology and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, both from the University of Wisconsin-­Madison. He is a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Educational Advancement and Professor Emeritus of Education and Psychology, Northland College, Ashland, Wisconsin where he introduced a course on transpersonal psychology. Co-author of Theory of Levels of Emotional Development (2 vols.) with Kazimierz Dabrowski, Michael has written extensively on the developmental potential and emotional development of the gifted. His article "Overexcitabilities" is in the Encyclopedia of Creativity. He has made studies of self-actualizing people and moral exemplars, such as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leta Hollingworth, Etty Hillesum, Peace Pilgrim. Further study of emotional giftedness, in particular of resilient survivors of childhood abuse, led him to spiritual giftedness, his major focus at the present.

Annemarie Roeper, Ed.D., is an educational consultant with more than 50 years of experience specializing in the psychological and educational needs of gifted children. In addition to numerous articles, she has published Educating Children for Life: The Modern Learning Community and Annemarie Roeper: Selected Writings and Speeches – a book parents find very informative. In 1941, she and her husband, George Roeper, founded the Roeper School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a famous, humanistic private school for gifted children; they also co-founded the Roeper Review Journal. Annemarie’s clinical approach to evaluation is unique. She is able to enter the child’s world very easily – they trust her with their deepest concerns. Those who wish to focus on the Self of the child could not find a better guide. Click Here to view Annemarie Roeper's new web page

Karen Rogers , Ph.D., is Professor of Gifted Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1991 she completed a thorough meta-evaluation of the research on grouping and a best-evidence synthesis of the acceleration research and brought both of these bodies of research up to date in 1999. Karen is respected and well loved by colleagues throughout the field. She is generous with her knowledge and eager to impart the information to others. During a time when gifted education was not in vogue, Karen firmly upheld the need for special programming based on both the research that had been done and that which she continued to do. Karen is also knowledgeable in the areas of curriculum, acceleration and the highly and profoundly gifted. She can assist schools in developing a scope and sequence for gifted students. She is author of OMNIBUS, an enrichment curriculum for gifted elementary students, and co-author of Talent in Context: Social and Historical Perspectives. She has published numerous articles and book chapters in the field of gifted education. An expert on research in the field, through her meta-analysis, Karen knows and can prove what works. She will keep you on your toes with plenty of information!

Kenneth Seeley, Ed.D., is the Executive Director of the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children. He was a professor of education at the University of Denver (DU) where he initiated the first gifted teacher education program in Colorado. He founded the University for Youth at DU and Odyssey of the Mind in Colorado. Ken is currently President of the Colorado Foundation for Families and Children and an adjunct professor at DU. His administrative work has been extensive in program development and evaluation for the fields of special education and gifted education. Ken’s research has focused on high risk, high ability students and on program development and evaluation. His research in the field of juvenile delinquency and its connection to the gifted population is unique. Ken’s work on behalf of children and families exemplifies the collaboration model so revered in these times; he has shown himself to be an individual who can work as effectively with social service agency personnel as with universities and schools. His perspectives on advocacy, program development, and facilitation are profound. He has served nationally as the Editor of the Journal for the Education of the Gifted and, as a member of the Keystone Consortium, he was a contributing author of four textbooks in gifted education. Ken is also an advocate for the arts, having once studied opera at Julliard. He is a father of two gifted daughters who speaks from the heart and the experience of a parent, an educator, an administrator and a researcher. A builder in every sense, Ken has the mellow quality of a mediator and is sure to put his audience at ease with the incredible knowledge and expertise he brings to the podium.

Annette Revel Sheely, M.A., is the school counselor at Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative. She holds a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology and serves as the MENSA Children’s Coordinator for Denver. With a passion for the field of giftedness, she helps individuals and groups to clarify problems, identify options, and achieve their goals. Annette has written articles on social and emotional issues and assessment of the gifted. She is a manuscript reviewer for the Advanced Development Journal and is currently editing a book on profound giftedness. She also serves on the advisory board for the National Gifted Children’s Fund. Annette compassionately addresses concerns over the emotional and social needs of the gifted with gentle warmth while offering valuable practical advice.

Linda Kreger Silverman , Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist.  She directs the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development, and its subsidiary, the Gifted Development Center, in Denver, Colorado.  Over 5,200 children have been assessed at the Center since 1979.  Her Ph.D. is in educational psychology and special education from the University of Southern California.  For nine years, she served on the faculty of the University of Denver in counseling psychology and gifted education.  Her textbook, Counseling the Gifted and Talented (Love: 1993), is the most popular text in this area; it has been adopted at more than 50 colleges and universities. Her most recent book, Upside-Down Brilliance:  The Visual-Spatial Learner, was released in 2002. Linda founded the only journal on adult giftedness, Advanced Development.  Currently, she is conducting research on profoundly gifted children, the visual-spatial learner, comparative assessment of the gifted on different instruments,the effects of vision therapy, and introversion. She has been appointed to the American Psychological Association task force on giftedness, the National Association for Gifted Children task force on social and emotional needs of the gifted, and the expert panel guiding the next revision of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale for Riverside Publishing.  Linda has been studying the assessment, psychology and education of the gifted since 1961 and she has contributed over 300 articles and chapters in this field. Our website devoted to visual-spatial learners is www.visualspatial.org. To view Linda's vitae, please click here. To see where Linda has presented in the last year, please click here.

Stephanie S. Tolan , M.A., author of 23 books for children and young adults (including the Newbery Honor Award winning, Surviving the Applewhites) and co-author of Guiding the Gifted Child (awarded "Best Book" by the American Psychological Association) has been an advocate for the highly gifted for nearly two decades. As the mother of an exceptionally gifted son, she has become a highly regarded and passionate crusader for the rights of gifted and creative children and adults. This popular keynote presenter at state and national conferences has written several impassioned articles about the needs of the highly gifted. She consults with parents and educators on the needs of this special population within the population of the gifted. She also serves as a contributing editor for Roeper Review and has written the column (The Reading Room) in the original Understanding Our Gifted. She is a fellow of the Institute for Educational Advancement, a consultant to parents of highly gifted children and prodigies and serves on the advisory boards of The Hollingworth Center for the Highly Gifted, the National Gifted Children's Fund and the Schilling School for the Gifted located in Cincinnati, OH.  Stephanie brings her presentations to life with expressive readings of poetry and literature, illustrating the issues with poignancy and creativity.

Anne Beneventi, has a lifelong passion for working with gifted children. She taught for over 20 years in public and private schools including Nueva School for the gifted. She co-founded two schools: Kaumeya International School in Alexandria, Egypt and Roeper West School for the Gifted in Berkeley, CA. She trained for several years with Annemarie Roeper and in 2002, was the first to be certified as a Master Practitioner of the Annemarie Roeper Method of Qualitative Assessment (QA). She currently has a private practice, evaluating children for giftedness using QA and consulting with families and schools to provide appropriate educational and emotional support for gifted children. She is on the staff of the Gifted Development Center’s Oakland testing clinic and serves on the board of Gifted Homeschoolers Forum as the Professional Outreach Coordinator.

Elizabeth Meckstroth, M. Ed., M.S.W., co-authored Guiding the Gifted Child and Teaching Young Gifted Children in the Regular Classroom. Since 1980, she has offered assessment, counseling and support for families with gifted children. She pioneered SENG Model Parent Support Groups and facilitated hundreds of parent discussion groups. Through publications and conference presentations, she has forged awareness about highly gifted children. Betty earned a certificate in Analytical Psychology from the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago and certification qualifying to administer, score, and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Betty currently focuses on highly-profoundly gifted, personality type, and healing models and energies.

Patricia Gatto Walden, Ph.D., is a nationally recognized licensed psychologist who has worked holistically with thousands of gifted and profoundly gifted children, adolescents, and adults for three decades. In her adjunct consulting practice, she has specialized in three areas: holistic health and well being, educational consulting for the gifted, and staff and program development seminars. Dr. Patty has helped parents, educators, and administrators understand and accept the multifaceted inner world, needs, and concerns of gifted individuals. It is her belief that home life, education, and counseling of the gifted must attend to the integration and enhancement of the mind, heart, body, spirit, and social self in order to attain contentment and balance in everyday life. Additionally, her career has included university instruction of doctoral level counseling trainees, counselor supervision, and educational administration. She has extensive experience guiding staff development, program development sessions, problem solving groups, and workshops. Dr. Patty has been a featured speaker at international and national gifted conferences and educational workshops. She is chair-elect of the Global Awareness Division of the National Association for Gifted Children, which will be her second term as chair. She is a Senior Fellow for the Institute of Educational Advancement, which serves profoundly gifted youth through various programs including Yunasa, a holistic summer camp. After much urging from clients, educators, and colleagues in the gifted field, she is writing a book incorporating her insights and wisdom acquired through thirty years of counseling and consulting.

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