Dr. Austina De Bonte is a consultant, speaker, coach, and advocate for gifted and twice-exceptional students with Smart is not Easy, LLC (smartisnoteasy.com). She is also President of the WA Coalition for Gifted Education (wacoalition.com), Past President of NW Gifted Child Association (nwgca.org), member of the WA State Highly Capable Advisory Board, member of the NAGC Public Policy and Advocacy Committee (nagc.org), and Advisor to The G Word documentary (thegwordfilm.com). A dynamic and engaging presenter, Dr. De Bonte speaks regularly at regional and national conferences, as well as conducts professional development workshops for educators, and provides consulting for individual families. She works with school district teams to develop and fine-tune their program models, especially concerning equitable identification strategies. Her signature style combines her experience as a student, parent, and family consultant along with synthesized research, current district practices, and cutting-edge neuroscience. She has particular passion for supporting gifted and twice-exceptional students in public schools and helping families get to the root causes of their child’s challenges, looking beyond the usual suspects. She received the NAGC Carolyn Callahan Doctoral Student Award (2023), People to Watch by Variations 2e Magazine (2020), WAETAG Advocacy Award (2019), has won three PTA Outstanding Advocate awards, and is a trained SENG facilitator. She has a Bachelors and Masters degree from MIT (1998) and a Doctorate degree in twice exceptional education from Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education (2024), where her dissertation was titled, "Beyond Universal Screening: Practices and Attitudes that Support Equity in Identification for an Accelerated Program." Contact Dr. De Bonte at austina@smartisnoteasy.com  Read her CV.