Austina De Bonte

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), President of the Northshore HiCap Parents Council (hcparents.org), and Advisor to The G Word documentary (thegwordfilm.com). A dynamic and engaging presenter, Austina 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 “People to Watch” Award from Variations 2e magazine in 2020, and has won three Outstanding Advocate awards from the PTA. She has a Masters degree from MIT and is a doctoral student at The Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity in Education.