Director; Counselor

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 5,000 children have been assessed at the Center since 1979.  She is co-chair of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) Task Force on Assessment. 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 latest book, Upside-Down Brilliance:  The Visual-Spatial Learner, was released November, 2002.  She 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. 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.

To view Linda's Curriculum Vitae, please click here.

Associate Director; Counselor; Examiner

Barbara ("Bobbie") Gilman, M.S., serves on the NAGC Task Force on Assessment and is creating the official report of the Task Force.
A recognized expert on assessment of the gifted, Bobbie has been writing and speaking extensively on the appropriate use and scoring of the newly revised and renormed major IQ tests with gifted children.  She holds degrees in Child Development and Psychology, and has extensive experience testing gifted children and making educational recommendations for them.  She works with the highly gifted and gifted children with learning disabilities, AD/HD, or underachievement issues.  Bobbie trains testers, supervises reports, and consults with parents worldwide.  A mother of highly gifted sons, she is a veteran of gifted committees, helped create an accelerated charter middle school, and is a popular speaker for parents and teachers on advocacy and classroom accommodations for the gifted.  Since the release of  her award-winning book, Academic Advocacy for Gifted Children: A Parent’s Complete Guide (formerly titled Empowering Gifted Minds: Educational Advocacy That Works), she is devoting more of her time to School Advocacy Consultation, helping parents to document the unique instructional needs of their gifted student, find curricular options that meet the child's needs, and negotiate with school personnel for programming accommodations.  Bobbie has just completed the manuscript for her new book, Challenging Highly Gifted Learners.

Betty Maxwell, M.A.  (See Senior Staff Development Director, Counselor)

Barbara Gilman, M.S.  (See Associate Director)

Helen McVicar, M.B.A., ABSNP - currently on extended leave, is licensed by the Colorado Department of Education as a School Psychologist and her professional experience includes 12 years working in public schools conducting comprehensive assessments, and providing direct services, crisis management, applied behavior analysis and consultation. She has worked for GDC as a Professional Associate for more than eight years providing assessments and acting as the site coordinator of a Stanford-Binet 5 discriminant validation study. She worked for several years testing children for Dr. George Dorry of the Attention and Behavior Center before his retirement. Helen holds an MBA in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from City University of New York and completed a Post-Masters Licensure Program in School Psychology at Marywood University.

As she became more interested in twice exceptional and learning disabilities, Helen completed the School Neuropsychology Post-Graduate Certification Program and received a Diplomate by the American Board of School Neuropsychology (ABSNP). In addition to cognitive, academic and social/emotional assessment, she can now consider attention, memory and executive functioning.

Linda Silverman, Ph.D.  (See Director)

Bobbie Gilman, M.S. (See Associate Director)

Betty Maxwell, M.A. (See Senior Staff Development Director, Examiner)

Michael Davis, Ph.D., Staff Counselor, has been a psychotherapist in private practice in Colorado since 1981. He has worked with gifted children and their families as the staff counselor at the Gifted Development Center, in Denver, for almost 30 years. In addition, he has taught graduate school classes at Denver University’s Center for Teaching International Relations and delivered numerous presentations at Gifted Conferences and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator™ Conferences.

Michael is also a Certified Imago Therapist and Couples Workshop Presenter, and has been sharing the benefits of Imago Relationship Therapy with his clients since 1998. He helps his clients understand and integrate the skills and practices that make relationships work. Michael likes to compare relationships to canoeing down a river. One thing he guarantees is that there are rapids downstream. Therefore he teaches people to paddle in calm waters, to navigate through rapids and, if they tip over, how to get back in the canoe. He does this with insight, warmth, and gentle humor. To learn more about him, the services he offers, and “Imago,” please visit his website.

Professional Affiliates

Linda Powers Leviton, M.A., MFT, Consultant & Director, West Coast Office of the Gifted Development Center office, has been in private practice as a Licensed Marriage, Family and Child Therapist since 1996. Prior to that, she taught gifted children and raised three of her own. Linda Leviton and Linda Silverman have worked together since 1974. They co-authored "In Search of the Perfect Program," which serves as a basis for helping parents find appropriate educational environments for their children.

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 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, including the book, "Mellow Out," They Say, If I Only Could.

Kathi Kearney, M.A. Ed., is the founder of the Hollingworth Center for Highly Gifted Children, a national resource and support network for exceptionally gifted children and their families. She has worked with gifted children as a teacher and administrator in a wide variety of settings, urban and rural, in public, private, religious, and home schools. Kathi is a recognized expert on homeschooling exceptionally gifted children. An excellent diagnostician, she works primarily in New England.