Joyce VanTassel-Baska, Ed.D., is the Jody and Layton Smith Professor Emerita of Education and former Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary in Virginia, where she developed a graduate program and a research and development center in gifted education. She also initiated and directed the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University.

Linda D. Avery, Ph.D., managed the Center for Gifted Education at The College of William and Mary upon receiving her doctorate in educational leadership, policy, and planning from that institution in the late 1990s. Previously she helped establish the first gifted education program at the state level in Michigan and helped administer the long-established state program in Illinois. She has authored language arts curriculum materials based on the Integrated Curriculum Model (ICM) and oversaw the preparation of a collection of social studies curriculum units. She has conducted several state and local gifted program evaluation studies over her career and numerous professional development workshops in curriculum development and implementation. She is currently living in Seville, OH.