Our Stories
Executive Board
Kimberly Elms, President
Kimberly is the Director of Elementary Curriculum & Instruction for Cave Creek Unified Schools. She has been involved in gifted education for eight years and has served on the AAGT board for two and a half years.
Kristine Stewart, President Elect
Kristine is in her fifth year as a gifted education teacher in the Marana Unified School District. She lives in Tucson with her husband, Randy. They enjoy camping, traveling and frequent trips to Disneyland.
Judith Sessions, Secretary, Annual Conference Co-Chair
Judie has been in education for 25 years. She has been involved in gifted education since 1988 and a member of AAGT board since 1992. She is currently employed by the Peoria Unified School District as an instructional specialist. She has been a classroom teacher, teacher of the gifted, assistant principal and prinicipal.
Anne Held, Financial Officer
Anne has been a gifted specialist in the Amphitheater School District in Tucson for seven years and is the parent of gifted children. She currently teaches humanities to gifted sixth, seventh and eighth graders in the REACH program at Wilson K-8 School.
Roberta Russell, Past President
Currently retired Roberta is a past teacher of the gifted and coordinator of gifted services for the Tucson Unified School District. She remains actively involved in gifted education.
Board of Directors
Carie Barstad
Carie is a gifted cluster teacher and mentor for the Glendale Elementary School district. She has a masters degree in gifted education from Northern Arizona University. She has two teenage gifted children. She is an avid hiker, backpacker, and kayaker.
Donna Campbell
Donna is a specialist in gifted education and differentiation. She is a former classroom teacher, a gifted specialist in schools, a district coordinator of gifted programs and services, and a teacher/facilitator in a school within a school for highly gifted students, ages ten to eighteen. All these experiences contribute to the work she now engages in- empowering teachers and school administrators to work “smarter” not “harder” by implementing good instructional and classroom management strategies to maximize the opportunity for students and teachers to thrive! She has been actively involved as an advocate for gifted students in the Midwest and in Arizona for over 20 years.
Seu Hee Kim, Annual Conference Exhibits Chair
Dr. Seu Hee Kim is a Science and Mathematics Achievement Advisor for the Glendale Elementary School District and a Faculty Associate for Arizona State University's College of Teacher Education and Leadership. In addition, she is the recipient of the 2004 AAGT's Gifted Teacher of the Year Award. Seu Hee is an advocate of gifted education and serves on the board of AAGT because she is lucky to be the parent of two gifted girls.
Susan Mahoney
Susan has worked in the G.A.T.E./Plus program of Tucson Unified School District for thirteen years.
Care McCray-Lengel
A lover of learning, happy high school teacher, and coordinator of gifted services, Care served 30 wonderful years working with gifted and remedial students in Tempe and then formed McCray-Lengel Education, LLC to coach teachers, districts, and parents about great teaching and gifted kids. Care has co-taught aspiring teachers at ASU and offers her expertise to North Central Accreditation and Arizona State Solutions Teams to evaluate and support school improvement. She’s always looking for new challenges and chances to serve, learn, and teach.
Jason McIntosh
Jason has been the Collaborative Peer Teacher for the Gifted in the Avondale Elementary School District for two years. Jason previously taught in Ohio, Georgia, and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Seven of his thirteen years of teaching experience have been in gifted education. Jason is Nationally Board Certified and has a Master's Degree in Elementary Education, as well as, a Master's in the Art of Teaching with a specialty in Biology.
Patty Messer
Patty Messer, Liberty Elementary School District Gifted Program Coordinator, has been teaching in the field of gifted education for 20 years. After receiving her Bachelors in Elementary Education from the University of AZ, she began teaching a self-contained gifted class in Lake Havasu City. She transferred to the Goodyear area in 2002 and began teaching in the Liberty Elementary School District's gifted pull-out program. After completing her Master Degree in Gifted Education from the University of Connecticut she moved into the coordinators position full time.
Tiffany O'Neill, Annual Conference Co-Chair
Tiffany is the Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) Coordinator for Casa Grande Union High School District. She is seeking an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus on gifted student education at Arizona State University. Tiffany also coaches Future Problem Solving and has had the most recent priviledge of accompanying 15 gifted students to the International Conference where they competed against students from around the globe. Tiffany is also the proud mother of her three year old beauty (and budding genius) Alina.
Lori Rubin-Williamson
Lori Rubin-Williamson is the mother of two highly gifted children who turned her hair gray prematurely! They are now in college so she should be getting her life back soon. As an officer of Scottsdale Supporters of the Gifted and current chair of the AAGT Parent Institute, she enjoys bringing in speakers to educate the community about the unique needs of gifted children and fielding phone calls from parents who are advocating for their gifted children. Lori helped write and lobby for the Arizona gifted legislation that passed in 2006.
Kristine Reich
ADE GIFTED DIRECTOR:
Prior to joining the Arizona Department of Education as Director of Gifted Education/ Advanced Placement, Peter Laing most recently served as Project Director and Co-Principal Investigator for Project Bright Horizon, a four-year U.S. Department of Education Jacob K. Javits gifted education research and demonstration grant, focused on designing effective systems and methods for identifying and developing talent and potential in culturally, linguistically, and socio-economically diverse learners. Peter has also served as a member of the Board of Directors for AAGT, and was a co-chair of the 2007 AAGT Annual State Gifted Education Conference. Peter currently serves as the Chair of the Special Populations Network and as a member of the Legislative Guideline Committee of the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC), and is a founding Co-Chair of the new Gifted and Advanced Learners Network of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD).