2E @ W&M Online Conference Presenters
2026 Featured Speakers
Claire Hughes, Ph.D.
Dr. Claire Hughes is Professor of Gifted and Twice-Exceptional Education at Cleveland State University. Previously, she was Professor of Elementary and Special Education at the College of Coastal Georgia, Senior Lecturer of Special Education at Canterbury Christ Church in the UK, and a Fulbright Scholar to Greece. Winner of the Gifted & Award from NAGC in 2022, she is President-Elect of The Association for the Gifted of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC-TAG) and previously, Chair of the Special Populations Network of the National Association for Gifted Children. Her research areas include: twice-exceptional children, Generational studies, AI in Education, and international education.
Dayna Abraham
Dayna Abraham, bestselling author of Calm the Chaos: A Fail-Proof Roadmap for Parenting Even the Most Challenging Kids. As a National Board Certified educator, parent of three neurodivergent children, and an ADHD adult herself, Dayna brings a unique and out-of-the-box perspective to parents raising kids in the modern world.
Through her compassionate framework, Calm the Chaos, she has helped millions of desperate parents around the world, find peace and meet their children where they're at when conventional parenting tools have failed them.
Kristie Speirs Neumeister, Ph.D.
Dr. Speirs Neumeister is an educational psychologist and professor in gifted education at Ball State University. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Association for Gifted Children and the President of the Indiana Association for the Gifted. She has presented and published extensively on common social and emotional characteristics of gifted children, twice-exceptionality, gifted program design, and strategies for promoting higher level thinking in gifted students. She and her husband are the parents of four daughters who are identified as gifted learners.
Michelle Ronksley-Pavia, Ph.D.
Dr. Michelle Ronksley-Pavia is an internationally recognized researcher and educator dedicated to advancing understanding and support for twice-/multi-exceptional and gifted learners. As Senior Lecturer in Special Education and Inclusive Education at Griffith University, Australia, she combines over two decades of classroom experience with cutting-edge research that centers the voices and experiences of gifted students. Dr. Ronksley-Pavia's groundbreaking work has earned her the 2025 World Council for Gifted and Talented Children (WCGTC) Emerging Scholar Award—one of the field's highest international honors, recognizing researchers making transformative global contributions within their first decade post-PhD. Her research spans critical areas including twice-exceptional identification challenges, the compounded disadvantage faced by these learners in schools, and innovative applications of generative AI (GenAI) to personalize learning for neurodivergent gifted students.
As the first Australian researcher awarded the prestigious Esther Katz Rosen Fund Grant from the American Psychological Foundation, Dr. Ronksley-Pavia is pioneering research on how gifted adolescents creatively use AI tools to support talent development. Her recent publications in the Journal of Advanced Academics and Education Sciences provide practical, evidence-based frameworks for educators and parents supporting twice-exceptional learners. Dr. Ronksley-Pavia serves as elected Australian Delegate to the WCGTC and actively contributes to international policy development in gifted education. As both a researcher and parent of twice-exceptional children, she brings unique personal and professional insights to understanding the challenges and possibilities for these remarkable learners.