Linda’s Legacy Campaign

Celebrate Linda’s 84th Birthday!

We are launching a campaign to preserve Linda Silverman’s legacy in 2025. Linda has been on a mission to help others understand the inner lives of the gifted from the time she was 17 years old. On January 28th, Linda will be turning 84. If you have been touched by Linda’s work, please help us preserve her legacy. We are asking for donations related to the number 84 in whatever amount you can afford: $8.40; $84; $840; $8,400; $84.000.

Highlights of linda’s Professional Accomplishments: 

  1. In June of 1979, Linda founded Gifted Development Center, which has become the gold standard in assessment of gifted and twice exceptional children worldwide.

  2. In 1987, she founded the nonprofit Institute for the Study of Advanced Development (ISAD), which conducts research on emotional development and Dabrowski’s Theory.

  3. In 1989, Linda initiated the only refereed professional journal on adult giftedness, Advanced Development—the professional publication of ISAD.

  4. In 1989, Linda published her first article on visual-spatial learners. She developed the construct in the visual-spatial learner in the 1980s.

  5.  In 1993, Counseling the Gifted and Talented, edited by Linda, was published; it was adopted at 50 colleges and universities.

  6.   In 1998, the Visual-Spatial Identifier Visual-Spatial Identifier was published and validated by the Visual-Spatial Learner Study Group, hosted by GDC/ISAD.

  7. In 2002, Linda published the book, Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner, which sold 25,000 copies.

  8. In 2013, Linda published Giftedness 101, which has sold over 5,000 copies and has been translated into Swedish, Korean and, recently, Japanese.

  9. As a founding member of The Columbus Group, Linda helped define giftedness as "asynchronous development." The Columbus Group is affiliated with ISAD.

  10. In 2024, Linda created Foundations of Gifted Assessment, a 28-hour, graduate level course. There are no other courses on assessing the gifted.

  11.   Linda influenced the development of IQ tests to better serve the gifted, including extended norms on the WISC-IV and WISC-V. Linda served on the Advisory Panels of the Stanford-Binet Fifth Edition and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale Fifth Edition.

  12. Linda has contributed more than 500 publications in the field, furthering understanding of the gifted globally.

  13. She has given keynote addresses, graduate courses, and done consulting in 11 countries and 43 states since 1974. Linda’s YouTube channel of presentations has reached thousands.

We are planning to raise $840,000 for the following purposes:

1.     Purchase a permanent facility for Gifted Development Center/ISAD.

2.     Fund the positions of Associate Director, Research Director, and Marketing Director.

3.     Fund a new editor of Advanced Development Journal and assure its continuation.

4.     Provide scholarships for assessment of children.

5.     Digitize, analyze and publish data on 6,600+ gifted and 2e children.

6.     Professionalize Linda’s video course on Foundations of Gifted Assessment to teach her unique methods of diagnosis and her child-centered approach to new generations.