A beloved friend of the gifted, Betty received dozens of unsolicited notes of gratitude for her guidance of families, such as the following:

Betty Maxwell

Betty Maxwell, M.A., former Associate Director of Gifted Development Center, recently offered her home for monthly Dabrowski Study Group meetings until the group converted to virtual meetings due to COVID. Betty has studied Dabrowski's theory since 1980, leading the Dabrowski Study Group at her home and at GDC in the late 1980s and 1990s. Co-founder of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development (ISAD), GDC’s nonprofit organization, which produces the only journal on adult giftedness: Advanced Development, for nearly 3 decades, Betty served as ISAD’s Vice-President.Betty was instrumental in the creation of the journal, as well as its continuation. In order to preserve the journal, Betty purchased it from the publisher in 1995 and donated it to ISAD. A certified psychosynthesis educator and counselor, Betty edited the fourth volume of the journal, in which her germinal article appears: "Self as Phoenix: A Comparison of Assagioli's and Dabrowski's Developmental Theories." In this article, she demonstrated how Assagioli's psychosynthesis techniques were fruitful in the transformative development described by both theorists. Betty served as Editor or Associate Editor of Advanced Development for 2 decades. Betty organized and led meetings of Parents of Gifted Offspring (POGO), the forerunner of PG Retreat. A strong proponent of visual-spatial learners, Betty co-wrote Picture it! Teaching Visual-Spatial Learners with Crystal Punch. She co-created the visual-spatial learner study group with Linda Silverman, and led meetings for 9 years, while the group developed The Visual-Spatial Identifier. Betty wrote "The Visual-Spatial Learner in School," which appears as Appendix A in Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner. She served as Director of Visual-Spatial Resource, developing a website, resources, and services for parents. Betty holds a Master's degree in gifted education from the University of Denver. She was a language arts teacher and taught for 15 years in a school for the gifted. In her role as Associate Director of GDC, she provided Dial-Log telephone consultations to families and individuals, and saw many clients in person. As an examiner, she found that test administration and analysis helped fuel her deep interest in the psychological aspects of development and self-actualization. The children she assessed came alive in her beautifully crafted reports. Betty managed GDC for many years, often without remuneration.