Paula Olszewski-Kubilius

Bio

Dr. Paula Olszewski-Kubilius is the director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University and a professor in the School of Education and Social Policy. Over the past 38 years, she has worked to create programs models to meet the needs of diverse gifted learners, including online learning programs, summer, and weekend programs. She has written and published extensively about issues in gifted education, with a particular focus on talent development for under-served gifted students. Her recent work includes The Handbook of High Performance: Developing Potential into Domain-Specific Talent with colleagues Rena Subotnik and Frank Worrell, published by the American Psychological Association, and Unlocking Potential. Identifying and Serving Gifted Students from Low-Income Households, with Tamra Stambaugh, published by Prufrock Press.

Olszewski-Kubilius has served as the editor of Gifted Child Quarterly, co-editor of the Journal of Secondary Gifted Education and on the editorial boards of Gifted and Talented International, Roeper Review, Jjournal for the Education of the Gifted, and Gifted Child Today. She is currently the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and serves on that advisory boards for the Center for Gifted Education at the College of William and Mary and the Robinson Center for Young Scholars at the University of Washington.

She is a past-President of the National Association for Gifted Children and the Illinois Association for Gifted Children. Dr. Olszewski-Kubilius has received several awards for her publications along with co-authors including the Gifted Child Quarterly Paper of the Year Award in 2011, 2017 and 2020; The Gifted Child Quarterly Paper of the Decade in 2020; the Mensa Education and Research Foundation Award for Excellence in Research in 2013; and the National Association for Gifted Children Scholarly Book of the Year Award in 2018, 2019 and 2020. She received the Distinguished Scholar Award in 2009 and the Distinguished Service Award in 2016 from the National Association for Gifted Children.

Advice to Your Younger Self or Someone Considering CTD

Explore as many options as you can to discover your talent areas and your interests. Seek out opportunities that might give you direction such as courses, extra-curricular activities, summer programs, summer jobs and talk to teachers, family members and other adults. Try things you are not sure about--you never know where these may lead you--hopefully to a field or career that you love.