Donor Egbuonu-Davis Looks to Expand Opportunities for Overlooked Gifted Students
When Lisa Egbuonu-Davis arrived at college in the 1970s, she had the benefit of a strong public school education, including multiple years of calculus, already behind her. She soon realized that many of her classmates were just as capable but had not had access to the same opportunities. She started running the Black Student Union tutorial program to help them catch up.
“Talent is normally distributed; opportunity is not,” Egbuonu-Davis says. “That sparked my interest in supporting access to gifted education.”
In 1983, Egbuonu-Davis earned a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a master’s degree from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, then built a career in pharmaceutical clinical research, health economics research, and medical affairs leadership. But she says she never lost her interest in gifted education. As a member of the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees from 2002 to 2008, she joined the School of Education National Advisory Council to support K-12 education. Subsequently, she sought information on advanced education research at the Johns Hopkins School of Education and discovered Jonathan Plucker’s work.
