Camilla Benbow was interviewed by Elsbeth Stern at the 2024 meeting in Zürich, Switzerland. Swedish-born, Camilla studied at Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees and, in 1981, her doctorate in education with distinction. As an undergraduate in Julian Stanley’s psychological testing class she began helping to run the talent searches of his Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), and she went on to become his final graduate student. In 1980 she and Stanley published a report in Science on sex differences in mathematical reasoning ability among gifted adolescents that remains one of the most widely discussed papers in the field.

When Stanley approached retirement he handed the study to Benbow, and SMPY has been the through line of her career ever since. Now co-directed with David Lubinski, it follows five cohorts of more than 5,000 intellectually talented individuals, identified between 1972 and 1997, across the lifespan; its findings on acceleration and the long-term development of talent earned Benbow and Lubinski ISIR’s 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award. Before moving to Vanderbilt she spent twelve years at Iowa State University, rising from associate professor to Distinguished Professor, chairing the psychology department, and serving as interim dean of education.

Since 1998 Camilla has been the Patricia and Rodes Hart Dean of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College. Reappointed in 2024 to a final term, she plans to retire in 2028 as the longest-serving dean in Peabody’s history. She has served on the National Science Board and as vice chair of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, and she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. Her connection to this interview series runs deeper than most: Camilla conducted its very first interview herself, sitting down with her mentor Julian Stanley in 2002. Twenty-two years later in Zürich, she took the other chair.