Emily Villamar-Robbins is an attorney with extensive experience assisting families in navigating the complexities of advanced learning needs in Texas public schools. Emily applies her policy experience and her knowledge of Texas legal requirements to engage in thoughtful analysis and problem-solving, enabling parents to fully understand both their legal and practical options. 

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Emily offers advising services to individual families, employee benefit packages to companies, presentations for organizations, and pro bono services to qualifying individuals. Her practice encompasses all aspects of K-12 gifted and talented services (sometimes called GT, TAG, or GATE), including the process of qualifying for services, delivery of services, furlough or exit from services, and more. She also offers guidance on acceleration placements (moving a student ahead in a single subject or a full grade) and additional advanced academic programs and opportunities. 

Prior to law school, Emily was drawn to education through her experiences with her cousin, who had developmental disabilities impacting her communication and mobility. While at the University of Texas at Austin, Emily pursued coursework in education and volunteered at the Austin State School, graduating with honors in English. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School, completing her 3L paper on the prevention of teenage dating violence in Texas public schools.

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After practicing law at Akin Gump, Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, and Wick Phillips, Emily stepped back from legal practice to focus on her young children. She found herself unable to stay away from education, however, and she returned to graduate school to complete a Graduate Academic Certificate in Gifted and Talented Education. While helping her children to navigate their own educational paths, she saw firsthand the struggles experienced by parents and teachers of students with learning differences, including advanced learning abilities, an area sometimes neglected in Texas school districts. She recognized that this was an area where she could improve the educational experiences of students and could make an impact. 

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Her involvement in education has been broad, including appointment to the Texas Education Commissioner’s Advisory Council for the Education of Gifted/Talented Students (CAC). She was one of the founders of the Texas Gifted Education Family Network, the first statewide nonprofit dedicated to free support for G/T families, and she serves on the founding board of a Special Education PTA encompassing both disabilities and advanced needs. In the CAC she advised on the 2019 and 2024 updates to the Texas State Plan for the Education of Gifted/Talented Students, and she has received state and local recognition for her work. Emily enjoys presenting to groups of parents and educators on Texas G/T requirements, and she was recently featured as a panelist for the Baylor TIP State Plan Update, a professional training offered by the Baylor University Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development.

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Emily enjoys spending time with her family, including her sons, husband, sister, and parents, who taught her the importance of education (coming from a long line of teachers on her mother’s side).  She is slowly improving her Spanish, and she enjoys writing, hobbies that involve making things, and her family’s Rankin’s dragon, who behaves surprisingly like a puppy with scales.