10 Year Anniversary

Meet Our Special Guests

Deedee Cummings

Deedee Cummings is a professional dreamer. She is also an author, therapist, attorney, and mom from Louisville, Kentucky. The books she writes focus on hope, diversity, social justice, and therapeutic skills for children and adults. Her work has been featured in HuffPost, Forbes, NPR, USA Today, Essence Magazine, Psych Central, Well+Good, and The EveryGirl, among other media outlets. Deedee is also the founder of Make A Way Media and The Louisville Book Festival. She believes literacy is a fundamental human right. Her work highlights inspiring messages that remind us all it is never too late to begin again. Cummings founded Make A Way Media in 2014 after struggling to find books with characters who looked like her own children and an extreme lack of stories that reflected their life experiences. Follow Deedee on Instagram for fun, inspiring, and informative updates as she continues to chase her dreams and bring them to life.

Kayla Pecchioni

Kayla Pecchioni (also known as “the real-life Princess Kayla” here at Make a Way Media) is a Broadway star and Deedee’s daughter. After moving to New York City, she booked her first job in just three days as a singer in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. She landed her first professional leading role just a year later in the The Book of Mormon. Since then, she has been in Some LIke it Hot and Paradise Square. She is currently performing in The Great Gatsby. When she isn’t on stage, you’ll likely find her out in nature, tending to her indoor garden, mentoring others or hanging out with her husband and two kitties. 

Mia Wenjen

Mia Wenjen blogs at PragmaticMom.com. She is also the co-creator and president of nonprofit, Read Your World. Her newest picture book is Boxer Baby Battles Bedtime (Eifrig Publishing). Her debut picture book, Sumo Joe (Lee and Low, 2019) was selected as a Bank Street College Best Children’s Book of the Year. Food for the Future: Sustainable Farms Around the World (Barefoot Books, 2023) is a Junior Library Guild selection, received a starred review from School Library Journal, and made Chicago Library Best of the Best list. We Sing from the Heart: How the Slants® Took Their Fight for Free Speech to the Supreme Court (Red Comet Press) releases on October 15, 2024. Follow her @pragmaticmom on social media.

Aditi Wardhan Singh

Aditi Wardhan Singh is multi-award-winning, best-selling author of nine diverse books including picture book voted Teachers Pick by Amazon, How Our Skin Sparkles and the award-winning books for being a global citizen, Strong Roots Have No Fear & Raising the Global Mindset. Her books aim to give multicultural mindsets a strong sense of identity, while building cultural awareness. She is also the founder of RaisingWorldChildren.com.

Giselle Shardlow

Giselle Shardlow, M.Ed., is an award-winning children’s book author and founder of Kids Yoga Stories which has grown from a single book to over 200 yoga and mindfulness resources, including yoga cards, mindfulness tools, and classroom resources. She holds a Master’s degree in International Education with a decade of international elementary teaching experience and currently works as a teacher substitute. The mission for Kids Yoga Stories is to create tools to help children self-regulate, manage emotions, and be ready-to-be-learn.

Jonathan Cormur

Jonathan is a SAG-AFTRA neurodivergent voice actor with a flair for character work across a diverse array of mediums—from video games and audiobooks to apps, digital comics, industrials, and narrative podcasts. He got his start by doing in-park voice over for California’s Great America Theme Park shows and attractions. Jonathan is the host and co-creator of Dorktales Storytime, taking on multiple roles in the award-winning podcast for young minds and curious imaginations. He has been featured in Forbes, ABC7 Bay Area News, and on 57 news affiliates for Scripps National News across the U.S.

Charlene Mosley

Born in Berlin, Charlene Mosley is a fine artist, illustrator, and muralist, who works in oil and watercolor. Charlene has exhibited in both national and international exhibitions. In 2016, Charlene was one of the contributing artists of Loving Vincent, the first fully-painted, Oscar-nominated feature film. Mosley’s current work discusses the 21st- century media-driven society and its relationship to technology and nature. She resides in San Diego and has been the illustrator for all of Deedee’s recent books.

Tonya Wright

Tonya Wright was raised an empowered daughter, has a master’s degree, and has been featured in the School Library Journal. In 2014, she founded Girlfriends Book Club Baltimore. It is a stress-free group which encourages reading, vocabulary expansion, comprehension skills, and confidence in a fun environment.

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Nikita Gupta

Nikita is a writer, author, blogger, entrepreneur, designer, innovator, and philanthropist. She co-created the first American Black History box by InKidz and is widely recognized for her multicultural lifestyle blog, Growing Up Gupta Through this platform, she shares stories about interracial and intercultural dating and marriage, multiracial and multicultural parenting, fusion recipes, and more.

As a cross-cultural family, Nikita and her husband noticed a lack of children’s books celebrating mixed Indian/South Asian heritage and bilingual books in Hindi and English. This inspired them to create “I Love Masala Me.” Additionally, Nikita and her daughter, Amaya, created “Mixed South Asians: The Coloring Book” to celebrate children of multicultural and mixed heritage.