Team — Literary Safari

Sandhya Nankani, Principal and Founder

Sandhya is Webby-Award nominted producer and thought leader. She founded Literary Safari in 2008 and has over 20 years of experience conceptualizing, developing, and publishing engaging and educational digital and print content and curriculum for children and adults. In all her work, she has been guided by the varied and interdisciplinary entrepreneurial experiences she had early on in her career running a college learning center, operating a family business in men’s retail, and working as a freelance journalist and editor. Over the years, she has taught College Composition to college freshman, edited the award-winning Writing for Teens magazine, collaborated with Google for Educators, authored hi-low and leveled fiction and nonfiction readers for Heinemann's Fountas & Pinnell programs, developed several middle school ELA programs, designed learning games, and written curriculum for the New York Times Learning Network, PBS, and Sesame Workshop. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has been published in The Lily (Washington Post), Quartz, Ms. Magazine, Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop blog, Toca Boca Magazine, Sepia Mutiny, and the Routledge Handbook of Media Education Futures Post-Pandemic. She is the editor of the multidisciplinary anthology Breaking the Silence: Domestic Violence in the South Asian American Community and a memoir/biography Moments with a Master: Meetings with Dada JP Vaswani. She has presented at international conferences including Google EdFoo, PBS Learning Day, Games for Change Festival, OMEP (Organisation Mondiale pour l’Education Préscolaire/World Organisation for Early Childhood Education and Care) World Conference, UNESCO Forum on Global Citizenship Education and hosted/produced live author Q&As for Parents Magazine, LitWorld, and public libraries.

Born in Ghana and raised there, in India, and in the United States, Sandhya holds an undergraduate degree in History and a Masters of International and Public Affairs from Columbia University. An alumni of Scholastic Education and Weekly Reader classroom magazines, she was a founding member of KIDMAP (Kids' Inclusive and Diverse Media Action Project), a grassroots coalition of children’s media professionals committed to representation in digital content for children, served on the Education Committee of the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City, and is president of the board of trustees of her local public library in New Jersey. She has served on award committees for Good Housekeeping’s Best Books Awards, the Cybil Awards, and the Japan Prize (Creative Frontier category).

Jena Detore, Early Childhood Curriculum Design

Jena Detore is an early childhood professional with over 10 years experience working in progressive classroom settings and 7 years providing private, at home behavioral support and tutoring to early elementary students and families with autism. She spent three years as a lead teacher in a toddler classroom in New York City and one year as a member of a trio of talented teachers in West Philadelphia. The Family Annex in NYC, a Reggio Emilia school, fueled her understanding of and appreciation for teaching the individual child within a group and for collaborative teaching while The Children's School of West Philadelphia taught her the power of mindfulness within a mixed aged classroom. Most recently, her experience as a lead toddler teacher at Secret Garden Montessori School in New Jersey taught her about young children's innate desire and respect for structure and order.

Jena holds a BA from The University of Vermont in Early Childhood Education and a Masters degree from Fordham University in Early Childhood Special Education. Most recently, Jena founded River Bend Teaching; a company that values children regardless of ability and provides consulting services to parents and educators around behavioral supports, motivation tools, progressive preschool education programs, classroom/playroom design and spontaneous carefully prepared play opportunities. Most importantly, Jena is married to her husband Chris and have two active young daughters together. She enjoys jumping in puddles in the pouring rain with her toddler and laying on the floor cooing and blowing raspberries with her rapidly growing infant! Email Jena at jena@literarysafari.com.

Sarah B. Boyle, Grades 6-12 Curriculum Design and Development

Sarah is an educator, curriculum developer, and writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has 10 years of classroom experience, teaching high school English at every level. She has also spent more than a decade working in educational publishing, doing everything from writing leveled readers to developing standards-aligned lessons and curricula. Sarah has a BA in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She was a New York City Teaching Fellow and earned her Master of Arts in Urban Education from Mercy College.

Kayla Fedeson, Special Project Coordinator

Kayla Fedeson is a television/media producer living and working in New York City. As part of the Literary Safari team, she wears many hats. She is our project management and administrative go-to and guru! She has also worked on several of our educational/children's projects since 2011, including the #ArmMeWithBooks list, and those in conjunction with Benchmark Education, Stride Learning, Pearson, and iON Future. And, she was an associate producer on the first season of The Story Seeds Podcast.

A proud alumnus of Syracuse University, she is a travel enthusiast, who especially enjoys practicing French and Spanish, as well as her photography. Kayla is passionate about media and the endless ways it can tell stories.

Anjali Sakhrani, Producer

Anjali graduated with an MA in Media Studies from the New School where her focus was in interdisciplinary storytelling and design. She has worked for Literary Safari on creative projects involving everything from visual design and art direction to narrative design and audio production. She is now the lead producer of The Story Seeds Podcast.