Dekeda Bio: In June 2015, Dekeda Johnson launched her blog - Walk One Day In Our Shoes – as a way to reach and teach the online community about her daughter who lives with nonverbal autism. Seeing the need from the perspective of a Black-American mom, she offers encouragement, tips and lively discussions about relevant news within the autism / special needs community. As a local autism advocate, she works diligently to promote acceptance for the often forgotten population. Her online blogging quickly expanded to include community outreach and event planning.

In 2021, The New York Times featured Dekeda in a project called “The Primal Scream: Three American Mothers on the Brink.”

In 2022, Dekeda was awarded the "Helping People Award" by the Comptroller of Maryland, for her outstanding community advocacy.

IG: https://www.instagram.com/w.o.d.i.o.s/?hl=en

Link tree: https://linktr.ee/WalkOneDayInOurShoes

EJ Bio: EJ (@that_bamma_ej) is a multi-faceted executive leader with over two decades of progressively responsible experience in leading wireless sales and operations teams in the federal, state & local government markets, B2B/commercial enterprise markets, retail sales & operations, training & development, as well as strategy execution, revenue growth & relationship cultivation. He also serves as the Vice Chairman of the Executive Board of Directors of Groove Phi Groove Social Fellowship Incorporated (@gphig.1962)

Additionally, EJ is the father of remarkable little boy who was diagnosed with Pfeiffer’s Syndrome, an extremely rare and complex genetic disorder. He and his wife have become examples of how to manage demanding careers, the unique experience of raising a medically complex and able-bodied child, develop a thriving and healthy marriage while dedicating time and energy to giving back to the respective communities theyre members of.

https://www.instagram.com/hat_bamma_ej

Ryan Bio: Ryan was born and raised in Durham, NC. After graduating high school he took his southern roots to Hampton University and received a degree in Electrical Engineering.

He is now living in MD and works as a hardware engineer with Leidos (formerly Lockheed Martin). It was here where he met is wife of 21 years, NaToya, and started their family of 4 (Nariah and Toryn). Ryan is a diehard soccer fan supporting Nariah’s path to D1 soccer this fall and a huge autism advocate for Toryn and other special needs families. Between traveling to soccer games and raising money and awareness for autism, it is a busy and time consuming path of fatherhood. But… there is enough time to dabble in homemade hot sauces made from scratch from his front yard garden and sold via Facebook. The ultimate goal of these sauces is to combine extreme heat with dope flavors such as Ghost pepper / Watermelon. This year’s harvest hopes to build on the new Dragon’s Breath pepper fulfill the constant request of “can you make it hotter?”.

Ryan created a Facebook group to chat, vent, share resources, and anything else that may benefit the special needs community called “The Village…”. There are doctors, speech therapists, etc. in the group to help with the knowledge sharing.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/thevillageconnection

https://www.facebook.com/vrgoldman