Jo Ann Kairys is a diversity expert and award-winning author/illustrator of children’s books. Her first book, Sunbelievable, released in October 2011, won the prestigious Mom’s Choice Award. I Want Cake! – to be released November 2015 – delivers again her eye-popping digital art as the setting for real life, multicultural children and intergenerational families.

Her personal experience as parent of a multicultural family is well suited for her academic launch into health care quality improvement, cultural diversity and cultural competence. As an accomplished quality of care and diversity expert, Kairys has taught, conducted and published original research on health care quality and cultural sensitivity.

As an acclaimed children’s book illustrator, she teaches her pioneering magic-realism style to students around the world through online private classes, small groups and Topaz Labs, a global company known for innovative photo-editing software. The San Francisco Book Review enthusiastically described the illustrations in Sunbelievable as “ . . . unforgettable. You can’t take your eyes off of them!”