Tammie Lister
Tammie works at Automattic, where she is donated to the WordPress.org project full time. Currently she is the design lead for the editor focus of Gutenberg. Her background is varied and includes psychology, design, development and user experience. She is passionate about Open Source and community.
Sinoun Chea
Sinoun (pronounced ‘sin-noon’) is the founder of ShiftWeb Solutions, a web design and SEO company. She has lived and breathed WordPress since 2009 and hasn’t turned back since! Sinoun is passionate about working with small businesses to help them achieve a sexier presence on the world wide web. She is both an artist and entrepreneur at heart. In her spare time, Sinoun is always working on various projects that stimulate her brain. She also aspires to be a professional picnicker, an air floater, and an expert sleeper.
Zach Tirrell
Zach Tirrell is Modern Tribe’s Director of Product, which puts him at the helm of hugely-popular WordPress plugins like The Events Calendar, Event Tickets, and Event Aggregator. Zach hails from Plymouth, New Hampshire, and has been a full-stack developer for over 18 years—including several-year stretches at Gigaom and Plymouth State University prior to joining Tribe.
Tom Shapiro
Tom Shapiro is CEO of Stratabeat, Inc. (https://stratabeat.com/), a B2B branding, web design, and digital marketing agency. Through his career, Shapiro has developed marketing strategies for multiple market leaders, including AT&T, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Experian, and P&G. Previously, Shapiro was the Director of Digital Strategy at the digital marketing agency iProspect. During his five years at the firm, the number of employees grew from 85 to more than 700. Shapiro has a deep passion for neuromarketing, psychology, and behavioral science, and his insights have been published in Chief Marketer, CMO.com, CNN.com, Forbes, among others. Shapiro’s book, “Rethink Your Marketing,” was published in 2017 (http://stratabe.at/rethink).
Aurora Morales
Currently a Search Outreach Specialist at Google, Aurora supports site owners and content creators in improving content accessibility through search. Before joining Google in her previous role as a Brand Specialist, Aurora spent time at Twitter and Youtube, and also has a background in journalism. Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, Aurora lived in Dublin and Madrid.
Tara Johnson
Tara Johnson is a front-end web developer, print designer, brand specialist, WordPress consultant, photographer, digital marketer and business owner (https://alchemythree.com). She’s committed to humanizing the online experience by way of smart design, compelling content and elevated branding. She’s been building sites with WordPress since 2006 and adores the WP community!
In her free time Tara loves to knit, ride bikes, hang with her 2 kids and drink the hoppiest IPAs she can find!
Email: tara@alchemythree.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alchemythree/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alchemythree/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alchemy3Studio
Steven Word
Steven Word is the WordPress Innovation Program Manager at WP Engine, where he evaluates, recommends, and architects WordPress technology solutions for customers and partners. A WordPress veteran of 10 years and Core Contributor, Steven is passionate about providing technical and strategic guidance to content creators, developers, and product teams.
Ross Viviano
In a previous life, Ross was a full-time musician who hustled his way around Southern New Jersey for 10 years. Now he focuses on his music and photography from the mountains of North Carolina, where he works at Automattic as a WooCommerce Happiness Engineer.
Roksana Pirog-Cappiella
RPC has worked with WordPress for most of her career, mostly in the nonprofit world. She’s also used WordPress to create a resume website when job hunting. She enjoys volunteering at her local animal shelter, gardening, and trying to find the best pizza in Boston with her husband.
Michelle Ames
Marketing is intuitive for Michelle which is why she pursued and gained her MBA from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business. Michelle has over twenty years of experience in higher education; ten years owning a web design and marketing company; and currently serves as the Head of Customer Success for GiveWP.com
Michelle is a veteran of public speaking. Teaching is in her DNA. She’s been an instructor for a wide variety of topics including Using Quantitative Data Analysis Software, Meditative Drawing, Intro to WordPress, and Marketing for Massage Therapy. Michelle speaks at conferences all over North America. You can find many of them recorded on WordPress.tv including “Little Things That Make a Big Difference” and “Hidden Features of WordPress Revealed,” as well as panel discussions on marketing and women in technology.
When Michelle isn’t organizing events, she’s attending them, exploring photography, and mentoring people in her local community.
Michelle is the author of the soon-to-be-released “A Good Firm Handshake (and other essential business tips)” available soon on Amazon.com.
Say hi to Michelle on Twitter at @michelleames and check out her website at marketedbymichelle.com.
Matt Medeiros
Host of the WordPress podcast, The Matt Report. Day job at Pagely managed WordPress hosting. Co-founder of Slocum Studio.
Mary Baum
Mary Baum is the founder and principal of RacquetPress, a digital consultancy to the tennis industry.
Trained as a print designer (because there WAS no web) Mary built her first site (wrong) in 1999 and started to learn real CSS and HTML ten years ago — at the tender age of 47.
Today she’s a fervent advocate for design in the browser (after a few thumbnail sketches!) and all the modern CSS the major browsers will support. This year she promises to finally learn Javascript deeply — really!
Laura Byrne Cristiano
Laura started her first WordPress site back in March 2006 when she and a friend and decided to start a website about a then little-known book called Twilight where fans could discuss the novel on a blog and forums. What started as a small site with maybe 30 visitors a week, rapidly grew into the most popular Twilight website on the Internet with millions of visitors each day from around the globe.
Laura was suddenly thrust into a media vortex that included set visits, a book deal, speaking engagements, and too many surreal experiences to count. This lead to Laura transitioning from a career in teaching to one in marketing as she hit the ground running with a whole new skill set including podcasting, video editing, SEO, social media management and content marketing.
Since then, she’s created/written for over twenty WordPress sites mostly in the areas of education and entertainment. Aside from her love of WordPress, Laura is also an Anglophile, avid traveler, theater lover, fantasy junkie, and occasional actor. She currently writes for Hypable.com and does freelance marketing and social media work.
Laura Rabell
After graduating with honors from the University of West Florida in Pensacola, where she grew up, Laura lived in Charlotte, NC with her husband E.J. for 10 years before they moved to Nashville, TN, to pursue music. With a marketing and client services background in fields such as healthcare consulting and financial services, Laura found a niche in helping small business owners with business development through web design and digital marketing.
Rabell Creative, founded by E.J. and Laura in 2012, offers WordPress website design and digital marketing services to help organizations make the most of their online presence. Rabell Creative is a Google Partner agency, and Laura is a Certified Adwords Specialist. Visit www.rabellcreative.com to see our portfolio of recent client projects.
Laura is also a performing musician and songwriter. You can follow along on her musical journey by subscribing to her monthly email newsletter at www.laurarabell.com.
Ashley Kolodziej
Ashley Kolodziej is an Assistant Creative Director on Boston University’s Interactive Design team, and spends most of her day investigating ways to make theme development, content management and customization within the Boston University WordPress environment easier for both developers and end users. She guides the addition of new features and functionality to Boston University’s custom theme framework and regularly contributes to the design and front-end development of university-wide user interfaces. Ashley is a big believer in education, documentation and her two pet bunnies, Nellie and Peppermint Patty.
Allan Cole
Hi! I’m Allan Cole. I’m a hacker, an artist, a beat-maker and an entrepreneur, and I’m in love with constantly getting better at building and creating. Over the years, I’ve developed skills in a wide variety of media that I use to express ideas in unique ways. These skills primarily include: front-end design/development, WordPress development, illustration, graphic design, and music production (beats). I’m currently employed by Automattic, Inc as a Theme Imagineer.
Kjell Reigstad
I studied Graphic Design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I went on to design t-shirts for MTV, websites for Ford, apps for HBO, and financial tools for Fidelity before finding my home at Automattic. I spend my days working on a (very) wide variety of projects for WordPress.com, while also leading design and illustration for Longreads. I live in a cozy red house outside of Boston with my wife, our daughter, and a friendly orange cat.
Kevin Hoffman
Kevin Hoffman is a Pittsburgh-based WordPress Engineer at WordImpress. He has contributed as a designer and developer to several plugins including GiveWP and the upcoming WP Business Reviews. After graduating from Drexel University with a degree in Digital Media, Kevin navigated a career that included time as a freelancer, agency developer, business owner, and his current role as a WordPress plugin developer. As an advocate of scalability and modularity in plugin design, Kevin enjoys sharing that perspective with the community.
Josh Pollock
Josh Pollock is the founder and lead developer of Caldera Labs, creators of Caldera Forms, a drag and drop responsive form builder for WordPress. He is also a WordPress core contributor and the author of two books about WordPress development.
John Eckman
After a first career as an academic, John’s been working in digital agencies for the last 18 years, and with WordPress for the last 10. He has been one of the organizers for WordCamp Boston since 2010, and is the CEO of 10up. He now lives in Salem MA with his wife and dogs. He blogs (very occasionally) at Open Parenthesis.
Jodie Riccelli
A lover of all things Philly, intrigued by tech, a self-proclaimed foodie, music lover, book hoarder, and a restless soul, Jodie started using WordPress in 2006. Her husband innocently suggested they needed a website for their music consulting business. One Saturday morning, she awoke to find a new laptop with video tutorials already loaded and manuals downloaded. After spending the weekend learning to use WordPress, she created their first website.
A graduate of Millersville University, Jodie brings fifteen years of sales and marketing experience to WebDevStudios. Her marketing expertise and ability to restructure and to systematize businesses has been recognized by entrepreneurs in real estate, the music industry, technology start-ups and education. Now she assists in creating unique web strategies and solutions for clients.
She was on the organizing team for WordCamp US in Philadelphia and sits on the advisory board for PHL Diversity (a division of the Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau), Blackboard Labs board, and is a member of the Philadelphia Chapter of The Recording Academy. In her downtime, she shares life experiences about screwing up on Izzabeth.com and has been known to get lost in old book stores avoiding the fact that there is no more shelf space at home.
Brian DeConinck
Brian DeConinck is a Boston-based front-end designer and developer with NC State University’s Office of Information Technology. In all of his projects, Brian is committed to universal design principles emphasizing accessibility, usability and user empathy.
Brian is also co-host of the WPCampus Podcast, where he gets to talk to interesting people about the interesting things they’re doing with WordPress in higher ed.
Jennifer McFarland
Jennifer Riehle McFarland is the Web Services Coordinator and the Design & Web Services team lead for the central IT unit at NC State. McFarland is active in the WordPress community and helps coordinate the annual Raleigh-area WordCamp. Along with colleague Brian DeConinck she is a contributor to the monthly WPCampus podcast (go listen!). She is psyched to be able to attend her first WordCamp Boston, even though no one says “”psyched”” anymore.
Jim Echter
@JimEchter – Jim and his wife run two businesses under the umbrella of True Creations. True Creations Woodturning (tcturning.com) and True Creations Quilting (tcquilting.com). Jim has an extensive background in high technology sales, marketing and customer service. He has been involved in several start-up companies but now follows his passion with his woodworking. Jim has a MS – Service Innovation and Leadership from RIT. He and his wife live in Penfield, NY and they have two adult children.
Jesse Friedman
Jesse Friedman has been building online experiences for 19 years, and exclusively with WordPress since 2006. He has written several books, taught 100’s of students as a professor, and organized dozens of local meetups along with a few WordCamps. He has spoken at tech conferences worldwide and has utilized his expertise as a consultant for small agencies and billion dollar international companies. He joined Automattic in 2014 through an acquisition of BruteProtect a company he cofounded that same year. Today Jesse focuses his efforts on in product marketing and strategic partnerships for Jetpack and Automattic.
Heather Hedden
Heather Hedden is a taxonomist and author of the book The Accidental Taxonomist (Information Today Inc., 2010, 2016). For over 20 years, she has designed and developed taxonomies and metadata strategies for web and internal content management both as an independent consultant and as an employee in different organizations. Heather works as a senior vocabulary editor at Gale, A Cengage Company and does taxonomy consulting through Hedden Information Management (whose WordPress site she created). She also teaches an online course and gives full-day workshop in taxonomy design and development.
Gregory Schoppe
Greg Schoppe is the lead developer for Bytes (https://bytes.co), a full-service Digital Marketing company with over 400 clients, ranging in size from independent contractors to multinational corporations. He is passionate about WordPress, programming, and technology in general, and writes about these topics at https://gschoppe.com.
Chris Gladney
Chris Gladney is a digital maker who has considered WordPress his main-squeeze CMS across his web development career. He has led development at a variety of Boston-based ad agencies including Arnold Worldwide, MMB, and Metropolis Creative for clients including Jack Daniels, John Frieda, Progressive, Sweet Baby Ray’s, and many more. He currently serves as web lead for Boston-based robotics startup, Jibo – the makers of their namesake product, Jibo – the first social robot for the home. Jibo was featured on the cover of Time Magazine’s 2017 Best Inventions issue.
Gary Thayer
Gary Thayer is a WordPress Developer at Hall Internet Marketing who specializes in eCommerce websites and analytics tracking. He is an active member of the WordPress community, acting as an organizer for the Southern Maine WordPress Meetup and as Lead Organizer for WordCamp Portland, ME.
Erin M. Harris
Corey Maass
Corey Maass is a full-stack web developer with a love for entrepreneurship and building web apps on WordPress. He built his first website in 1995, his first SaaS app in 2003, and his first WordPress plugin in 2009. In 2015, after 4 years of full-time WordPress development, he combined his passions and launched his first commercial plugin, Kanban for WordPress. He’s spent the last few years growing the business. He currently lives in Saugerties, New York.
Kori Ashton
Kori Ashton has been listed as one of seven women who run tech startups in San Antonio to watch. She started her first company at the age of 12, and has had an entrepreneur’s heart ever since. She built her first HTML website in 1998, and was instantly hooked on Web design. With a degree in the arts, Kori brings to WebTegrity fun creativity, and more than fifteen years of experience as an online marketing specialist, graphic designer, and Web developer.
Since 2005, Kori has taught HTML, CSS, Web design, WordPress, SEO and other topics to hundreds of students at schools, colleges, and community classes across Texas. Here are some of her talks at WordCamps across the US. Check out her TEDx San Antonio Talk and her YouTube Tutorials all about WordPress.
Claudia Charbel Cuento
Claudia started her career as a hostess, and stuck to hosting to build her career doing what she loves- creating solutions! Technology has been her passion, and being able to empathize and strategize has served her well throughout her career
Chris Lema
Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform dedicated to WooCommerce stores.
Rachel Cherry
Rachel Cherry is a freelance software engineer with a background in higher education and other enterprise-level organizations, like Disney. She is the Founder and Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in higher education. She is a strong advocate for the importance of accessibility and universal design. Rachel lives in Alabama but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.
Amanda Giles
Amanda Giles is WordPress Evangelist and Enthusiast who loves converting people to WordPress. She’s been developing websites since 1994 and has been building WordPress themes since 2009. She hails from New Hampshire where she founded the Seacoast NH WordPress meetup in 2011. She works as an independent consultant and also as part of Spark Development, a small agency focusing on WordPress web development. Amanda’s loud sneezes have occasionally caused restaurants and theaters to break out in applause and she’s also now known for having dropped the f-bomb on stage during the 2017 State of the Word.
Find her on Twitter: @AmandaGilesNH
Dwayne McDaniel
Dwayne has been working in tech and open source sales since 2005. He knew as soon as he started working with Java middleware developers he never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv teams and projects. He fell in the love the community and then found a position at Pantheon at the end of 2013.
As a Community and Agency Success Manager he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland to MIT and Stanford.
Outside of tech he loves producing and performing improv theater, reading webcomics and singing karaoke!
Reach out at https://mcdwayne.com or on twitter @mcdwayne
James Hall
With over 15 years of experience working in the web industry in the public sector, I began freelancing in my spare time. In 2014 and with an increasing client base, I decided to take the plunge and turn HeX Productions into a full time business.
As a self-confessed geek, I am passionate about all things web from working on small independent projects to large local government and higher education sites and developing accessible, mobile and social strategies to enable easy access to information on the move.
Whether it’s working with new clients on improving their web presence to help grow their business or supporting existing customers with their daily web needs.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.
He is also the creator of >ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.
Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is the lead organizer of WordCamp Birmingham and co-organizer of the Birmingham WordPress Meetup.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Alexander Zuniga
Alex Zuniga is a Solutions Engineer at WP Engine in Austin, TX. He enjoys educating colleagues, customers and other WordPress enthusiasts about innovative WordPress solutions. For two years he worked on the WP Engine Support team troubleshooting everything WordPress and filled the role as Git Subject Matter Expert. On a side note he enjoys a glass of smokey scotch and a medium rare ribeye.
Ronnie Burt
Ronnie leads the education and hosting services team at Incsub, the company behind WPMU DEV, CampusPress, and Edublogs. A former educator, wannabe musician and math nerd, he is a proud Austinite.
Frank Corso
Frank has been working with WordPress since 2009 and is the founder of Markasio, an agency that creates digital marketing software products. He is the organizer of Gainesville’s Digital Marketing Meetup, WordPress Meetup, and PHP Meetup. In his spare time, he also teaches web development both as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida and a Subject Matter Expert at IT.Pro TV.
Frank has developed many types of software including Xbox 360 games, mobile phone apps, websites, and AR apps. He loves to blog about marketing, business, and user research.
Above all else, he enjoys spending time with daughter. Follow him on Twitter or Instagram: @fpcorso
Bradley Jacobs
Bradley works at Boston Globe Media, serving as the Lead Developer for WordPress development. He has been working with WordPress for about 14 years and has spoken at conferences on a variety of topics relating to the WordPress ecosystem. When not at work, Bradley can be found wandering the streets of Boston in a seemingly hopeless quest to find a shiny Magikarp in Pokemon GO.
Adam Warner
Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners.
He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that happens to have been his job title when joining SiteLock.com. Today, he’s the Open Source Community Manager there, continuing to bring his experience and knowledge of the web, business, and security to many other communities.
Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything.