Meet our magical faculty, the WordPress Professors under whom you will learn how to conjure up beautiful web designs, enchant responsive and unique plugins, and cast magical incantations that will leave your viewers spellbound!
Adam Bradford
Adam Bradford is the Director of Web Development at Highforge. He has a wide range of specialties and is passionate about automation and creative engineering. While not on the computer, Adam enjoys studying physics, psychology, and the universe.
Adam Soucie
Adam Soucie is the Founder and CEO of Orlando web development agency Impossibly Creative. He is a member of the WordPress Orlando organizing committee where he helps wrangle both monthly Meetups and WordCamp Orlando. You can find more of Adam’s musings on WordPress at impossiblycreative.com.
Andrea La-Rosa
Andrea has been a WordPress developer and website builder for nearly ten years and currently also servers as a technical consultant for several major startups and online businesses. She also has a strong background in community management, having professionally managed online communities and social networks of up to 8 million people, so her passion is helping businesses develop strong online communities with the WordPress platform. Her web development and consulting agency, WP Sesame, was recently named one of Seminole County’s Top 30 Small Businesses of 2015, which was super exciting. When not geeking out about all things WordPress, she resides in sunny Lake Mary, FL, which she enjoys very much.
http://wpsesame.com
http://linkedin.com/in/andrealarosa
Angelica Yarde
From a child experimenting with as many artistic outlets as possible, Angelica found her specialty in design. With a focus in identity design, print design, and project management, she enjoys creating solutions for brands of all sizes.
She uses her nine years of experience to combine the world of digital aesthetics with strategic functionality to develop and implement successful branding techniques.
If she’s not curating her extensive typeface collection, Angelica can be found on her yoga mat, seeking inspiration, or connecting with local creatives over chai tea lattes.
Anthony Burchell
I am a designer and a developer. I spend my time creating new and exciting things with WordPress and am a Core Contributor. Since I was 8 years old I have been obsessed with design and programming. I worked in advertising from the age of 15 to 22 and since then I have shifted my focus to the world wide web and am working at WP Engine to make WordPress more awesome!
Barry Nadler
Barry Nadler brings over two decades of experience in the learning and media industries. He has worked in several industries including news, entertainment, personal computer peripherals, conferences, enterprise software systems, and internet marketing. In those two decades, he has also owned three businesses.
Barry currently is the owner of eLearningDeconstructed.com, as well as a full-time Sr. Instructional Designer and Media Developer for the world’s largest financial services company – FIS Global.
Over the past three years, Barry has actively been involved with the local ATD chapter. He has hosted and presented at several events, been a board member for two years, and was the Director of Social Media for one year.
Bess Auer
Bess Auer is the founder of the Florida Blogger & Social Media Conference (FLBlogCon), a one-day gathering of the state’s biggest bloggers and social media pros. Bess is dedicated to helping bloggers grow and monetize their websites through her annual conference and through her website GottaGetBlogging.com. In her other life, she’s owner of FloridaSwimNetwork.com, a WordPress Multisite that covers competitive swimming through blogging, video, and live streaming, including broadcasting for the University of Florida, the SEC Network, and ESPN.
Brian Jessee
I am an independent developer and work with Modern Tribe doing support and development on the Events Calendar, where in the last year I personally supported over seven thousand (7,000) inquiries. Since 2012, I have I supported and developed my own plugin, the Coupon Creator. Because of these roles, I have gained extensive experience supporting WordPress plugins.
Brian Richards
Brian is the creator of WPSessions.com and a Senior Solutions Specialist with Crowd Favorite. He has been using WordPress since 2007 (version 2.3). Over these last several years Brian has had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress experts and agencies and help develop sites for Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. Brian has an affinity for self-directed learning and helping others develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems.
Chad Windnagle
Chad is a PHP Developer and CMS Expert. He has years of experience building complex and highly functional WordPress and Joomla sites.
As a developer writing high quality code in web projects, Chad brings professional development standards to any web development project, and shares his knowledge to up and coming developers.
Chris Edwards
Chris is currently the Director of Technology at Effin Amazing, an analytics and growth consultancy. He is a 16-year Internet marketing veteran with experience in web design & development, search engine optimization, online marketing, social media marketing and mobile development. He specializes in WordPress custom development utilizing either Genesis Framework or underscores. Chris has held development and Internet marketing positions in some of Orlando’s top technology companies.
Chris Lawson
Chris Lawson is an Interactive Strategist that helps solve issues through the use of technology. With over a decade of digital product development and marketing, Chris has helped organizations from start-ups to Fortune 1000’s grow their digital footprint by crafting and growing their online communities.
Before co-founding Live Pulse, Chris was the Director of Marketing, Communications, and Strategic Partnerships at Ruckus, an early music and movie social network that grew to over 1000 college campuses and 2 million users, and was acquired by Total Music, a joint venture between Sony and Universal. Chris is also a serial entrepreneur and start-up junkie, having started five companies and working with dozens more.
Chris holds a B.S. in Advertising from the University of Florida and a M.A. in Communications in Digital Media from The Johns Hopkins University. Chris is also a ConvergeUS fellow. Co-Chaired by TechNet’s CEO, Rey Ramsey, and Twitter’s Co-Founder, Biz Stone, ConvergeUS drives technology-based breakthroughs for critical social problems and thus accelerates social innovation.
About Live Pulse:
Live Pulse is an Interactive Consultancy. From Start-ups to Fortune 1000’s, Live Pulse helps entrepreneurs of all stages grow their digital footprint.
Chris Wiegman
Chris is a Senior Web Engineer for 10up and has been working on WordPress since 2008. Before joining 10up Chris built one of the largest security plugins in the WordPress community as well as numerous other plugins and solutions. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation.
Cliff Seal
Cliff is a Senior UX Engineer at Pardot, a Salesforce company, where he’s also the resident WordPress nerd.
He’s the co-founder multiple profitable side projects, such as Evermore and TuneDig. He co-organizes amUX, a morning meetup focused for local UXers. He’s an accomplished speaker who’s given talks around the world.
Cliff lives with his wife, April, in Atlanta, where he can be found at a concert, cycling around the city, or playing guitar.
Daniel Walker
Daniel Walker has been a full stack developer for 10 years. He started working as the Director of Technology at Fattmerchant in May 2015. He regularly speaks at the monthly University JavaScript meetups in Orlando. Daniel is married to a nurse yet finds time to play Destiny on Xbox One.
David Khourshid
David Khourshid is a front-end web developer and speaker in Orlando, Florida. He is passionate about JavaScript, Sass, and cutting-edge front-end technologies. He is also a pianist and enjoys mathematics, and is constantly finding new ways to apply both math and music theory to web development.
David Laietta
David began building HTML websites in high school, (arguably) wasting lots of time on computers. PHP came shortly after, with the mind blowing ability to make websites more than static entities. Later, early in 2008, David discovered WordPress and has been a proselytizer ever since. As lead organizer of WordCamp Orlando, David regularly speaks, mentors, teaches and trains on best practices with WordPress.
David Parsons
David Parsons, a recent Computer Science graduate over at The University of Central Florida, has been working with WordPress for over seven years now. His passion for the web originally started by making a simple website with WordPress back in high school. Over the years he has branched out his skill set with responsive design, web apps, SEO, theme and plugin development.
David Yarde
David Yarde is the co-founder of Sevenality, a design firm that specializes in design, branding, user experience with the aim of helping businesses build better cultures and products. When David isn’t working on Sevenality or volunteering, he’s busy being Batman and spending time with his family and occasionally sharing tweets via @dsmy.
Devin Vinson
I started as a typical ‘little bit of everything’ web guy. WordPress was an open and accepting path full of tutorials and an amazing community which I grew to love and depend on. Eventually I transitioned into full time development and built my resume up working as a subcontracted developer for small agencies and companies. I’m currently working at Awesome Motive where I am a developer for OptinMonster.
Frank Corso
Frank is the founder and president of My Local Webstop and has been working with WordPress since 2009. He is the lead developer of Quiz Master Next. He is an organizer of the Gainesville WordPress Meetup where he helps WordPress users of all levels. When not focused on improving sites, he actively blogs and speaks about WordPress, Security, and Business. Above all else, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter.
Gregg Pollack
James Aubele
James Aubele attended the University of Pittsburgh where he got his masters of Arts Teaching and Rochester Institute of Technology for his MBA. He takes MBA topics and makes them practical for small business owners.
James Tryon
My name is James Tryon. I’m Creative Director of WP Valet, founder of Easily Amused, Inc, and a father of 2. I’m also one of the co-organizers of WordCamp Orlando and the WordPress Orlando meetup group. I’ve been in the creative industry for more than 17 years and have an eye for design and usability. I also possess the know-how to plan, design, and code it all if needed.
An avid collector of random awesomeness and thrift-store artifacts, I’m always finding something interesting to spark my creativity. When I’m not working, I am more than likely building something, playing with toys, or hanging with my friends and family.
Jean Perpillant
I am the owner of Design Theory, which is a local web design business based out of Orlando, FL. I’ve been freelancing in web design and photography for over 7 years. My main goal is to help people get their ideas and visions into reality.
Jeffrey de Wit
Just a humble guy that spends time making the web better, one website at a time.
Front-end developer/developer lead at Highforge and primarily focused on building accessible websites.
I’ve built government websites under the strict Dutch web guidelines for three years before moving to Florida and finding employment with a digital agency that uses WordPress, Django, and Shopify to build websites.
Jennifer Cox
Jennifer crafts tailored SEO and social media strategies that help large and small businesses compete in the ever-changing digital space while maintaining their brand voice. Originally from the world of email marketing, Jennifer translated her knowledge of ongoing campaign management and engagement into useful tools to help her clients craft content that’s easy to optimize, shareable and appealing for humans and Google alike.
Jesse Petersen
Husband. Adoptive Dad x1. Foster dad x28. Preferred Genesis framework developer. Founder: GenesisThe.me :: Genesis Product Manager @ thewpvalet.com :: ISTJ
Jessica Stewart
Jessica, a graduate in Video Game Design at UCF, found her calling as a web developer with BrandCo after dabbling in WordPress. She also finds it strange to talk about herself in the third person
Jonathan Brinley
Jonathan has been building WordPress websites and plugins for eight years, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for five years to build delightful and creative solutions on top of the WordPress platform. When he’s not coding, Jonathan is busy homeschooling his two children and enjoying the beautiful weather of Northeast Florida.
http://xplus3.net/ • http://tri.be/ • http://flightless.us/
Josh Murdock
Josh Pollock
Josh, is the owner of, and a developer for CalderaWP, makers of fine WordPress plugins including Caldera Forms, a drag and drop, responsive form builder and URL Builder, the visual editor for WordPress permalinks. He also writes about WordPress for many sites and listens to a lot of heavy metal, and is trying very hard not to become a coffee snob.
Josh Shashaty
I am the Lead Developer of WP Valet. I’m primarily a back-end developer with strong passions in workflow, team collaboration, and making my life efficient/easier. I’ve been involved with WordPress since 2010.
Judi Knight
I run a small agency, New Tricks to empower companies to grow their businesses helping them sell online as easily as they can in person – with a stellar WordPress website. We are fanatics about making websites that people like to use. This is my fifth year conjuring WordCamp Atlanta with a great team from our WordPress Meetup Community.
Kimberly Lipari
Micah Wood
Micah is an Atlanta-based, full-stack developer committed to continuously improving his craft and sharing his insights with the development community. He is currently the CTO at NewClarity Consulting, LLC which specializes in building websites and applications on the WordPress platform for enterprise clients.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is an independent graphic designer in Minneapolis (formerly Chicago). Her formal education is in design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites and high-end presentations for her clients. She loves the WordPress community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.
Mike Hansen
Mike Hansen is a WordPress Developer and core contributor working on the Open Source Team at Bluehost. He is active in his local community, lead organizer for WordCamp SLC and co-organizer for the UtahWP meetup. He enjoys helping WordPress users solve their problems.
Nathan Porter
After 10 years in implementing and advising on enterprise software solutions, Nate has ditched the suit and tie for T-shirts, jeans, and a mountain man beard. He’s totally serious about his work though—and the beard. When he’s not teleporting to meet with our clients or speaking at technology conferences, he leads our team of talented designers, developers, content creators, and yoga fanatics through the daily obstacle course of code, pixels, and deadlines.
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design.
She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects.
In other news, Nile is a proud support member at Team Yoast. She also runs a 7,000 member Facebook roup dedicated to helping WordPressers, called All About WordPress. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.
Paul Hershey
I’m a Product Designer in Orlando with a passion for design, illustration and music. I’m obsessed with user experience and pixel perfect design.
Russ Sanderlin
Sandy Edwards
Scott Buscemi
Scott Buscemi started his web & app development agency at the age of 17. Since then, he graduated from college before he turned 21 and has successfully grown Luminary Web Strategies into a reputable company that builds and manages eCommerce systems and interactive websites for organizations across the globe.
Scott Mann
I’ve been managing teams of creatives and makers in non-meatspace with my company Highforge since 2001. I was an early adopter of WordPress for delivering powerful websites to small and medium businesses and we’re big fans of Genesis these days. Highforge is also one of the few small WordPress shops that has deep experience with the Shopify platform.
I enjoy speaking and storytelling, I’m a certified Google Adwords Partner, and I’m a social impact advocate in Orlando. I founded Highforge in 2001 as a boutique digital agency with the purpose of helping good people grow good businesses online. Since then our agency has helped hundreds of businesses reach millions of customers. Some of our clients include Adventist, Florida Hospital, Image Skincare, Dynafire, Global VRS, Rebuild Globally and Florida Abolitionist.
I’m a gamer and I play racquetball recklessly in my free time. I’m also an advocate for Be The Match, a non-profit organization that saves lives.
Stephanie Brinley
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Stephanie. Her toes were cold. Like many little girls, Stephanie loved to dance, she loved to draw, and she loved to try out every typeface available on the computer when designing birthday cards for her family. Several years passed, and the little girl grew up. Now Stephanie loves to dance, she loves to draw, and she maintains a library of countless typefaces so she can always have just the right one for birthday cards, logos, and websites. After discovering a place where her toes are sometimes warm, Stephanie moved her family and her business to North Florida, where she attempts to balance web design, homeschooling, and exploring the world of flavors she can invent in her kitchen.
Susanna Miller
Susanna is the Orlando Campus Director and the Lead Campus Director, Southeast, for The Iron Yard, the nation’s largest in-person code school. She’s just starting to learn WordPress as she works on her new blog, but in the meantime, she’s keeping busy facilitating the growth of new developers in Orlando.
Taylor McCaslin
Taylor McCaslin is a Technical Product Manager living in Austin, Texas. He currently works at WP Engine, a managed hosting platform for websites and apps built with WordPress. WordPress has been Taylor’s platform of choice for over 5 years. He even paid his way through college by freelancing as a WordPress developer!
Since then, Taylor has created custom WordPress themes and plugins for a large range of clients from SMBs to multinational corporations. Previously, Taylor helped people find jobs as an Interaction Designer at the world’s largest job search engine, Indeed.com. Before that, he worked as a Product Design Intern at Bazaarvoice. Taylor graduated from UT Austin in 2013, where he studied business, digital art and media, theatre, and computer science.
When not pushing pixels or coding, Taylor can be found geeking out with the latest tech gadget or experiencing the rich Austin, Texas art scene. You can learn more about Taylor at taylormccaslin.com or by following him @Taylor4484.
Thomas Giella
Thomas is in charge of venue logistics, lunch, signage placement, and has all around been an integral part of WordCamp Tampa. Thomas is the owner of Gear Spinners LLC. A company whose sole goal is to provide small to medium businesses great online solutions and online presence. Thomas began his career with a degree in design in 2006, leading to a degree in management in 2011. Started using WordPress in 2007. In his spare time, Thomas enjoys the fruits of life including Xbox 360, learning Python on Raspberry Pi, family, and friends.
Tim Sisson
Tim loves WordPress and enjoys leveraging it to help businesses meet their needs. He leads the Customer Community Team at InMotion Hosting where they create documentation and help customers with issues related to WordPress. He’s passionate about all things nonprofit and eCommerce.
When he’s not tinkering with WordPress he spends his time on adventures with his wife Lisa, three daughters Autumn, Stella, and Petra.
Topher DeRosia
Currently Chief Documentarian for Easy Digital Downloads, Topher has been the CTO of a WordPress based startup, freelanced, been part of a WordPress VIP agency, and worked in a cubicle farm. He’s been a WordPress developer for 5 years now, and a general web developer for 20 years.
Trey Praytor
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon teaches WordPress for Treehouse, the online technology school. Before that he taught WordPress, web design and web development at the high school and college level. In addition to teaching, Zac runs a Web Hosting for Students.