Karena Kreger
Devin Sears
Born as The First Baby in the local hospital on January 1st 1987, Devin’s 2 minutes of fame would include tv time, a newspaper article and prestigious award of 100 free diapers. It has been largely agreed that this was the peak of his life and it has been largely downhill ever since. He’s spent the majority of his adult life trying to get back into the limelight he grew accustomed to his first day on this planet. When he’s not traveling or working, he spends his time on his motorcycle or hiking in nature or cheering for whatever New England sports team is in season.
Mike Hansen
Mike has been working with WordPress since 2007. He has experience as a custom theme and plugin developer and has been a contributor to WordPress core since version 3.5. When not coding Mike enjoys making it out to local WordPress meetups and helping others to learn and share his passion for WordPress. Mike is the Lead WordPress Developer at Bluehost.
Drew Wilde
Albeit strange, my name is James but I go by Drew. I grew up in California, North of San Francisco in Sonoma County and am I’m a diehard Bay Area sports fan. I’ve fancied myself a runner, cyclist and tennis player in the past but I fear my peak is behind me. My other hobbies are mostly reading, film and theatre. I earned a bachelor of arts degree in english and a masters degree in business administration. I’m passionate about agile project management and am working to become a project management professional. I’m married to a wonderful wife and were glad to have our first child join the family earlier this year.
Brady Nord
Brady has been an active member of the WordPress community for the last 8 years. He co-founded MOJO Marketplace (Formerly MOJO Themes) in 2009 and grew the theme and plugin marketplace to over 5 million users. He currently leads all WordPress products across Endurance International Group which include Bluehost, HostGator and MOJO Marketplace.
Dennis Snell
As a Code Wrangler at Automattic, Inc., I spend my days reticulating splines, thinking, and working to make sure that the code we write helps us achieve our goals and do so efficiently. As a digital nomad, I enjoy living simply with my most wonderful wife and adventuring with her. I love cooking, engineering, photography, and my faithful God, Jesus Christ.
Jesse Friedman
Jesse Friedman has been building websites for 17 years, and exclusively with WordPress since 2006. Since then 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. Today he’s a proud team member of Jetpack at Automattic.
Josh Pollock
Josh, is a WordPress plugin developer, educator and entrepreneur. He is the owner of Caldera Labs, makers of Caldera Forms. In addition he is a contributor to WordPress core, the WordPress REST API, and plugins by Foo Plugins, Postmatic, Pods, Aesop Interactive, WordImpress, GravityView and more.
One of Josh’s favorite things to do is to share what he has learned about WordPress plugin development, business and community. He writes regularly for Torque Magazine and has contributed to other top WordPress tutorial sites. He is also the author of the book The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress REST API.
James Tryon
John Hughes
John Hughes is a PGA Master Professional, Vice President of the North Florida PGA Section, PGA National Award Winner, and avid WordPress user.
What began 2+ years ago as an immediate need to build a website, with zero capital due to a loss of employment, John embarked on what became a meteoric journey to build his initial website as well as a supporting cast of landing page sites, using WordPress and its various resources. John credits WordPress and the WordPress community in building his successful golf coaching practice in Central Florida, that routinely brings him clientele from around the globe.
Thomas Giella
Thomas is the owner of Gear Spinners DBA Complete I.T. The goal of the company is to provide managed security and backup website solutions. In additional to website solutions, the company consults, designs, and installs secured business computer networks. Thomas began his career with a degree in design in 2006, leading to a degree in management in 2011. Thomas started using WordPress in 2007, and now uses it 99.9% on all website projects. Past working experience includes marketing manager for a leading worldwide equipment solutions manufacturer and chief architect designer for a national company located in Tampa. Thomas is the lead organizer for WordCamp Tampa.
Demian Seiler
Co-founder and lead code monkey at Presstronic Studios. Software engineer with over 18 years of experience in testing and creating applications. Rookie entrepreneur with almost no experience running a business. Just stubborn enough to believe you haven’t failed until you quit.
Angelica Yarde
Angelica Yarde is the co-founder of Sevenality, a brand strategy agency, located in Orlando, Florida. She is also the owner of Studio 404 Paper and co-host of the Heart + Hustle Podcast. She has been a WordPress user for over a decade and is passionate about helping brands achieve their goals using design and user-experience based solutions. She helps out with the WordPress Orlando meetup group and enjoys being a type snob.
Jeff de Wit
Just a guy that spends his 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.
Also, Hodor.
David Laietta
David Laietta is an organizer of WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando. He has been using WordPress for more than eight years now, and builds custom themes and plugins for clients. David is the founder of Orange Blossom Media, a WordPress development agency based in Orlando. In addition to WordPress, David is passionate about open source software, online freedoms, internet culture, and constantly learning about the world. He looks forward to chatting with you at WordCamp Orlando or on Twitter @davidlaietta.
Chip Keefer & Carol Gann
Chip Keefer is an Information Security Consultant at EverLearn Associates.
Carol Gann is the founder of Orlando Web Wizard, a WordPress managed hosting provider.
Matthew Hunt & David Yarde
Matthew Hunt is a designer with over 9 years experience designing and building custom websites with WordPress. He owns and operates Afteractive, a web design studio in Orlando. He uses WordPress for it’s ability to design an experience that makes content management accessible to non-technical users.
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.
Georgina Lewis
Mrs. Lewis was the CEO & Founder of a successful IBM affiliated software solutions company for 14 years. Her company developed manufacturing, forecasting, plant control MRP II, and cost accounting computer software for Fortune 500 Manufacturing plants worldwide. She has traveled internationally visiting major manufacturing facilities in the food, chemical, metal, electrical and wood sectors, and in golf: the Ben Hogan company. She was instrumental in forming departments for plant operations, activity based accounting standards, capacity planning and forecasting.
After selling her software company in early 2008, she founded the Golf Resource Group and the Shazzam Media Marketing companies.
Shazzam Media (www.shazzam-media.com) is a Social Media Marketing company that guides businesses & industry professionals to market themselves on the internet offering innovative leading-edge solutions. They design wordpress websites from small individuals to fortune 500 corporations that are modern yet edgy and are responsive to the computer, iPad, and iPhone layouts.
Georgina Lewis is a personal consultant to some of the biggest names in the sports industry, including executives from Time Inc, Sports Illustrated, Golf Magazine, the 2008 Business Man of the Year, and several PGA and LPGA celebrity golfers around the world.
Scott Mann
Scott’s been managing amazing teams of creatives and makers since 2001 with his company, Highforge. They switched from Movable Type to WordPress in 2009 for commercial projects. These days they use Genesis and Shopify for a lot of their projects.
He’s a certified Google Adwords Partner (has been since 2002) and a community advocate in Orlando.
For a few summers, he worked as a tour guide at Disney.
His driving passion is to empower others to grow their businesses and improve their communities.
He’s a gamer, backpacker, chess player and he enjoys racquetball recklessly in his free time. He’d also like you to join www.BeTheMatch.org, a non-profit organization that saves lives.
Aubree Rider & Sean DiMercurio
Aubree Rider and Sean DiMercurio founded The Heroes Group, an accounting firm with a fresh approach to all things finance. We support startups and small business owners in accounting, tax and payroll as your Accounting Sidekicks. Sean has been a CPA for over 6 years, working for large public accounting firms and high net-worth families before his passion was sparked when he for changed the game for small business owners. Aubree is a Marketing Guru and WordPress Lover channeling her passion into being a resource to the entrepreneurial community.
Nicole Perpillant
Nicole Perpillant is the COO at Design Theory LLC. She’s been working with WordPress since 2010 and focuses on social media integration. In her other life she’s a certified eDiscovery Practitioner and Data Technologist for a Fortune 500 company. Her 13 year career spans Engineering, Quality Management, and Information Security. Twitter: @DT_Nicole
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 and is very active in the WordPress Orlando community. Chris has held development and Internet marketing positions in some of Orlando’s top technology companies.
Elizabeth Pampalone
After finishing a Web Programming Degree at the University of Cincinnati, Elizabeth Pampalone ended up in Jacksonville. In 2007, She founded her first company, Jax Computer Chic. She started out making house calls for sick computers and branched out into teaching classes. As her computer company grew she decided to go back to her first love and opened a web design firm called The Web Design Chic. In order to get more business clients, she began networking like mad. She saw a need and thus NetworkInJax.com was born. In 2014, she was named “Queen of Networking” by the Jacksonville Business Journal. This led to ventures such as DoINeedABusinessPlan.com and becoming host of 5 meetups and mentoring 7 meetup leaders. During all this, she was an active teaching member of SCORE for 5 years, an instructor with OLLI UNF for 3, a continuing education instructor with UNF for 2 and a small business instructor with the SBDC for 1. When she is not pursuing her career, she is out ballroom dancing or embarking on an adventure with her husband, Joseph. They were married in December of 2011 and Elizabeth couldn’t be happier!
Jonathan Brinley
Jonathan has been building WordPress websites and plugins for ten years, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for six 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.
Irina Blumenfeld
Irina Blumenfeld is an independent Front-End Developer. She has been creating websites for more than 10 years. Over time, she has branched out her skills with responsive design, theme development, and a passion for website performance. Originally from the Ukraine, Irina has lived in Orlando, FL for more then 20 years. She holds a degree in Management Information Systems and Computer Science from the University of Central Florida.
While Irina is not coding, she enjoys running and spending time with her husband and 2 daughters
Stephanie Brinley
With a life-long passion for art and a BFA in Graphic Design, Stephanie is a web designer with an emphasis on design. She started freelancing as a print designer many years ago, but found the transition to digital design a natural progression. Shortly thereafter, Stephanie and her husband began experimenting with WordPress around version 2.0.2 and built a thriving company around it. In 2011 they moved their family to Jacksonville, FL and rebranded as Flightless. Stephanie has been involved with the Florida WordPress community since 2014 and got her start speaking at WordCamp Miami. Since then she has been honored to share her knowledge at WordCamps Tampa, Orlando, and US, and is a founding organizer of WordCamp Jacksonville. Most weeks you will find her attempting to balance digital design and homeschooling, exploring the world of flavors she can invent in her kitchen, and sometimes on Twitter @sjbrinley.
Jeff Noel
Jeff Noel is a 30-year Disney Leadership veteran, 2-time Disney Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, a published author, and highly-sought business advisor, helping Fortune 500 companies worldwide achieve success through a series of programs that focus on Jeff’s approach to business operations, touching on the five key operational areas that drive success for any company, based on his 30 years with The Walt Disney Company.
Jeff worked his way into management positions throughout the company, experiencing everything from restaurants to hotel management, to working with high-profile Disney executives and organizing teams that would open some of Disney’s most exciting attractions and resorts.
As one of Disney’s top leaders, Jeff was invited to become part of Disney Institute’s team of professional development keynote speakers, and spent his last 15 years with the Company at Disney Institute, developing business strategies and systems that teach the world’s Fortune 500 companies how Disney runs its business.
Andrew Norcross
I’m this guy who writes code. And drinks coffee.