Adam Soucie
Adam Soucie is a WordPress developer based in Orlando, FL. Adam has participated on the core WordPress Accessibility Team and is also a member of the WordPress Orlando & WordCamp Orlando organizing teams.
For more information on Adam, visit adamsoucie.com or impossiblycreative.com.
Allie Nimmons
Allie Nimmons is the founder of Pixel Glow, a support tech at GiveWP and a GoDaddy Speaker Ambassador. She is a self-taught web designer and developer and has been working with WordPress since 2014. She is mildly obsessed with lists and wants to make the internet approachable and accessible to all.
Andrea Zoellner
Andrea is the Chief Content Creator at SiteGround and the lead organizer for WordCamp Montreal. She trained as a broadcast journalist and worked in corporate communications before trading it for a career in tech. Now she spends her days developing brand messaging, copy editing and blogging. When she’s not at home in Montreal, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her adventures on her travel blog.
Beth Livingston
Beth built her first WordPress website in 2009 for a side business, was immediately smitten, and soon began building websites for other small businesses. In 2016, after a long history as an IT Business Analyst, Instructional Designer, and Project Manager, Beth left the corporate world to become a full time WordPress Coach and Designer, and now enjoys providing real-life project management skills training for WordPress practitioners (designers, developers, consultants, project managers, and agencies) through her company, WP Roadmaps and Coaching.
Beth also administers the WordPress Project Management Facebook group and serves as an organizer for the Triad WordPress Meetup Group where she has hosted several “happiness bar” type events for those needing help. Beth is the author of The Complete Project Management Roadmap for WordPress due to be released Summer 2019.
In her spare time, what there is of it, Beth also enjoys visiting live music venues and occasionally acting and singing in local theater productions.
Charles Johnston
Charles is a self-proclaimed and well earned “digital ninja” on a mission to help entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations change their communities. After spending the last few decades in the IT industry he started a boutique web design agency called HeartWired Digital Solutions, where they focus on putting compassion back into technology. After his first of what has now been many mission trips, Charles knew that he had to use his gifts, his talents, and his passion for technology for good. Rather than just offering web design services, HeartWired provides purpose driven web design and digital solutions.
Chris Edwards
Chris Wiegman
Chris is a Senior Software Engineer at WP Engine who has been working with WordPress since 2008. He built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org, WordPress plugins and themes, Google Chrome extensions, WordPress development environments and solutions for sites large and small. When not writing code, Chris, a teacher at heart, has presented sessions, workshops and keynote addresses at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University plus other university courses ranging from computers to aviation.
David Wolfpaw
David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.
David Zimmerman
David Zimmerman is an internet marketing consultant who specializes in search. He has several years experience working with B2B companies, especially manufacturers. He started his own consultancy, Reliable Acorn LLC, after working in several agencies. David’s core marketing belief is that all marketing should be measured. Measured marketing is more effective and less expensive. There’s no excuse, in David’s mind, for marketing efforts whose results are not measured.
Reliable Acorn LLC: https://reliableacorn.com/
Frank Corso
Frank has founded and sold multiple software companies and is, currently, the founder of WP Health, the easy-to-use WordPress monitor. He is also the organizer of Gainesville’s Digital Marketing Meetup as well as a co-organizer of WordCamp Jacksonville. In his spare time, he also teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Florida.
Above all else, he enjoys spending time with his daughter.
Follow him on Twitter or Instagram: @fpcorso
Geoff Myers
Geoff Myers has been involved in and excited about business, design, and technology since 2004, when he founded SimDex LLC at the age of 14 in his hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota. Although SimDex originally started as an IT consulting and support company, it evolved into a web design and development agency by 2008, and eventually matured into a full-service web services consulting firm by 2016, specializing in custom WordPress web application development and 3rd party integrations. For more than 15 years, Geoff has been designing and coding for the web while also growing his – and his clients’ – businesses through the development of custom-built, user-focused web applications and the automation and optimization of business workflows.
Geoff originally started out building static websites with Dreamweaver in HTML and CSS, but shifted to using the Joomla! content management system (CMS) by 2008, when version 1.5 was released. In 2010, he fell in love with WordPress and its community. Since then, Geoff has designed, developed, marketed, managed, and maintained more than 100 WordPress-powered websites for a wide variety of clients in terms of industry, size, type, and location. Geoff now specializes in building powerful enterprise web applications and integrations using WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, and REST APIs.
Irina Blumenfeld
Irina Blumenfeld is a web consultant, empowering business owners through WordPress. She is a founder of Netmagik, web consulting and digital marketing company, based in Orlando. Irina is passionate about Web Performance and helping people learn more about the web.
James Tryon
Jason Coleman
Jason is co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress and CEO of Paid Memberships Pro, the 100% open source membership plugin for WordPress. He has been pushing WordPress to its limits for many years and is an advocate for using WordPress as an application framework to build web sites and apps that go above and beyond the typical blog of CMS site. Jason works out of his home in Reading, Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife and business partner Kimberly Coleman and their two children.
Jessica Frick
Jessica Frick is the Product Manager for Liquid Web’s Managed WordPress offerings. When she’s not obsessing about all things digital, you can find her enjoying quality time with her family, binging a sci-fi series, working in her garden, or brewing some iced tea.
Jonathan Brinley
Jonathan began tinkering with WordPress websites and plugins fourteen years ago, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for the last nine years, and currently leads a team of developers 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.
Josh Pollock
Josh Pollock is the founder and lead developer of CalderaWP, 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.
Kara Franco
Kara Franco is a digital marketing professional and ethical marketing advocate. She helps small business owners create and manage their websites, communicate with their customers, and grow their businesses.
Karla Campos
Karla Campos is the Founder of Social Media Sass, a company specializing in digital marketing training and education. Karla is also the owner of the Mompreneur Center.
Karla is a speaker and author and won the Small Business Influencer award for 2013. Karla has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, T51, NBC6, Social Media Today, the Sun Sentinel, and many more.
Kevin Cristiano
Kevin came to WordPress in 2006 by chance and got hooked because of its ability to give site owners the capacity to not only control their content, but also to manage their sites themselves. You can find him at tadpole.cc working with non-profits.
Kevin is on the WordPress Global Community Team as a “super deputy” and specializes in Sponsors, Finance, Trademarks, and the GPL.
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 education 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 in a variety of industries. She is currently a content specialist at Bet Hannon Marketing, and she does freelance marketing and social media work.
Lindsey Soucie
Mary Baum
Mary Baum is the founder and principal of RacquetPress, a digital consultant to the tennis industry. … Trained as a print designer before the web was born, Mary built her first site (wrong) in 1999 and started to learn real CSS and HTML in 2007 — at the tender age of 47.
Today she’s a big fan of design in the browser (after a few thumbnail sketches!) and all the modern CSS the browsers will support. She’s also started hanging out in the core developer chats and helping write the blog posts (and it’s giving her a swelled head.)
Also high on her list: rare steaks, homemade hot fudge sauce, high backhand volleys and high-contrast serif type; the Genesis Framework, Boeing fighter jets and repeating patterns in Illustrator; and finally, Atomic Blocks for Gutenberg and the ad court.
Matt Kopala
Matt is the founder of SiteDistrict, a powerful & flexible WordPress hosting platform. He has a degree in Computer Engineering, and started off his professional career as a member of the design team for AMD’s first 64-bit processor. Matt is passionate about understanding and helping people solve technical problems. He feels that WordPress hosts should do as much as possible to provide good performance, security, and automation, so that you can focus on your business while your host takes care of the rest. He enjoys travel and previously spent 3.5 years backpacking non-stop across South America, Oceania, and Asia.
Matthew Montoya
Matthew Montoya has crisscrossed the country over the last seven years to 46 states, helping, in person, over 12,000 small business and bloggers better understand how email marketing can affect growth and what email design and automation mean to growth. His extensive 17-year marketing background from print, broadcast, web and social has helped these thousands of small businesses rethink their marketing strategy to meet the demands of today’s mobile heavy consumer.
Michele Butcher-Jones
Michele is a WordPress Technical Specialist at Thrive Internet Marketing Agency and runs her own WordPress shop at 13Core. When not working her jobs, Michele is an organizer for WordCamp St Louis, WordCamp US 2018, and the Lead Organizer of the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup. When not logged in to her computer, she loves traveling with her family, enjoys reading, taking pictures, and a lover of fine food and better drinks.
Mike Demo
Former MousePlanet MouseStation Podcast co-host Mike “Demo” Demopoulos is a lover of open source first, specific tools later. Because of this, he speaks at Ignite! Conferences, Meetups, WordCamps, Joomla! Events, and more. Mike volunteers with The Joomla! Project as the former treasurer of Open Source Matters (the not for profit organization for Joomla!) as well as serving on the Joomla! board.
Mike Demopoulos has spoken on various open source topics including WordPress and Joomla! in addition to marketing related talks which include A/B testing content.
Before coming to BoldGrid as a community evangelist, Mike spent years building a strong client base in the financial and insurance industries. He believes in sharing his business acumen and marketing insight as it fits within his main goal of building a community.
When he’s not spending time with his wife Kayla, you may find Demo at a Disney Theme park, collecting artwork, or hanging out with his dog B’Elanna.
Be sure to say hi to Mike Demopoulos on Twitter at @MPMike.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.
As the founder of >ADVANCE Coaching, Nathan works with WordPress solopreneurs and business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.
Nathan has been working with clients to build websites since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he has been an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham (WP Y’all) for several years.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Patrice Turner
I love the power of words and their ability to tell a story, grab the right attention, increase revenue, and build a brand. I’m a word junkie and a book lover. I’m a grammar junkie and a time management nut. Some agencies, non-profits and organizations I’ve written, trained and spoken for include: eWomenNetwork, SPAA (Speakers, Publishers & Authors Association), Warner Pacific College (where I’m currently a board member), Southside (net)Working Women, Young Adult Leadership Movement, Women Employed, Women In Leadership, MYSI Corporation, Southern Illinois Ministers Association, The Write Stuff, Leadership Advance Conference, A Gathering of Women Conference, T.O.U.C.H., Little Black Pearl, Sharp Skirts and New Moms Inc. What motivates me is promoting writing for brands I truly love and respect and connecting business owners with each other, resources, clients and funding.
Rep. Anna Eskamani
Representative Anna V. Eskamani is an Orlando native and daughter of working-class immigrants from Iran who has committed her life to advocating in support of Florida’s hardworking families.
On November 6, 2018 Anna was elected to serve the great people of House District 47 with a vote margin of 57% to 43%, flipping a legislative seat, and becoming the first Iranian-American elected to any public office in Florida. As a lawmaker, Anna serves on four committees including Ways & Means, and has risen to be known as a fighter for Florida’s families. Prior to running for office, Representative Eskamani worked as the Senior Director of Public Affairs at our local Planned Parenthood affiliate, and yes: she is still pursuing a PhD in Public Affairs from UCF, too!
Tough, authentic and unafraid, Anna is a progressive who has proven herself as a leader who works hard, delivers results, and gets things done.
Rian Kinney
Founder of Kinney Firm and eCommLegal, Rian is a Florida based tech and privacy attorney, legal consultant and published author. Kinney Firm represents and advises founders and businesses of every size, from freelancers to enterprise; across industries in the areas of intellectual property, e-commerce, privacy and corporate law, as well as business and marketing strategy. Actively engaged in the Open Source and WordPress communities, she has spoken at conferences nationally and internationally on topics ranging from “The Future of Open Source” to “How to CYA Your Site” and “The Key Differences Between EU and US Privacy Law”.
Rian was recently named Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of Science and Technology’s Committee on Open Source Software. She also hold’s the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ CIPP/E and CIPM designations.
Robert Jacobi
Robert is an open source executive, solution seller, evangelist, and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience in sales and management experience with Fortune 50 to SMBs.
Robert engages with small to Fortune 500 companies in order to increase immediate revenue, and reduce long-term support and maintenance costs. Robert is an international, well known, and respected speaker and contributor in the open source and hosting communities including President Emeritus of Joomla, member of Make WordPress Hosting, contributor to ICANN At-Large, and former Chair for the Technical Outreach Working Group of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.
Roy Sivan
I have been using WordPress since the early days. Nowadays I’m a senior software engineer that specializes in front end technologies at The Walt Disney Company. I love seeing how far I can take development and think outside of the box to build new and crazy things, or combine bleeding edge tech with WordPress. I’m also socially awkward, but apparently people say hi to me all the time anyway.
Stephanie Brinley
With a life-long passion for art and a BFA in Visual Communications, Stephanie is a branding specialist and digital designer. Stephanie is the owner of Flightless, specializing in hand-crafted logos and extending brands beyond the business card. She has been involved with the Florida WordPress community since 2014 and has been honored to share her knowledge at WordCamps Miami, Tampa, Orlando, and US. Most weeks you will find her attempting to balance design and homeschooling, exploring the world of flavors she can invent in her kitchen, and sometimes on Twitter @sjbrinley.
Steve Curtis
I am an organizer for WordPress Tampa, WordPress enthusiast and co-owner of St. Pete Design. I have been developing WordPress websites since 2008.
My passion is spreading the word to my fellow developers about accessibility. We can make a huge difference in the lives of folks that use alternative applications to access our websites. One website at a time!
I also really enjoy developing WordPress plugins.
Steve Schwartz
I’ve developed WordPress Websites for about 10 years. After experiencing a hacked site in 2012 I became obsessed with website security and with educating others on “end to end” online security. I’m a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and I am currently pursuing the Offensive Security Certified Professional cert (OSCP) through Kali Linux.
My teaching style has always been to try to take complex technical jargon and bring it down to a level where end users can understand it. I differentiate myself as an educator by not just telling students to do (or not do) something, but rather explain the importance of “Why” and through story-telling to get the point across and make it stick.
Tessa Kriesel
Building community and teaching come naturally to dog-lover and Developer Outreach Manager at Pantheon, Tessa Kriesel. She wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.
Tessa has spoken on many topics, including helping beginners with their development workflows, mentorship, building communities, and shedding light on continuous integration and deployment. She has also been a panelist on a wide range of topics at Conferences and Meetups.
When Tessa isn’t working on her development chops or mentoring junior developers, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.
Tricia Clements
Tricia Clements combines her love for pets, especially her rescue mutt, with her business by focusing on marketing for pet businesses.
Tricia focuses on content and loves finding out all that WordPress has to offer to help her business and make things run smoother and easier. As a social media manager, she creates and manages social media content, writes blogs and manages her clients Google My Business (GMB) accounts.
William Earnhardt
William works as a WordPress developer and core contributor at Bluehost. He’s been doing web development for over a decade in a variety of forms—at a major university, a global non-profit, a Fortune 500 company, and as a freelancer. Prior joining Bluehost he spent 6 years building and running WordPress multisite networks at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
When not doing WordPress things, he loves hanging out with his two sons, playing soccer, working on his old Willys Jeep, fishing (especially from a kayak) and cheering on the Tar Heels.