WordCamp Orange County 2018 is proud to present the following lineup of speakers, displayed here in random order:
Jessi Gurr
Jessi’s love for website development started back in 1993, when at the age of 12 she learned HTML and secured her first dot-com. Remember Geocities, black backgrounds, lime green text, and the running dog .gif? Man, those were the days…
Jessi spent her late teenage years working on freelance website projects, and in college she held a part-time position as the webmaster for the student-run radio station.
After graduating from the University of Minnesota, Morris in 2005, Jessi started a small freelance agency, Iceberg Web Design as a way to advance her career, drive her passion for website development, and help other small business owners succeed by creating a professional online appearance. The business grew slowly until 2015, when Jessi took the leap to grow her business from having just one part-time employee to a full staff of 7 full-time developers, sales staff, and a project manager. Today, Iceberg Web Design is a leading website development firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Jessi lives in Minnesota with her husband, Chris and two young boys, Cedar and River. She enjoys organic gardening, making candles every fall, and vegan cooking.
Bob Watson
An early adopter of social media, technology, the Internet, Bob studies the latest in global trends to identify best practices in delivering a best-in-class service delivery to today’s consumer.
As a licensed real estate broker, he began his real estate career in the exclusive luxury market of Georgetown in Washington DC. He quickly became a Washington DC Association of REALTORS® Multi-Million Dollar Sales Leader. Bob’s real estate career has spanned sales, management, real estate brokerage ownership and executive leadership.
The internationally acclaimed Social Media Mastermind Orange County (SMMOC) was founded by Bob and his wife Kathy Klingaman in 2009 to provide the Southern California business community an opportunity to participate in a facilitated discussion to brainstorm and share best practices related to technology, the Internet and social media. In the past 9 years it has grown into a dynamic community with over 1,300 members with a global social media reach.
Jared De Jong
Jared De Jong is a partner in the Irvine office of Payne & Fears LLP, and a member of the law firm’s “Technology, Startups and Emerging Growth Companies” practice group. Jared advises clients on risk management, insurance and compliance issues. He is also a civil litigator with significant experience representing clients in federal and state courts. Jared has a particular interest in risk management and insurance relating to data security and privacy, and works with companies in the tech space to help manage their exposure to various liabilities.
Chris Ford
Chris Ford is a project manager at Reaktiv Studios who dreads writing speaker bios. When she isn’t actively avoiding talking about herself in the third person she’s either sweating project details, trying to make a meeting shorter than scheduled, designing new processes and systems, or encouraging the talented dev team she works with to kick ass and take names. When she isn’t working she’s probably on Reverb dreaming about what guitar she wants to buy next.
She has never played D&D, but don’t hold it against her–she’s still a pretty major nerd.
David Blackmon
David Blackmon is the co-founder of Aspen Grove Studios and a partner at Divi Space, two leading WordPress and Divi development companies that specialize in custom web design and product development of WordPress themes and plugins. David is also the co-host of the daily WP The Podcast show and also heads up another weekly podcast, Divi Chat. A digital nomad through and through, David travels the country in his 38′ RV, working from remote locations where he enjoys hiking, campfires and spending time in nature.
Jennifer Bourn
Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative a full-service design and development company specializing in WordPress. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento and writes regularly about freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding.
Jilian Plelan
Recently starting her own company, Jillian Phelan is a passionate advocate for people. She spent over 20 years in Human Resource and Recruiting roles for Global organizations like EY, Deloitte, Pacific Sunwear and more. Her most recent company, Red Canoe Ventures, she started on the premise of being of service. Her focus is bringing the human experiences of compassion, courtesy, and empathy to HR and Recruiting functions. Jillian works with a handful of clients throughout the US where she helps streamline HR processes, recruit top-talent, and develop hiring marketing strategies. A graduate of UC Berkeley with her MBA from Pepperdine University, Jillian spends her spare time focused on the care and feeding of anyone she can get her hands on.
Alicia St. Rose
Alicia St Rose began her adventure with WordPress when a UX friend offhandedly suggested using the CMS for a mutual friend’s website. That was over 10 years ago and the adventure has turned into a torrid love affair. Now she is a freelance developer, exclusively powered by WordPress, and has yet to find a limitation in this magical piece of software.
She is owner, principal designer and developer at Intrepid Realist Web Consulting, a small agency that employs one. In addition to creating for WordPress, she is working on an online program for Virtual Assistance and Entrepreneurs who want to deck out their WordPress sites like the Pros. She is also a Creativity and Mindshift Mentor, aiding people in busting through their own limitations in order to express their own unique, wildly creative selves.
She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California with her two rambunctious cats, Oscar and Milo. She divides her time between that seaside town and Black Rock City, Nevada.
Chris David Miles
Chris is a Project Manager for Bluehost in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has done freelance web design and front-end development for over a decade. He discovered WordPress in 2011 and has used it to build sites for clients and non-profits ever since.
Mikel Bruce
Mikel Bruce, CEO of TinyFrog Technologies, has over 25 years of sales and marketing experience with 10 years in corporate marketing. TinyFrog Technologies, a San Diego-based WordPress web design, development & hosting agency, has grown to a diverse team of 20 members and has built over 1,100 websites since it was founded in 2003. In addition, the TinyFrog team maintains over 600 WordPress sites for companies all over the world.
Scott Bolinger
Bio coming soon.
Bernard Ablola
Bernard Ablola a managing partner at Think Strategy, a marketing and communications firm, located in Irvine, CA. Think Strategy focuses on B2B sales development for enterprise level clients. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of Growth Marketing and WordPress.
Prior to his role at Think Strategy, Bernard managed over $25MM+ in search and display advertising for Microsoft’s premier clients.
He is an active board member for Holistic Life Foundation, Inc., a Baltimore based nonprofit, that teaches over 7,500+ children nationwide, the practice of mindfulness and yoga.
He received his BA from University of Baltimore and his MBA from Seattle University. On the weekends, you can find him hiking or skateboarding through SoCal, walking his Pomsky (Google it) or finding THE spiciest Asian food in the city. He is an avid traveler, visiting art galleries around the world, 8 countries in the last 12 months. Some of his favorite places include the Philippines, Hungary and Vienna. When in Asia, he highly recommends NOT eating the ice.
Rory Heaney
Senior Front-End Developer for CIE Digital Labs, Freelancer, and WordPress Timber ninja. Rory has been working with WordPress for the past 8 years and it has been his tool of choice for everything web related. Rory is a huge advocate for the REST-API / ACF / TIMBER, and leverages’ those tools in his projects whenever possible.
Drew Wilde
Currently at Endurance International, I’m a Product Manager responsible for gathering and assessing business goals, market research, customer feedback, and other input to formulate product features, functions and requirements which offer significant competitive advantage for our flagship hosting brand Bluehost.com.
I’m passionate about the WordPress community and love to speak.
Devin Sears
After giving up on his aspirations to play in the NBA, Devin has found his place in the marketing world. As the Field Marketing Manager of Bluehost, he travels the country in quest of the perfect milkshake while working with the WordPress community to help SMBs grow a successful online presence. In his free time he can be found in the middle of a marathon (Netflix, not running), cruising on his motorcycle, swinging from a hammock somewhere in nature, or playing ping-pong.
Tim Strifler
Born and raised in Orange County, CA, Tim is the founder of Tim Strifler Online Solutions, a WordPress web design agency, and Divi Life, a leading Divi product company focused on creating plugins, child themes, and tutorials for the Divi theme framework. Tim is also the co-host of the daily WP the Podcast show, as well as a panelist on Divi Chat, a weekly live YouTube show. Tim now lives in Austin, TX with his wife Courtney and hyperactive dog Murphy. When not behind the screen, Tim enjoys hiking, mountain biking, droning, and anything else that gets him outdoors.
Robert W. Price
Executive Director: Global Entrepreneurship Institute. We are the Trusted Source For Educating and Supporting over 500,000 Entrepreneurs in 195 Countries. Founded in 1996 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, our Mission is to spread wealth creation around the world by encouraging entrepreneurship and sharing knowledge to those who educate and support entrepreneurs. We put “global” in global entrepreneurship. Using our exclusive “Roadmap to Entrepreneurial Success” we have helped entrepreneurs raise over $100 million.
Eric Debelak
Eric Debelak has been creating WordPress sites for over 10 years. He is currently a co-founder and senior developer at 11 Online, a full service digital agency in Albuquerque, NM. At 11 Online, Eric works with a variety of technology, including React.js, Python, Laravel, Android and of course WordPress. Eric also previously taught full-stack web development at Central New Mexico Community College’s STEMulus Center.
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.
Michelle Rodriguez
Michelle Rodriguez is the chapter leader of Girl Develop It in Orange County, California where she teaches introductory and advanced classes as a front-end developer. She’s a lover of the WordPress Community, a member of Women Who WP, and a social media ninja. Michelle handled the marketing for Girl Develop It in Los Angeles as well as teaching intro to web concepts classes. Michelle believes in mentorships and strives to model for others that coding can still be a passion even when it’s not your career.
She had a moment of inspiration more than 5 years ago when she happened upon an HTML tutorial that changed her life. Having no previous knowledge of coding or even a desire to develop websites, she navigated through the tutorial out of curiosity. The moment she saw “Hello World!” display in her browser she was hooked. As a lifelong learner herself, she is certified by Lynda.com in Advanced Custom Fields and Creating Custom Plugins with PHP and continues to teach herself.
When Michelle is not freelancing in website development, she is perfectly happy being an introvert and, as she says, “silently judging since 1986.” She definitely will make you laugh with her friendly snark and wit.
Jan Cavan Boulas
Jan is a designer and illustrator whose work has been featured in several publications online and offline. When not trying to help make the Web a better place, she can be found taking off on an impulse adventure, experimenting in the kitchen, or playing badminton. She is currently a Product Designer at Automattic, makers of WordPress.
Pam Ann Aungst
Pam is the owner of Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth™ Search and Analytics. Both specialize in SEO, PPC, and Analytics. Through Stealth™, we work on a private-label basis through other agencies. Through Pam Ann Marketing, we work directly with well-established businesses and funded startups to take their search and analytics strategies to the next level. Pam regularly gives talks at WordCamps around the country about SEO and Google Analytics.
Alex Vasquez
Alex Vasquez is a WordPress Developer and owner of DigiSavvy, a boutique digital studio providing digital marketing and custom web development services.
Sam Jadali
As a cybersecurity researcher and crypto activist, Sam’s dedication and passion in the cloud space has been alive and well before the term cloud was born. He has spent the last 20 years in the hosting industry and he founded Host Duplex 8 years ago. Since the launch of HD, Sam and his company have been not only managing WordPress sites but educating clients on security and performance to assist in their success. His clients include some of the most visited WordPress sites on the internet including MacRumors and even local Southern California companies like Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza. He quickly realized that client education is vital for not only their success but for his success. With his depth of knowledge of plugin security and compliance regulations, he continually educates his clients on how to be defensive with security while maintaining the performance they expect.
An avid Big 10 fan, Sam escaped the Iowa cold and moved to sunny Southern California 7 years ago. He currently resides in downtown San Diego and is currently learning the ropes of raising a new puppy.
Leo Postovoit
Leo Postovoit an open source advocate, designer-developer and coffee geek. He is also an organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles, an organizer for the Los Angeles WordPress Meetup, a contributor to WordPress Core’s Accessibility team and works as a WordPress consultant for XWP. In the 11 years he has used WordPress, Leo’s work has appeared in publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, and Lowrider Magazine. Beyond journalism, he’s worked in marketing, education and the film industry (and even spent a few years as an American Sign Language interpreter.) He also double majored in Journalism and Anthropology at San Jose State University.
Tim Heggem
Timothy Heggem is a strategic advisor to the executive committee for Trustwork and its corporate affiliates. He also operates a consultancy that provides strategic communication and crisis management services, particularly to emerging businesses. Prior to these roles, Timothy was an attorney with a background in white collar criminal defense and complex commercial litigation.
Robby McCullough
Jamie Schmid
Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content. She has a background in Information Architecture and Content Strategy, enthusiasm for all things WordPress, and a whole lot of cats back home in Portland, OR. In her role as SiteLock WordPress Evangelist Jamie helps build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.
Saied Abbasi
Saied is the founder of WPHELP.CO and works as the COO / Web Developer at Ben Freda Consulting. For the last four years he has led and developed workshops in JavaScript, jQuery, CSS, HTML and WordPress. He is active in the WordPress community and loves to share.
Kitty Lusby
Kitty is a full time blogger and nerd based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Words are kind of her thing, and she takes pride in her years of writing and blogging experience for all kinds of businesses and purposes. You can find Kitty’s work scattered across the internet, or if you’re into things like marketing and SEO, you can read her posts on the NeONBRAND blog. Nerds who like science should check out Kitty’s online lab at Tryentific.com.
Jennifer Brueske
Jennifer started with Iceberg Web Design in October 2015. She has worn many hats including high school math teacher, tutor, bookkeeper, waitress, assembler of things, and administrative assistant. During her previous employment she was asked to develop and manage the company website and rediscovered her love of code. She then decided to pursue web development as a career.
Jennifer enjoys reading, gaming (board, card and video), sewing, putting together IKEA furniture, and martial arts.
Erik Mathy
My name is Erik Mathy, and I’ve been a web applications developer for over 20 years. By way of background I’ve worked on everything from small, informational static marketing sites to enterprise level, SAAS, event registration and management systems used by multi-billion dollar media conglomerates. Prior to working at Pantheon, I was the Senior PHP Developer and Team Manager for the CMS Team at Techsoup Global, a multinational non-profit.
Steve Zehngut
Steve founded Zeek Interactive in 1995 and he has been the creative technologist behind the Huntington Beach based company since its inception. Under his direction, Zeek has grown from an apartment bedroom to one of Southern California’s leading WordPress and mobile development shops. Steve is the lead organizer of WordCamp Orange County and the organizer of the OC WordPress Meetup. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has taught interactive courses at UC Irvine, USC, the American Film Institute, and Cal State Long Beach. Steve has a BA in Film from Cal State Northridge.
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.
Andrew Norcross
I split my time between writing code and fixing the code I have already written. All while drinking coffee.
Yvonne Conway-Williams
Cybersecurity consultant. Co-Founder/Partner of ParadoxPrime Information Assurance.
Yvonne gave her very first presentation at a WordCamp to WordCampOC in 2017 with her well-received presentation “Cybersecurity: Russian Hackers, Privacy, and You”.
She received certification in Cybersecurity and Risk Management through Harvard University.
John Hawkins
Long time WordPress user/developer/lover.
Samantha Zehngut
Bio coming soon…
Toren Ajk
Toren Ajk is the founder and CEO of The TAC Marketing Group, which offers a range of Internet marketing services including marketing strategy, web development, search engine optimization (SEO), paid search (PPC) campaign management, and media buying.
Previously he was CMO for the award winning Line2 mobile communication apps. He developed the overall marketing strategy and directly managed the mobile advertising, paid search, web media, and social media campaigns that drove over 1.5 million app downloads.
In 2018 TAC launched the first native AMP WordPress framework AMPWPTools.com
Mike Karikas
Grand Poobah of Technology and co-founder of Neutrino, Inc, creating fancy custom real estate websites for 12 years now. I have a love/hate relationship with WordPress but there is a lot of love.
Joe A. Simpson, Jr.
Joe A. Simpson, Jr. is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During days he works at a top-five transit agency, fighting the good fight to ease the commute around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history ten years later with a blog network consisting of dozen project-specific or transit news sites. Toastmaster ATM Silver; actively contributes the Community, founding the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup in hopes of hosting WordCamp SCV in the town centre. Volunteer at WordCamps (WCLAX 2017). Presenting this speech at WordCamp Chicago 4/28-29.
Brenner Adams
Brenner is the founder and CEO of the LINK Group that has processed $100MM in transactions, Advisor and Lecturer at CS1893 Academy, and Adjunct Professor of Startup at the University of Utah where he has ‘hatched’ over 200 student lead business ideas. He is the former game designer of the award winning game Amped at Xbox. Years of experience in software design, marketing, payments, snowboarding and skateboarding. Brenner also worked with the author’s of “I’ll eat that cricket,” a book about gamification and helped lead the team of gamifying projects for Intercontinental Hotels Group, Boeing, Time AOL, Dexter, and Barilla Pasta.
Amber Hewitt
Amber Hewitt is the founder of Graphicgoo, a full-service graphics partner specializing in graphic design and front-end web development. As a designer, website expert, and social media master, she helps businesses navigate and break through the clutter by telling their unique stories through the lens of their own brand and brand goals.
Amber has a BFA in Graphic Design from ArtCenter College of Design and since graduating has gained 15 years of experience in an ever changing industry. In that time, her career has given her the opportunity to truly develop a passion for brand development, UI/UX design, typography, and all things design related.
She’s able to find inspiration in the digital world, as well as in the unplugged universe. When she is away from her computer (don’t worry, she’s never far), she enjoys scuba diving, riding her motorcycle, and long walks on the beach with her dog.
Aaron Holbrook
Aaron Holbrook has been building websites since 1998. He found a passion for HTML, CSS and PHP and even built his own content management system in 2004, only to stumble upon WordPress shortly thereafter.
After earning a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Augustana College, Aaron became the full-time webmaster for a hospital. After spending 5 years managing content, he realized that his passion was building, not just managing, websites. Before leaving in 2011, he rebuilt the entire hospital website on WordPress.
Aaron has accomplished quite a bit in the last five years. He has built and maintained websites for some very large companies around the world. He has contributed to WordPress core and is the co-creator of the popular ElasticPress plugin.
Aaron loves teaching and in the past few years has given talks at WordPress events around the country, including Milwaukee, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Providence, Orlando and Orange County. Aaron started a local meetup group and even helped organize WordCamp Chicago in 2013.
Gary Johnson
Gary Johnson, President of J2 Marketing, helps companies get more profitable clients. With 23 years of sales and marketing experience, Gary builds powerful strategies and offers simple solutions to grow business. Gary’s approach comes from experience and analysis of the most successful rainmakers in business.
Jason Cosper
Jason Cosper is currently employed as the Developer Advocate for WP Engine. Honestly, that’s just a fancy way of saying “I get paid to chat with people about WordPress.” Nice work if you can get it.
Jason spends a ton of time with his wife Sarah and two chihuahuas, Rowdy & Gomez. They watch a lot of bad TV, scary movies and premium cable programming. He also enjoys hanging out in musty record stores, drinking whiskey, smoking meats, and sampling craft beers.
Aaron Campbell
Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than ten years, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over seventeen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.