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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.
Natalie MacLees
Natalie MacLees is an web developer and UI designer. She is founder + principal of Digita11y, an accessibility-focused interactive agency. She is the author of jQuery for Designers, now in its second edition. She was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2013 and 2014. She founded Website Weekend LA, a 48-hour hackathon matching web professionals with nonprofits in need to websites. Along with Nathan Tyler, she’s a founder of N Squared – a tiny software company that has made Draw Attention, Simply Schedule Appointments, Plugin Detective, and other awesome WordPress plugins. She makes her online home at nataliemac.com.
John Hawkins
John has been building things on the internet for over 2 decades. He found WordPress in the summer of 2003 and has been fully immersed in it ever since. John was the organizer of the first WordCamp conference in Las Vegas in 2009 and has been involved with organizing it (almost) every year since. John has a passion for teaching others to use WordPress. He founded and organizes the monthly Las Vegas WordPress meetup where he’s a frequent presenter and has traveled the country speaking at WordPress conferences from coast-to-coast.
Matt Kopala
Matt is the founder of SiteDistrict, a powerful & flexible WordPress hosting platform. He has a degree in Computer Engineering and was on 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. He enjoys travel and has spent close to 4 years backpacking around the world.
Maura Teal
Maura is a Software Developer at Pagely and previously developed for WordPress at scale at a large media company. She is an open source and emoji enthusiast, and is a firm believer that speaking about —and sharing— life experiences (both failures and successes) builds lasting connections.
Jennifer Bourn
With 20 years experience as a graphic designer, 14 years experience as a web designer, 13 years as a creative agency owner, and 10 years as a blogger, Jennifer Bourn has worked with hundreds of small-medium sized service-based businesses to build brands, establish profitable online platforms, and claim authority positioning in their niche. She is also a sought-after speaker and writer, earning rave reviews for her workshops, trainings, and valuable articles.
Through Jenniferbourn.com, Jennifer focuses on providing the information, tools, and resources freelancers need to build thriving, successful businesses that align with the lifestyle they desire and delivering courses that help freelancers make more money. Through her agency, Bourn Creative, she offers a suite of services designed to maximize results and increase profits that include brand strategy, content strategy, and website strategy, as well as copywriting and content implementation.
Chris Ford
Chris Ford has been managing WordPress projects for over a decade. For most of that time she was managing her own projects as an independent contractor focusing on design, branding and UX. A year and a half ago she traded that in for a position as a remote Project Manager at Reaktiv Studios, a WordPress VIP partner.
David Ryan
Dave Ryan is an Interdisciplinary WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where he focuses on helping build WordPress and supporting the WordPress community.
In the past Dave has worked for large publishers and universities, scaling high-traffic WordPress sites by blending his skills in information design, journalism and web development.
Dave lives in Phoenix, loves a good taco and will like every photo of your dog on Instagram.
Jonathan Desrosiers
Jonathan has been using WordPress since 2007 to build sites covering the entire spectrum of local businesses to enterprises and large universities. He has been a WordPress Core contributor since 2013, and a Core committer since 2018. He is also a WP CLI committer, the WordCamp Boston 2019 lead organizer, and an organizer for the Boston WordPress Meetups. He currently works as a WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where a majority of his time is spent contributing to WordPress Core and related projects.
Wrigley Gannaway
I am a recent graduate from Brigham Young University – Idaho in the field of Web Design and Development, with an emphasis in Design and a personal interest in Multimedia Design and Marketing. Hobbies include photography, swing dancing, crafting, and self improvement (and of course, anything on the world wide web)! I am from Huntington Beach, California and currently residing in Salt Lake City, Utah interning for Need Someone To Blog. I love the WordPress community and am exciting to make my debut into the web marketing and creative freelance world!
Kara Bullock
Kara is an artist who lives in Southern California with her supportive husband, Jeff, and their three creative and inspiring children, Charlotte, Claire, and Brady. Kara has 20+ years of experience in teaching and curriculum development. She began her career as an elementary school teacher in 1998 working with children ages six through 12.
In 2008, she began teaching college courses, online, to adults studying to be teachers! She found it very rewarding to work with those that had a passion for teaching others! In 2018, she stepped away from teaching education courses to work full-time as an artist, art instructor, and mentor. Her work as an online instructor quickly transferred over to teaching art to students all over the world. Kara is known by her students, both online and in-person, for providing a safe place for individuals to learn at their own pace, in a space that they feel they can try anything and feel supported and encouraged. She feels very lucky to get to do what she loves every day, and that is create art and mentor others on their personal creative paths.
Kara has always been drawn to creating portraits, probably because of her love for people. Kara’s style is somewhat impressionist. Her work has been described as colorful and bold. It is her goal to create a portrait that makes the viewer want to know more about the story of the person in the painting. She often paints her children as they inspire her the most. Kara wants her audience to be drawn to what is happening in the lives of the individual at the moment that they were painted. Having worked with children, she knows how difficult it can be to grow up, and she wants to capture all of the feelings of her own children that they experience with each new day of their lives. Whatever the feeling, happiness, angst, sadness, anger, etc. she is hoping to capture it and help her audience to feel it.
Francesca Marano
Francesca is the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround, web hosting company. She is part of the WordPress community team, organizing meetups and WordCamps in Torino and taking part in many other WordPress events worldwide.
She founded C+B, a blog with an editorial staff of more than sixty authors offering daily advice for Italian female creative entrepreneurs.
Francesca is a passionate speaker and you can find her in Italy and around the world talking about WordPress, community, open source, women in tech, and small businesses.
Jennifer J Brueske
Jennifer joined Iceberg Web Design in 2015. Throughout her career, she has worn many hats including high school math teacher, tutor, bookkeeper and administrative assistant. During her last 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 graduated from St. Cloud University, and holds a Bachelors of science in Mathematics. She is the lead developer on most complex projects at Iceberg, and thrives when given challenging coding projects.
Jennifer enjoys sharing her passion for website development with others.
Jennifer lives in Becker with her husband, Justin, and four kids, Jarrod, Rhiley, Katelyn and Isabella. She enjoys reading, gaming, and eating.
Dwayne McDaniel
Dwayne has been working in tech and open source since 2005. Once he dipped a tow into the world of Free and Open Source Software, he knew never wanted to work outside of it again. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv community in 2013, which lead him to his current role. As a Developer Advocate at Pantheon he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland and from MIT and Stanford.
Reach out at mcdwayne.com or on twitter @mcdwayne
Amy Hall
It’s not a surprise that Amy Hall is referred to as the MacGyver of MailChimp. For the last ten years, Amy has been taking content management out of the hands of business owners who are already juggling too many tasks. Not only is she a certified MailChimp Partner & Expert, but she builds WordPress websites, writes optimized content, and provides hands-on WordPress training to her clients.
When it comes to speaking, Amy is a natural. After all, she teaches blogging and WordPress at Mira Costa College. Amy is in her element when showing Meetups and WordPress users how to optimize their forms, perfect their lead generation, and make their WordPress sites perform.
When she’s not training clients on how to best create their business funnel, she spends time with her husband, a minister in Carlsbad, takes her grandkids to museums, painting classes, and enjoying nature.
Say hi to Amy on Twitter at @GenuineAmyHall and check out her bio at amyhall.biz.
Emily Lema
I’m a freshman in High School that plays around with WordPress. Everything that I know, I learned from my father, Chris Lema!
Rahul Nagare
Rahul has been working in the web hosting industry since 2005 and started using WordPress in 2008. Since then he has helped scale web and cloud infrastructure for companies like General Mills, Saks, CSX, and PetSmart. Rahul is now the co-founder and CEO at ScaleDynamix, where he manages 12,000+ WordPress and WooCommerce sites.
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 an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Mike Benayoun
Mike Benayoun is the co-founder of 196flavors.com, the online reference for food history and authentic and traditional recipes from around the world. The website is available in English, French and Spanish.
Kari Sletten
Kari has a background in Information Technology and Geographic Information Systems. She began her career as a GIS Technician in Norfolk, Virginia and has since spent time as an IT Director, full-time mom and freelance website designer before becoming a web developer.
Kari currently works for Iceberg Web design in Minneapolis, Minnesota building custom WordPress websites. She loves using her creativity and diverse background to solve all kinds of problems.
Joseph LoPreste
Hi, I’m Joe LoPreste I’m a St. Pete. native. I bring over 10 years of business and technology experience to the team. With St. Pete Design I have the opportunity to combine my passion for business and my obsession with pushing technology beyond its limits.
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. She has been working with WordPress since 2005, and today runs a WordPress website development company in Minneapolis, MN. Jessi lives in Anoka MN, and loves traveling for both business, and with her two young boys. She enjoys organic gardening and vegan cooking.
Erik Wardell
I have the privilege or coaching site owners and freelancers through the SEO process on a daily basis at Pathfinder SEO. In my role as an SEO coach, I get to take the complex world of search and make it approachable for people who know they need to get found in Google, but don’t know where to start. I spend the rest of my time spreading the word about the benefits of guided SEO and working on client sites.
Living and working in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains affords me an outdoorsy lifestyle complete with lots of adventures and time spent in scenic places with my young son, wife, and pup.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is the VP of Products at Liquid Web. He’s also a regular blogger, public speaker, and evangelist for WordPress and WooCommerce. He’s been working on eCommerce stores for more than twenty years.
Cami Kaos
Cami lives, works, parents, and plays in the rainy city of Portland, Oregon. She’s had a love of WordPress and WordCamps since she stumbled upon the first WordCamp Portland where she became a reluctant and then excited volunteer. She now works at Automattic as a community organizer for the WordPress open source project where she gets to work with WordCamps and their organizers every day.
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 owns WP Roadmaps and Coaching, providing project and productivity management education to WordPress consultants and agencies.
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 has spoken at WordCamp Asheville, Venture Cafe Winston-Salem, the Triad WordPress Meetup, and has taught project management classes at Guilford Technical Community College’s Small Business Center in Greensboro NC.
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.
Andy Fragen
Andy Fragen has been using WordPress since 2007 and in that time has become a proficient hacker, contributor, plugin developer, and hobbyist of WordPress.
He has several plugins in the Plugin Directory and has contributed to many others. His plugin contributions have over half a million downloads. Some of his most popular plugins are The Events Calendar Category Colors and GitHub Updater
“WordPress provides a problem-solving sandbox that intrigues me and allows me a creative outlet from my normal job. I enjoy helping others and helping them find solutions to their problems.”