Aaron Jorbin
Aaron is a polyhistoric man of the web. Currently Technical Architect on the Conde Nast Platform Team and a WordPress contributor, he works to improve developer happiness and is dedicated to making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. In the past he worked at AddThis and Privia Health.
Adrian Cardenas
Cuban born Adrian Cardenas spent 8 months in a refugee camp prior to arriving in the U.S. as a child. Though self-taught, he has partially earned his degree in Computer Science and Computational Math, which he strives to finish one day. He has been a PHP developer for 4 years and a Systems Administrator for several before that. He is currently making awesome things in both front & back end at ServerGrove, a local hosting company. Over the years, Adrian has developed several WordPress sites, both single and multi, many of them interfacing with other systems such as MediaWiki & custom solutions. At ServerGrove he has also been witness several hundred WordPress installations and some of the “gotchas” that developers can face.
Alison Foxall
Alison Foxall is a founding partner and lead designer of Gobble Logic; a web design, development, and marketing firm located in Tampa, FL. She has a traditional background in design, but has been a front-end web developer since the early 2000’s. Alison has been using WordPress since 2004, and developing for it since 2006. With her leadership, her team has created custom plugins, themes, and application platforms all with WordPress. When she isn’t running the business, Alison is learning Japanese, reading books or periodicals, and being active in political groups and discussions.
Amanda Blum
Amanda Blum has been speaking at, organizing and cursing at WordCamps/Meetups since 2009. As Strategist for Etch Software in Portland, Oregon, she helps organizations leverage technology for better processes and digital marketing. When not Pressing, she makes pickles, knits scarves and manages her batshit crazy doberman Clementine. She has never visited Miami and is impressed that all the WordCamp Organizers have promised to have a flock of flamingos sing happy birthday to her.
Anna Tuttle
Anna Tuttle is a 13-year-old girl who writes a blog about her life at annatuttle.com and has been writing reviews for restaurants and attractions in Miami since she was 8 yrs old as a kid reporter at Miami Fun Guide. She also enjoys cooking, baking, playing guitar, singing and watching or reading her favorite movies and books.
Blanca Stella Mejia
Blanca has been blogging for six years and is also the founder of an award winning bilingual blog MiCaminar.com, (My Walk), where she shares doses of inspiration, leadership and motivation. She gets geek and blogs about Social Media at BlancaStella.com and also the founder of a Web Development agency VizRED.
She works full time as a Social Media Consultant and is one of the Community Managers for Microsoft Research’s creative social network project by FUSE Labs, Socl.. She was named by Latina Magazine as one of the top 25 Women Who Shine In Technology. Her motto is “Make Authentic Connections Through Social Media Platforms”, and her passion has been doing just that. She is very involved in the local grassroots Social Media community and is the Co-Director of Latism South Florida which is a chapter of the largest non-profit Hispanic online voice. Blanca is also invited to speak about Social Media, Blogging, Reputation Management, WordPress, and Local Search at various conferences.
Brad Touesnard
Developer, host of the Apply Filters podcast, and founder of Delicious Brains Inc., the company behind WP Migrate DB Pro.
Brad Williams
Brad is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, a co-host on the DradCast podcast, and the co-author of Professional WordPress (1E & 2E) and Professional WordPress Plugin Development. Brad is also one of the organizers of the Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group and WordCamp Philly. Brad blogs at http://strangework.com and tweets at @williamsba.
Brian Messenlehner
Brian is the co-founder of WebDevStudios.com, a web development company that specializes in building all things WordPress. He is also the co-founder of AppPresser.com, a WordPress based framework for building iOS and Android Apps.
Brian started his career as a software developer for the U.S. Marines with a focus on building web applications and relational databases for the Marine Corps Logistics Command. After the Marines, and prior to WebDevStudios he worked at a law firm in New Jersey building custom web applications to identify and track insurance and healthcare fraud for clients such as Allstate and Encompass.
Brian loves WordPress in his spare time! He is the co-author of the book ”Building Web Apps with WordPress” by O’Reilly Media, which is about leveraging WordPress as an Application Framework and he is the organizer of the New Jersey WordPress Meetup Group.
Brian enjoys learning about new technology and believes open source software like WordPress is the key to successful cost effective web solutions in any situation.
Follow Brian on Twitter at: @bmess, @webdevstudios, @apppresser, and @bwawwp
Brian Richards
Brian is a developer with WebDevStudios.com and the creator of WPSessions.com, a resource where developers and site-owners alike can learn directly from WordPress experts. He also enjoys hanging upside down in avatar photos.
Carl Hancock
Carl Hancock is one of the co-founders of Rocketgenius, Inc. A premier provider of WordPress plugin solutions and the creators of one one of the most successful commercial WordPress plugins: Gravity Forms. He loves building innovative solutions for WordPress, and is a devoted father, loving husband, amateur photographer, startup founder and travel addict.
Chris Lema
For twenty years Chris has been managing high performers and overseeing new product development. He’s a daily blogger, an ebook author, a public speaker and works as the VP of Engineering for Emphasys Software. In his spare time he helps companies leverage WordPress, and WordPress companies find leverage.
Chris Wiegman
Chris is the developer of iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) and has been working on WordPress security for over 5 years. Previously a captain for a small airline, Chris’ interest in security began on his first day as an employed pilot, 9/11 and gradually evolved over the years to helping individuals and smaller organizations protect their websites from many of the common methods attackers use to compromise their victims. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has taught computer security for St. Edward’s University as well as other courses ranging from computers to aviation.”
Cody Landefeld
Cody Landefeld is founder and director at Mode Effect, a WordPress design and development consultancy. A user experience problem solver by nature and have over 10 years of experience in the creative field, we are passionate to help businesses succeed using their websites as their marketing hub.
Cory Miller
Cory is a former newspaper journalist turned full-time web entrepreneur. In January 2008, he founded iThemes in his home, fulfilling a lifelong dream of running his own company. Now iThemes has grown to over 20+ team members, hundreds of products and thousands of customers worldwide.
David Laietta
David Laietta is a WordPress theme and plugin developer, as well as community organizer. He leads the WordPress Orlando Meetup, as well as WordCamp Orlando.
David is also a long-time supporter of WordCamp Miami, and among other areas, will be speaking at the WordCamp Miami beginner’s workshop on May 9th.
David Parsons
David Parsons, a Computer Science major at the University of Central Florida, has been working with WordPress for over six years now. His passion for the web originally started by making a simple website with WordPress. Over the years he has been branched out his skill set with responsive design, web apps, SEO, theme development, plugin development and Compass & SASS enhanced stylesheets. Recently David has been spending a lot of his spare time speaking at local events such as the local Orlando WordPress Meetup Group, BarCamp Orlando, BarCamp Tampa and more recently WordCamp Miami.
Diane Kinney
Diane Kinney is the Creative Director and co-founder of The Versatility Group, a full service firm providing websites and other online solutions for 15 years. She is an award winning designer focused on WordPress design and development, graphic design, and marketing services. In her previous corporate life, she led large scale application development projects, managed multi-disciplinary teams, and oversaw Operations including marketing, customer service, and business development. She gets excited about applying the lessons from her diverse background to web and marketing projects.
Dre Armeda
Dre is the Co-Founder of Sucuri Security. Dre is a Harley enthusiast, and a Chargers fan. he wears many hats, and love tacos. He is infatuated with WordPress, web design, and web security. Dre hopes to make the internet a safer place! Dre presents at various WordCamps and other events every year. Dre is a proud WordPress contributor and was the lead organizer that brought WordCamp to San Diego. Dre can also be found attending local WordPress meetups at the Inland Empire WordPress Meetup and the WordPress San Diego (North County) Meetup. Dre is the Co-Host of the DradCast on Wednesday nights. Pressing all the words!
Gabriela Levit
Gabriela Levit is a developer with over 15 years programming experience. She started Jacaranda Technologies six years ago, primarily creating web sites, custom WordPress themes, and now expanding into plugins. She was a recent 2014 WordCamp Phoenix presenter and upcoming speaker at the WordPress NYC Meetup. As well, past WordCamp New York volunteer and WordCamp Philly sponsor. When not programming, she can be found taking pictures, eating/cooking yummy food, and flying small planes.
Hector Torres
Hector Torres is the Founder of WP-MONITOR, a WordPress monthly maintenance service. He’s also the Founder of Idealocity.com, a WordPress Website Design company. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and is a WordPress aficionado.
Hristo Pandjarov
Hristo is a WordPress enthusiast who’s done it all: supported WordPress clients, built websites, designed WordPress themes, wrote tutorials, dug deeper into SEO and developed his own WordPress SEO plugin. He’s been fortunate to have his passion for all things WordPress and his job overlap at SiteGround, where he develops and implements various in-house performance boost solutions to help make WordPress websites faster and more secure.
Jackie Jimenez
Jackie Jimenez is The Innovative Consultant, focusing on the big picture with integrated marketing. She specializes in branding websites online with social media, SEO and email marketing. Her career has helped many companies including Hilton, Marriott Vacation Club, GKhair, and world-renowned hairstylist Peter Coppola.
Jackie co-organizes the South Florida WordPress group and WordCamp Miami 2013, often speaking and training clients in WordPress Webinars. Connect with Jackie on Twitter @jackiej04 and @InnovateWP.
Jared Atchison
Independent developer. Loves WordPress, web development, technology, business, and marketing. Also: husband, Texan, Aggie, and dachshund owner.
Jared Easley
Jared Easley is an entrepreneur, trainer, speaker & host of the Starve the Doubts podcast. Jared has interviewed successful entrepreneurs such as Seth Godin, Simon Sinek, Guy Kawasaki, Michael E. Gerber, David Allen, Gary Vaynerchuck & Chris Brogan about overcoming self doubt in order to achieve goals. Jared is also the co-founder of the Podcast Movement which is the only National Conference for Podcasters by Podcasters.
Jeff Chandler
Jeff is the man behind WPTavern.com. On WPTavern, you’ll find reviews, news, screencasts, guest blog posts from some great WordPress community members and much more.
John Carcutt
John is an SEO & Social Media veteran and recognized industry thought leader with 13+ years of expertise in both agency and in-house search engine optimization. He is a regular speaker and teacher at the top national SEO and Social Media marketing conferences including SES, SMX, PubCon, and is a published author on the topic of SEO in iMedia, Search Engine Journal, and WebProNews . As an original pioneer of modern search optimization, John co-hosts one of the most popular search related radio shows online: the SEO 101 show at webmasterradio.fm.
His digital marketing, search and social media experience ranges from the largest Fortune 50 companies all the way to local businesses, and includes clients like Turner Broadcasting, The Miami Herald, Discover, Sandals & Beaches Resorts, Cotton Inc., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Stanley.
John is Director of Search & Social Media for Advance Digital, a division of Advance Publications Inc- the parent company of Conde Nast.
John James Jacoby
Project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress. WordPress contributor, BackPress supporter. Cranky driver. Puppy whisperer. Naps required. Currently the Director of Web Engineering at 10up.
Jonathan Brinley
After taking the plunge into full-time freelancing in 2009, Jonathan took advantage of his freedom and “retired” to Jacksonville, Fla. He’s busy enjoying the sun and the beaches with his wife (Stephanie) and two kids (Titus and Tirzah). But too often, he has to pull himself away from the sand and get down to business: writing WordPress plugins for fun and profit. When he’s not collaborating with the fine folks at Modern Tribe, Jonathan likes to create open source libraries that help make the plugin developers’ jobs a little easier. http://xplus3.net/ https://github.com/jbrinley
Josh Eaton
Josh is a senior developer at Reaktiv Studios, with a focus on modern front-end development, custom themes and plugins. A former management consultant, he taught himself web development and continually enjoys laughing at code he wrote 6 months ago. When not wrangling code, Josh travels the world, plays guitar and loves craft coffee and fine whiskey.
Karim Marucchi
Karim is the CEO of Crowd Favorite, a VeloMedia Group company, which delivers enterprise-level professional services to clients like Disney, National Geographic, Lexus and DirecTV. With offices across the US and Europe, it’s uniquely positioned to deliver large-scale client projects. We focus on both WordPress and WordPress integration projects.
Karla Campos
Karla Campos is the CEO of Social Media Sass a company specializing in digital marketing training and education. Social Media Sass has trained individuals in topics like WordPress, Joomla, social media, crowdfunding, blogging, content and SEO to name a few. Karla is a speaker, the winner of a Small Business Influencer award for 2013 and the author of Chronicles of a Social Media Addict. On her spare time Karla likes to build websites for her startup ideas and writes for different blogs. Karla holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Technical Management.
Kathryn Presner
Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012 and is currently embedded with the Theme Team, where she help folks with all types of theme-related issues on both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at WordCamps, Girl Geek Dinners, Podcamps, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress hours are spent collecting vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, growing organic garlic, and cavorting with her four felines.
Mark Jaquith
Mark Jaquith has been working with and contributing to WordPress since 2004. He is one of the lead developers of the WordPress core and offers freelance WordPress consulting services through Covered Web Services with a focus on scaling, security, and custom functionality. Mark likes patches that have more red than green, and his favorite WordPress features are the ones that you’re not even aware of. He eagerly looks forward to shooting down your feature suggestions with, “No, but it would make a great plugin!”
Mason James
Mason is the Co-Founder and CEO of WP Valet where he’s made an art of making people happy with their WordPress experience. He has a passion for creating solutions and truly loves it when a plan comes together. When not connected to a computer he’s probably playing music, video games, or with his puppy, Penny (photos available on request).
Matt Medeiros
Matt Medeiros is co-founder of Slocum Studio a custom development and theme shop. He is the founder of WPMentor.org a website dedicated to helping WordPress people find mentorships. Matt hosts the popular podcast Matt Report which aims to help new WordPress freelancers and agencies grow their business.
Michael Eisenwasser
Michael Eisenwasser is the driving force behind BuddyBoss, an incredibly popular and well-supported BuddyPress theme. He previously managed the development and growth of SongLyrics.com, one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world with over 100 million annual visitors. Michael is a knowledgeable and fun speaker, leaving audiences at WordPress events and major universities in total awe. His personal achievements are also mesmerizing.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is a graphic designer and co-founder of Marktime Media, a multimedia design and video production company based in Chicagoland. She was formally schooled in many aspects of 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, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She is a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a Meetup junkie, @3themes contributor, and WordCamp Chicago lead organizer.
Mika Epstein
Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Support Rogue. Working for DreamHost, she solves any WordPress problem that comes up, and still finds time to slash unanswered WordPress.org forum threads by night and wrangle plugins by day. A self-taught guru on Multisite and .htaccess, she has a passion for writing and technology and blogs about them on her own site, as well as for DreamHost.
Nathan Hangen
Nathan is a co-founder of Virtuous Giant, where he serves as the business and development lead for IgnitionDeck, an eCommerce suite for WordPress. When he’s not shipping product, Nathan enjoys competing in triathlons, playing soccer, and coaching youth sports. In a past life, he served as a Psychological Operations Sergeant in the US Army, where he deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom.
Noel Tock
Noel is Swiss web guy that enjoys building solutions online. He is a Partner at Human Made, a top tier WordPress agency (and VIP Partner). As Chief Product Officer, he oversees the product portfolio and acts as liaison for the Swiss client market.
He’s a jack of all trades, master of none, usually bouncing between project management and front-end development. The projects he enjoys working most on target small businesses and the long tail, democratizing opportunity so that smaller players have a shot at being successful online (happytables & Clickbank Powered both being excellent examples).
Pascal Depuhl
Pascal Depuhl has been telling stories with pictures for his clients as an advertising photographer for over 20 years. Seeing that video is quickly becoming the online language of choice, he began to learn filmmaking. In the winter of 2012 he found himself filming in Afghanistan, telling the story of what a flight service does. Pascal’s first documentary, “On Wings of Hope”, has gone on to win Best of ASMP 2013 and just was selected to be screened at the Palm Beach International Film Festival.
He grew up in Germany and Chicago and now lives in Miami with his wife and 2 daughters.
Pippin Williamson
If you are a WordPress plugin developer, you probably have used or seen one of Pippin’s plugins. He’s written more than 100 plugins (we are looking to see if he has a social life) He has spent a long time working on improving community involvement on projects by developers / designers. Not to mention contributing to the WordPress core and WordPress Codex.
Rebecca Gill
Rebecca Gill is founder of Michigan based Web Savvy Marketing – where graphic designers, WordPress coders, and SEO consultants are all rolled up into one. From stock Genesis themes and custom WordPress design to full blown website development with organic SEO, Rebecca and her team deliver websites fantastic web sites to satisifed clients.
Rebekah Monson
Rebekah Monson is a journalist, designer and dork. She’s the communications manager at the University of Miami School of Communication and cofounder of whereby.us, a creative organization that helps curious locals explore, celebrate and improve Miami through events, journalism and community protoyping. She cofounded Hacks/Hackers Miami, a group that brings together journalists and technologists, and Code for Miami, Florida’s first Code for America civic hacking brigade. She loves people, dogs, coffee, Miami, stories and technology — so long as servers are up, traffic is decent and no one pees on the rug.
Rick Tuttle
Rick Tuttle is a longtime WordCamp Miami supporter and lives in Miami with his wife and two daughters who all use WordPress. He is employed as a .NET web developer and also actively uses WordPress to help with community causes as a volunteer. Follow on Twitter @ricktuttle.
Rosie Taylor
Rosie’s passion is writing, marketing and teaching. She regularly presents live workshops and webinars on marketing and web topics especially as an Authorized Local Expert for Constant Contact. Known for creativity mixed with business acumen, Rosie is a solid public relations and online marketing strategist. As a Certified Duct Tape Marketing consultant she offers proven strategies for small business success.
Sarah Gooding
Sarah Gooding is an Editorial Ninja at Audrey Capital. When not writing about WordPress, she enjoys baking, knitting, judging beer competitions and spending time with her Italian Greyhound. She also writes for the popular WordPress news blog WPTavern.com
Steven Alig
Steven Alig is the President and Founder of South Florida Web Studio. He has been professionally involved in the internet industry since 1997. Working directly with both large national corporate accounts and small local business, Steven understands the diverse set of requirements that different businesses have. Working with many different technologies throughout his career, Steven committed exclusively to WordPress in 2010 and has not looked back since. Over the years Steven has provided online marketing, web development and consultation services for clients such as The Miami Dolphins, Walmart, Arvida Homes, The St. Joe Company, Motorola, The Hollywood Florida Office of Tourism and more. Today, every project completed by South Florida Web Studio is built on WordPress.
Steven serves on the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors as well as several committees and other associations. When not working or learning something new, Steven enjoys spending time with his family and coaching his daughters’ soccer teams.
Suzette Franck
Suzette Franck is a WordPress Evangelist at (mt) Media Temple, a Los Angeles-based company providing premium web hosting and cloud services to web designers, web developers, digital innovators and entrepreneurs since 1998. An established member of the WordPress community and one of today’s most prolific female WordPress speakers, Suzette joined Media Temple in 2012 and has, since then, been building on the company’s early involvement with the WordPress and Open Source communities. She advocates and educates for WordPress by actively participating in WordCamp conferences country-wide and WordPress meetups in Southern California.
As passionate about front-end coding as she is about increasing awareness of the wonders of WordPress, she also co-hosts Media Temple’s weekly educational podcast, WP Unicorn Project, with WordPress Unicorn Rockstar Natalie MacLees, which addresses all things WordPress and web development with a variety of WordPress professionals including designers, developers, and entrepreneurs. Suzette blogs about WordPress at suzettefranck.com, and she is a repeated guest on the popular WPWatercooler video podcast (over 5 million views). When she is not “WordPressing”, Suzette, who resides in North Hollywood, CA, paints and collects art.
Syed Balkhi
He is the founder of WPBeginner (the largest free WordPress resource site) and List25 an extremely popular entertainment site with over 725,000 subscribers and 90 Million video views. Syed’s work has been featured in NYTimes, HuffingtonPost, Yahoo Small Business, Wired, Mashable, and countless other well-reputed online magazines. Syed has worked with some of the largest brands in the industry including but not limited to WarnerBros, Webs, Mercer, and more.
Sze Liu
Sze Liu is the CEO and Founder of 852 Creative Marketing & Design. Originally from Hong Kong, Sze has always loved branding, marketing and technology and has been involved in the field throughout her career. She has managed online and offline marketing for start-ups and major corporations (Manpower, Inc. and Ryder System, Inc.). She also has experience in global business development, including projects based in China.
Sze has lived in South Florida for more than 20 years and holds a B.S. in marketing and international business from Florida Atlantic University, as well as an MBA from University of Miami. As co-founder of Wiredin Women, she also helps support a community of women who wish to learn, share ideas and become successful in online business.
Tammie Lister
Tammie Lister is a theme wrangler with Automattic. Before moving there focus on themes, she was focused on creating sites with BuddyPress. She’s a contributor to the BuddyPress project having worked on the UI refresh and most recently the template pack. Tammie has also written a book on BuddyPress theme development. Themes are her world and she is passionate about raising the standard of BuddyPress themes.
Tomas Puig
Tomas Puig is the Director of Marketing for WP Engine who currently lives and works in San Francisco. Tomas’ career started at NASA Ames research center where he worked on computer security and web development. However he quickly moved to the entertainment and branding side starting in music production with recording such artists as Jack Johnson, Clay McClinton, and Laura Cash. In Advertising after his award winning FuseTV, IFC, and Namco campaigns Tomas was recruited by Studio One Films (Part of the A.G. Nadiadwala Group) to become their head of technical / creative in Bollywood. Where he launched major USA based brands in India and directed music videos.
After returning to the states Tomas worked in the digital ad agency industry with well regarded firms including LEVEL, COG1, Rosetta, and Propane. Some of his major clients included Facebook, Cisco, NetApp, Namco/Bandai, Square-Enix, and Google. His most recent projects included working on digital and brand properties for Kaiser Permanente, New Relic, and the new Tomb Raider video game.
Tomas has directed projects that have won 4 Gold National Addy’s, several Cannes CLIO’s, and festival awards. It should also be noted that he is a giant geek who loves video games (currently playing Bioshock Infinite), Legos, breaking his Arduino set ups, and playing with his dog Éowyn.
Tracy Rotton
Tracy Rotton is a lead web developer for RP3, an advertising agency in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2012, she discovered responsive web design, and became obsessed. Since then, she’s built responsive websites for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Norfolk Southern Corporation, FrontPoint Security, and Long and Foster Real Estate, the latter two on WordPress. Deciding to combine her passions for responsive websites and WordPress, she’s writing a book all about responsive WordPress theming.
Trisha Salas
Trisha Salas works with the awesome team at WP Valet. As a Lead Account Rep she is responsible for everything from debugging code to custom designs. She is a regular contributor to BuddyPress, is part of the dev team working on the Admin Help Plugin (an experimental feature plugin intended for WordPress 4.0) and routinely helps in the WordPress forums. She has recently helped to start the Tulsa WordPress Meetup and – as a part of the Tulsa Web Devs group – worked to host the 200 OK Conference in 2013, Tulsa’s first all web conference.
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon teaches WordPress for the amazing online education company, Treehouse. Before that he taught WordPress, web design and development at the high school and college level. In addition to teaching, Zac runs a web design company that builds $975 templated WordPress sites for small businesses.