Zac Gordon is currently preparing the JavaScript for WordPress Master Course. Previously, Zac taught WordPress for Treehouse, the online technology school. Zac has years of experience teaching WordPress and JavaScript at the high school and college level. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students.

Michelle Marin is a web designer / front-end developer who graduated from the University of South Florida with a BFA in Fine Art – concentration in Graphic Design and Iron Yard where she completed the Front-End Engineering program. Originally from Orlando, she now lives in Tampa creating online brands for entrepreneurs and businesses.

Nizar Khalife Iglesias is the Lead Instructor at Ironhack Miami and has been a Web developer for over 8 years. He teaches people what coding is and how to code. Nizar also writes software for the server, command-line and browser, usually in his preferred language: JavaScript. He loves learning and speaking about code and tries to stay active in developer meetups in South Florida. Aside from that, Nizar is from Puerto Rico and enjoys video games, film and cookies.

Ben is a Midwest dude with a Westcoast lifestyle. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with degrees in Journalism, Spanish and Rhetoric, he took a wrong turn somewhere and found himself in San Francisco working at a technology company. He works with awesome WordPress and Drupal agencies, and also codes very mediocrely in Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, and more. Talk to him about open source, travel, beer, or books.

Patrick is a web enthusiast and loves sharing all sorts of content online. He writes tutorials for WooCommerce, tutorials how to paint toy soldiers (yes for real), and has taught a number of online courses and even written a book. He’s the Product Manager for #WooCommerce at @Automattic, poly, and the guy who makes crazy sound effects.

“Marc Gratch is an independent WordPress consultant, developer and WordPress evangelist. Marc attributes everything he knows about code to the WordPress community, with his initial foray into WordPress ( version 2.8 give or take a point release) he did not know how to code. Today he builds custom themes and plugins for clients, works with plugin authors on premium extensions, contributes to plugins in the repo and co-organizes his local WordPress meetup.

When Marc isn’t doing WordPress things, he is (most often) chasing around his toddler wrangling dogs, going to school, and spending time with his family.”

Ptah Dunbar is a core contributor of WordPress, BuddyPress, bbPress and founder of WP Dev Agency, a WordPress development consultancy. Since 2006, Ptah has been involved in the WordPress eco-system creating themes, plugins, providing WordPress training, pioneering new development best practices and speaking at several WordCamps across the States. He is best known for his work contributing in WordPress and for developments in JavaScript and application frameworks.

Karim Marucchi is the CEO of Crowd Favorite and Chairman of The VeloMedia Group. In the past 20 years, his career path has encompassed a variety of opportunities including founding startups, working for large web agencies and taking companies public. This wealth of experience in taking digital teams across the globe has provided Karim with the necessary foundation and institutional knowledge in leading Crowd Favorite into the growing multinational organization it has become today.

Jim Gilbert has been a leader in the social media space since 2008. His presentations have been seen by thousands of marketers. He speaks each year at The Direct Marketing Association annual conference, Social Media Day, Social Media Week and many colleges and universities. His presentation slides have viewed over 90,000 times. When Jim speaks, he gives it all away! His energy is infectious and his delivery style is thoughtful, entertaining and loaded with powerful takeaways. Jim is CEO of Gilbert Direct Marketing, WorldWide – a digital, direct marketing agency here in South Florida. Follow him on Twitter @gilbertdirect

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 marketing, and SEO to name a few. Karla is a speaker, the winner of a Small Business Influencer award for 2013. Karla has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, T51, NBC6, Social Media Today, and the Sun Sentinel. Karla is the author of Social Media Fame.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.

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 degrees in Computer Science and Computational Math, which he strives to finish one day. He has been a PHP developer for 6 years and a Systems Administrator for several before that. He is currently making awesome things for Linio.com. 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. While at ServerGrove, a previous, employer, he witnessed several hundred WordPress installations and some of the “gotchas” that developers can face.

Ibis is an out-of-the-box thinker with more than two decades of software development experience, with an emphasis in eCommerce and web development. Her work experience includes extensive work in web development, user interface, eCommerce user experience and conversion optimization, product configurators, web optimization, web integrations, payment integrations, mobile websites, internationalization, and database design and optimization. As a Miami native and someone that has worked for many of South Florida’s major technology companies, Ibis is passionate about putting Miami on the map in terms of technology, and seeing her city becoming a major tech hub.

As the Miami Chapter Leader for the nationwide non-profit, Girl Develop It, Ibis volunteers her time to inspire women to see the greatness within them and mentor them as they start a career or transition into a career in computer science. She is most determined to make a difference in the lives of women in Miami, lead a movement to grow the numbers of local women in IT, and play an active role in increasing the Miami software development workforce.

Chris works on the core team at Easy Digital Downloads. When he’s not working on fixing WordPress core bugs ,he’s also a student at the University of Florida.

Binod Purushothaman is the director of product and technology at SiteLock. Binod heads SiteLock’s product development team, using his extensive knowledge from developing several technology startups in the energy, manufacturing and finance sectors in India and the United States.

As lead security analyst, Logan Kipp provides SiteLock’s Partners and Support Services Division with information and training on emerging technologies and threats, as well as providing operational oversight. Logan has seven years experience in the website hosting and security technology field, working previously for GoDaddy.com. Logan is an advocate for strong encryption and works with local organizations to promote security awareness.

Andrew (or Norcross, as most know him) is the founder and lead developer of Reaktiv Studios, an agency focused on solving complex problems with killer WordPress solutions. After quite a few years in the finance industry, Norcross switched to coding and hasn’t looked back. He’s got skin in both the service game — Reaktiv Studios is a WordPress VIP Featured Partner, helping top-tier clients with their WordPress development— and the product game, with Reaktiv’s flagship plugin, Design Palette Pro, continually being developed and supported. An organizer for WordCamp Tampa, Norcross loves to keep giving back to the WordPress community with free plugins, education talks at conferences, and core contribution to WordPress. Norcross lives in Tampa, Florida with his amazing wife, three kids, and rescue dogs that believe they’re humans.

Jose L Pimienta is a developer and designer focusing on front-end technologies. He was born and raised Cuba, where he saw the web for the first time in 2005. He loves music, design and engineering. He is currently building brands and products at Alpis (@alpisdesign)

Frank has been working with WordPress since 2009 and is the founder and CEO of My Local Webstop where he develops Quiz And Survey Master, the highest rated quiz and survey plugin in the WordPress.org repository. He is an organizer of the Gainesville WordPress Meetup and the lead organizer of this year’s WordCamp Jacksonville.

In his spare time, he is the host of The WP Report which is a podcast about improving your WordPress site. He loves to blog about WordPress, Marketing, and Business and has spoken at various conferences including WordCamp Tampa, WordCamp Orlando, and WordCamp Raleigh. Above all else, he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter in Starke, FL.

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!”

Bruno Cunha is a self-taught front-end developer working at EarlyShares, where he helps build platforms for crowdfunding commercial real estate. A Miami native, Bruno likes contributing to the local tech community – most recently, he gave a talk for the Miami Ruby Brigade on JavaScript for Rails Developers, as well as a two-part talk for the Front-End Developers of Miami on mob programming using TDD and JavaScript. He loves building modern and performant interfaces and happily welcomes any challengers to a battle in Super Smash Bros.

Rachel Carden is a web developer and designer for the University of Alabama and founder of WPCampus, a community and conference focused on using WordPress in the world of higher education. When she’s not using WordPress to help build the world of higher ed web, she’s a theme and plugin developer who enjoys promoting the importance of accessibility and working to encourage collaboration and professional development as a conference and meetup organizer. Rachel lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama but you can find her on Twitter, GitHub, and bamadesigner.com.

Bill Gadless is President and Co-Founder of emagine (www.emagine.com). After dropping out of college and dabbling in web design at the dawn of the industry (1996), Bill co-founded emagine along with Brett Cohen with zero dollars in their pockets and nothing but drive and a love for the web. On their own proprietary CMS, emagine started doing websites for anyone who needed one with budgets of $500 – $1,000. Today, under Bill’s Sales & Marketing leadership and Brett’s Technical leadership, emagine is a 50-person WordPress-based Digital Agency with close to 2,000 websites under their belt in their focus sectors: Healthcare, High-Tech and B2B. Bill blogs regularly and speaks at WordCamps across the U.S.

Kimberly Lipari is Co-Founder and Director of Operations for valet.io, formerly WP Valet. Valet started life as the original support company and has evolved into a full service agency that provides full Development, Design, and Site Management. Kimberly has written for WP Elevation, presented a webinar, and spoken at various WordCamps about team and client interactions. She was recently featured in an Online Summit called ‘Tracking the Dream Team Code’, helping business owners build the best teams possible. In her downtime Kimberly is usually managing her circus of three kiddos. She cooks and listens to audiobooks for therapy and loves any excuse to get outside and do something fun. She lives just outside of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Michele Butcher is the lead WordPress Security Specialist for WP Security Lock and the newest Support Engineer for Yoast. She is from Carbondale, Illinois which is at the other end of the state from Chicago and has much better scenery. Michele is also the lead organizer of the Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup and teaches beginners and Intermediate WordPress for John A Logan College.

Cliff is a Lead UX Engineer at Pardot, a Salesforce company—a leader in B2B marketing automation — where he is the resident WordPress developer. He’s the co-founder multiple profitable side projects, such as Evermore and TuneDig. He co-organizes amUX, a morning meetup focused for local UXers. He’s an accomplished speaker who’s given talks around the world. He’s also been developing with WordPress for many years, contributes back into the community, and participates in WordCamps.

Cliff lives with his wife, April, in Atlanta, where he can be found at a concert, cycling around the city, or playing guitar.

Free started her digital journey in high school when she was introduced to HTML. Even then, she had an inkling about the massive impact of social media, and soon began creating her own MySpace themes. In the years since, she has continued to gain experience as a Web Producer, Web Developer and Social Media Specialist, or as she calls it, “The Voice”. But don’t get the wrong idea. Coworkers describe Free as a brilliant yet modest team player. In her down time, she enjoys spending time with her daughter, sampling new beers, redesigning logos, and attempting to keep up with local tech meetups.

Dr Nancy Richmond is a professor and leading speaker in social media, personal branding and marketing. Her passion is to empower and train leaders in effectively leveraging social media for their careers and business. She teaches social media classes for the College of Business and is the co-founder of the Social Media Association at Florida International University.

Dr. Richmond has worked with leading universities including MIT, Harvard University, Florida International University and Northeastern University. Nancy has a passion for social media with over 80,000+ followers on Twitter, 5,000+ connections on LinkedIn and 7,000+ followers on Instagram. Nancy’s most recent project and research #LeadersGetSocial explores how leaders can use social media to succeed in their careers and organizations.

Dr. Anthony Miyazaki leads the Department of Marketing in the College of Business at Florida International University and directs the Master of Science in Marketing program. Over the past several years, he has worked with his team of faculty and administrative staff to reinvent processes so that they are sensible, effective, and efficient by (1) combining innovation with analytics, (2) developing synergies between employees’ professional brands and the organization’s brands, and (3) enhancing the social media influence of his team members. He teaches Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, and Marketing Management at both graduate and undergraduate levels, as well as an undergraduate Marketing Yourself (Personal Branding) course.

With a degree in Broadcast Communications from Florida Atlantic University, Christina began her career as a video editor. After moving back home to Orlando, she applied her visual and story telling skills and knack for planning to project management. Her career as a Project Manager began in the technology industry, working with the biggest college sports entities to rebrand and revitalize their web properties and mobile applications. Christina became a certified Scrum Master while using Scrum Methodology to launch the PAC-12 Conference website. Most recently, Christina served as a Project Manager at Lightmaker USA, where she focused on building new properties and servicing maintenance clients. Currently, Christina works at 10up, a fully distributed agency working with 10+ clients/projects. Christina applies her intense work ethic to provide a fun and rewarding working environment for her team and clients.

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

Carl Alexander is a PHP developer from Montreal, Canada. He has a website where he publishes articles on a regular basis. It’s his way to help the community with these hard-to-learn topics. It’s also why he’s excited to speak at WordCamp Miami. It’s another way for him to help out.

Besides that, he’s been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. He also helps organize other WordPress events during the year. You can find him on Twitter and GitHub.

Pascal Depuhl is a visual content creator at Photography by Depuhl, a Miami based production company. He’s been capturing still images for over 25 years and even though he got into video only 5 years ago, you’ll find his award winning and mind changing videos on National Geographic, Netflix, the BBC and many of his clients websites. It’s common to find him in the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of South America and it’s just as common to walk away from one of his short documentary style films with your mind blown.

“Marc Benzakein has been working online since the mid 90s, starting as a Network Administrator for a small, independent ISP in Southern California and has been involved in almost all aspects of technology. In 2009, he started developing in WordPress, first for his own purposes and then for clients. In early 2013, he got involved with ServerPress, LLC, makers of DesktopServer, a local development tool created for WordPress designers and developers.

Marc lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife, Jessica and a gaggle of children currently ranging in age from a few months to 13 years old.”

Patrick Alexander is the CEO and founder of WPBICO, an all in one WordPress solutions company specializing in covering all the website needs from bloggers, small businesses to corporations. An avid WordPress enthusiast and lover of all things tech, Patrick has devoted himself to the tech industry for over 15 years gaining extensive experience in Programming, Web Development, System Administration and Technician; and a resume with related positions in the U.S Air Force, Florida International University and several Internet Start Ups.

Rocío Valdivia is a Spanish Computer Engineer in love with Open Source, technology, travelling and personal challenges. She enjoys working every day as a Community Wrangler at WordCamp Central for Automattic. Rocío has experience as a WordPress & BuddyPress consultant and specialist developer since 2009.

Part of the Spanish translation team at GlotPress, and Spanish WordPress and BuddyPress forums administrator. Co-organiser of WordCamp Sevilla and WordCamp Europe 2015 and 2016, and co-author of “WordPress para Dummies” (2012). Lecturer at conferences and seminars. Find Rocío on Twitter: @rociovaldi.

As a hands on leader of multiple successful companies, Brazilian-born and South Florida-raised Alex Oliveira has helped clients advance their businesses and brands by building and executing interactive marketing campaigns for over 15 years.
With a heavy emphasis on Lead Gen, Alex has created a name for himself as a well-respected marketing technologist and entrepreneur. From small to Mid-sized companies to non-profits and Fortune 500 brands like Ford and Allstate, Alex enjoys a diverse portfolio of clientele.
Alex’s other passions include adventuring with his wife and 3 kids, giving back to the local community and having his morning coffee with a side of NPR.

Steven Alig spends his days planning applications and web projects with WordPress. He has been developing and designing websites since 1997. In 2004 he started his own agency. South Florida Web Studio has changed and adapted many times over the years since its inception and it continues to deliver quality web projects for a variety of clients. Since 2010 WordPress is the exclusive platform of choice for Steven and his agency.
He is a community volunteer serving on various Web advisory committees for Broward College and Broward Schools, as well as an organizer for Creative Mornings Fort Lauderdale, and WordCamp Miami. Steven also coaches soccer for both his daughters’ recreational league teams.

Jean Felisme has been a builder of things on the web for 10 plus years, as a freelancer and entrepreneur. He fell into WordPress back in 2008 and has never looked back. Now, he is a co-founder of RateMyBarber.com and a teacher of web development skills to students of all ages.

Father of two sugar filled girls and husband of a very forgiving wife. Best friend to the Stewmister, Miniature Schnauzer, that always has his back. He is also a big Football fan and music lover.

Shayla Price creates and promotes content. She lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Originally from Louisiana, Shayla lives in the Fort Lauderdale area. Connect with her on Twitter: @shaylaprice