WordCamp Miami is happy to announce the eight (and potential final wave) of approved and confirmed speakers and panelists for WordCamp Miami 2017.
Allie Nimmons
Allie is a self-taught freelance web designer and internet marketer. After attending WCMIA in 2015 and being blown away, she vowed that one day she would be a speaker at a WordCamp conference. She designs and builds sites using WordPress and focuses on SEO rich sites for small businesses and brands who may not be able to afford a custom site from an agency. When she isn’t designing and learning, she’s hanging out with her boyfriend in South Florida and listening to podcasts.
Andrew Norcross
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 son and a rescue dog that believes he’s a human.
Victor Santoyo
Mark Jaquith
Brian Rotsztein
Zac Gordon
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.
Steven Alig
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.
Michael Dyer
Michael Dyer is a co-founder and CTO of Trapezoid, Inc., a South Florida-based security company focusing on hardware trust. He is active in the local security community and is also a co-founder of DigitalEra Group, LLC in Miami.
Michael loves to teach and talk technology. He built his first “full stack” production website in 1995, and has been building connected platforms ever since.
Peter Nova
App/Web Architect & Senior Developer. Mainly embedded in the Angular Ecosystem.
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.
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.
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: 
Paul Gilzow is the lead programmer for the Division of Marketing and Communications at the University of Missouri, where he has worked as a Web applications programmer since 2005. Certified by the SANS Institute in Web application security, Paul frequently works with campus IT security to deliver presentations to fellow developers and assists in triaging and cleaning up compromised sites on campus. He is also heavily involved with his local OWASP chapter and teaches classes on secure coding practices to local areas businesses and organizations.
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.
Jonathan began tinkering with WordPress websites and plugins eleven years ago, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the 
Shawn is the Director of IT at Actionable.co, and lives in Ottawa, Canada. His current mandate is the development of the distributed company’s internal business systems and processes, which rely heavily on the integration of various services’ APIs (including WordPress REST) to automate regular processes for this distributed company. Shawn has over 20 years of experience as a web application developer, and has been working with WordPress since 2009.
Robert McFrazier has been in the software industry in the Seattle area for over 15 years in many different roles including LAMP engineer, software developer, technical trainer, architect, technical support, and manager. I have been on the technical review team for two Cassandra books: Learning Cassandra for Administrators and Cassandra Data Modeling and Analysis. Robert enjoys learning new things and working on strong teams. He spends his free time with wife and son trying to stay dry in the pacific northwest.
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.
Auston is a self-taught programmer, polyglot (PHP, Ruby, Python, JS) & 2x CTO. He’s currently the head instructor at Wyncode Academy, where he helps people develop and refine programming abilities over 10 weeks.
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.
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
Joseph has been designing and developing websites for over eight years, specializing in UX and UI for both front-end and back-end users. Working with major brands and companies such as Alamo, Dell, DHL, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Intuit, Kabaam and Norwegian Cruise Line – he has developed many different websites ranging from Landing Pages, to Microsites and Single Page Web Apps. Twitter: 
Amanda Giles is WordPress Evangelist and Enthusiast who loves converting people to WordPress. She’s been developing websites since 1994 and has been building WordPress themes since 2009. She hails from New Hampshire where she founded the Seacoast NH WordPress meetup in 2011. She works as an independent consultant and also as part of Spark Development, a small agency focusing on WordPress web development. You can often locate Amanda by her loud sneezes and it’s likely because of these sneezes that she leads such a blessed life. Find her on Twitter @AmandaGilesNH or @SparkDevs
Shelly Peacock is the founder of the Spinbird Group, a WordPress Consulting and Design Group. She has a “full-stack” professional background of over 15 years which includes sales, marketing, and training social media. An active member of the WordPress community, she has traveled and spoken at WordCamps both nationally and internationally. Her favorite things? Hole-in-the-wall eateries that rock and creating artwork … with blowtorches and with code.
Tanner is a web developer and entrepreneur located in the small town of Granite Falls, Wa. He’s passionate about using technology to promote community. When he’s not tracking down new leads or coding, he loves playing music and spending time with his wife and 4 (soon to be 5) kids. 
Jason Mazier is the President of Mazier Media, a marketing agency based in Fort Lauderdale. Jason was born and raised in New York City. In his 17-year career, Jason worked on multi-channel marketing campaigns for such clients as Boyce Technologies, LLERO Magazine, Broward Center for the Performing Arts, LiveNation, Holy Cross Hospital, Huntington National Bank, and JPMorgan Chase Bank. Jason is also the founder and host of devLatino – Digital Empowerment Voyage, a podcast highlighting Latinos in technology and the digital space. Follow him @jasonmazier
Michelle is an independent graphic designer and frontend developer in Minneapolis. Prior to beginning her career, she studied Visual Communications, with minors in Psychology and Sociology. As her work progressed, she also branched into front-end development and user experience design to round out her skillset. 
Sandy Edwards has been working in the online marketing space for over 5 years. She started at a niche firm that utilized WordPress to create sites quickly utilizing several options frameworks. Today, she owns CESquared a WordPress focused Agency that engages in SEO, Project Management and Development. She loves to give back by teaching kids about coding, WordPress, and other technical skills. Sandy is very active in the Orlando WordPress community and is excited to see what changes are coming to the tech space in Florida!
Krystal works hand-in- hand with emagine’s Sales and Marketing teams to identify qualified clients in the company’s core sectors, establish connections and maintain relationships with prospective clients. Krystal served in the U.S. Navy for more than 8 years, traveling the World on aircraft carriers. Upon entering civilian life, she received her Business Marketing degree from Bridgewater State University. Outside of the office, Krystal enjoys catching up on her latest business podcast or book and getting some sun with her 6-pound Chihuahua, Jessie.
As a Web Strategist and Account Manager, Leah partners with emagine’s clients across the healthcare, biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device sectors to explore opportunities to enhance their online presence with activities such as web design and development, SEO, PPC, social media, content management solutions in WordPress. After attending the University at Buffalo and New York University, Leah began her career in digital strategy working with pharmaceutical companies on their digital strategies. In her spare time, you can find Leah at Orange Theory Fitness or Instagramming her 1 ½ year old Cavapoo, Stella Wayne Rose and 1-year old Cockapoo, Carter James.
Meagan Hanes is a WordPress expert based in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with over 20 years creating websites by hand and over 10 years using WordPress. She creates elegant, high-performance, mobile-optimized web solutions – front-end, back-end, and everything in between. You may have seen her present talks across a variety of WordPress subjects. She gives back to local communities through organizing WordCamp Ottawa 2016 and 2017, running meetups such as the Ottawa WordPress Community, and teaching others to code via Ladies Learning Code. Meagan is a part of the OTGS family, makers of the WPML and Toolset plugins.
Kimberly Lipari is the CoFounder of 
Louise is an eternal web development geek and social media junkie. She’s a native of Metro Detroit and an alumna of the University of Michigan. She learned about the human side of computer science while earning a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science and has fined tuned her web developer skills over the course of a 20+ year career building, breaking, and fixing sites for a multitude of startups. She’s never had a “real” job and thus is quite well-versed on the realities of being a successful freelancer and small business owner. Louise loves coffee, is full of useless facts, and is eagerly waiting for her shot on Jeopardy. She lives in South Florida with her three bouncing boys and her husband.
Eduardo Carreiro is a Brazilian web designer and social marketer. His first site was in 1998, for a pharmaceutical company. He lives in the USA since 2007, when a company hired him in Brazil to develop websites in Portuguese. Since then, he improved his skills, leading projects in WordPress websites for multinational companies and Digital Marketing strategies. Recently, he opened your own company.
Melanie Adcock has been designing websites for more than fifteen years and has been using WordPress exclusively for the past six years. Her current clients include several small businesses, continuing care retirement communities, churches, and faith-based ministries. Melanie also mentors and consults with other WordPress enthusiasts. Twitter: 
David is a Growth Engineer, geek, podcaster, and serial entrepreneur who has trained thousands of small business owners and sales professionals on how to find and attract customers in a changing marketplace dominated by Google, Facebook and other 21st-Century phenomena. His clients include multinational conglomerates, Mom & Pops, and everything in between… even household names like Ziglar, Inc. In 1998, David founded 
David Laietta is an organizer of WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando. He has been using WordPress for nine years and builds custom themes and plugins for clients. In addition to WordPress, David is passionate about open source software, online freedoms, internet culture, and constantly learning about the world. He looks forward to chatting with you at WordCamp Miami or on Twitter @davidlaietta.
Andrew currently works for 
Tara Claeys, of Design TLC and Nice Work, LLC, provides custom website and graphic design services, with a focus on creating effective, clean and personalized communication platforms for small to medium businesses. Tara has a marketing background, combined with several years working with WordPress, helping her find solutions for complex marketing communication and website functionality challenges.
Brian, a former Marine Corps software developer is the Co-Founder of 
Project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress. WordPress contributor, BackPress supporter. Cranky driver. Puppy whisperer. Naps required. Currently the Director of Web Engineering at 
Syed Balkhi is an award winning young entrepreneur with several 7 figure online businesses. He was recognized as the top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by United Nations. His work has been featured in Forbes, Inc, Washington Post, FoxBusiness, Entrepreneur, Wired, and many top publications.
Pete is a full-time senior web engineer with 10up. He’s been working with WordPress the past 5+ years, but has been doing web development professionally since the mid 90s, and is the creator of baconipsum.com.
Patrick Rauland is an e-commerce geek. He worked for WooCommerce as Product Manager and helped them to grow into the most popular e-commerce platform on the web. He now creates consults with WooCommerce as an e-commerce expert, he coaches companies on how to optimize their store, and he creates the e-commerce content for Lynda.com.
Christie Chirinos is a Partner in & the Business Manager at Caldera Labs, a WordPress plugin company. Caldera is the company led by Josh Pollock behind Caldera Forms, a leading drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress, and a handful of other free and premium plugins. She has been selling online since 2007, having worked on ecommerce sites, monetized blogs, technology strategy for nonprofit organizations, and now, digital downloads. Christie received her Master of Business Administration degree with a specialization in information systems management from Florida State University, and is currently based out of New York City.
Rebecca is a Michigan native and president of Web Savvy Marketing. She has as a well-rounded business background within SMB and enterprise organizations, as well as over fifteen years of experience in sales and online marketing. She provides one-on-one SEO coaching, teaches group on-site workshops, and is an SEO instructor at diyseocourses.com and seobootcamp.com.
Diana Espino is a Software Architect and Zend Certified PHP Engineer with 15+ years experience in Full Stack web development. She specializes in large-scale web applications, modern PHP and JavaScript frameworks, growing engineering teams, and creating great engineering culture. Recently, Diana was recognized by Google as a Passionate Woman in Technology. Her passion has helped produce 2 of the Top PHP Conferences in South Florida – SunshinePHP and WordCamp Miami.
Mike Herchel is a front-end web developer at Lullabot and has worked on prominent projects such as the Syfy network, SpaceX, Principal Financial, and more. He’s been passionate about web development since creating his first website in 2001. Mike started using Drupal in 2008, and has been involved in the Drupal community since 2010, and is one of the organizers for the annual Florida Drupalcamp conference. He enjoys presenting at conferences, sharing knowledge as much as possible, and writing about himself in the third person.
Chris is a developer for UF Health at the University of Florida who has been working on WordPress since 2008. Over the years Chris built one of the largest security plugins on WordPress.org as well as numerous other plugins, themes and other solutions. When not coding Chris loves to teach and has presented at numerous WordCamps and other conferences as well as taught computer security for St. Edward’s University and other University courses ranging from computers to aviation.
CEO of Perfect Dashboard. OpenSource CMS aficionado. Joomla Extension Directory team member, and WordPress Directory aspiring team member. A frequent speaker at WordCamps and Joomla Days around the world. 10 years of experience in freelance & agency business. Foodie & computer games freak. Originally from Poland, excited to visit in Miami!
A lover of all things Philadelphia who is intrigued by the constant expansion of the tech world, Jodie Riccelli began using WordPress in 2006. A graduate of Millersville University, Jodie brings 15 years of sales and marketing experience to WebDevStudios. Entrepreneurs in the real estate, music, technology and education industries have recognized her marketing expertise and ability to restructure and systemize businesses. A self-proclaimed foodie and music aficionado, she now lends her creativity to create unique web strategies and solutions for clients. 
Project lead for BuddyPress and bbPress. WordPress contributor, BackPress supporter. Cranky driver. Puppy whisperer. Naps required.
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.
Jayvie likes to call himself an accidental careerist in web development: he graduated college with a biology degree but life had other plans for him. He started developing static websites in 2002, and has been an avid user of WordPress to this end since its first release. Since then, he’s found himself a happy little corner in an integrated marketing company in Baltimore, where he uses WordPress beyond site integration.
Troy Dean is co-founder of WP Elevation, the world’s largest business community for WordPress consultants and freelancers. He is also co-founder of RockStar Empires, and online education platform that helps entrepreneurs use the Internet to scale their businesses. He is a proud university dropout and freaking loves the Internet. He is also a voice-over artist, singer and guitar player. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife, who runs a psychology podcast on WordPress, and his dog Lucy who is more a Drupal kinda gal.
Naomi’s been working with WordPress as a professional developer since 2005, and you can currently find her over at gravityplus.pro, where she specializes in quickly delivering custom business applications at a fraction of the cost, and curating The Gravity Guide. She contributes back to the WordPress project through the core code, the codex documentation, free plugins, organizing the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, organizing WordCamp Atlanta, and speaking at WordCamps.
Tracy (or 
When not banging his head on his monitor, attempting a blood sacrifice to get a particular piece of code working, Cal enjoys building and managing development teams using his widely imitated but never patented management style of “management by wandering around”.
Chris Coyier is a web designer who writes about web design at 