Category: Speaker Announcements

John is one of the WordPress core developers, a member of the WordPress security team, and was the release lead for WordPress 4.1. He works as a senior developer at Human Made in the UK, and has over ten years’ experience developing with WordPress.

Nicole has designed websites professionally since 2006, with the last 3 years focused on WordPress development. Currently she is a Designer/Front End Developer for BoldGrid and living in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In her spare time she enjoys listening to music, playing board games, and watching Star Wars with her two young children.

Grzegorz is a passionate code wrangler and open-source contributor based in Oleśnica, Poland. He writes JavaScript at Automattic and helps develop Gutenberg – the new WordPress editing experience. When not coding, Grzegorz enjoys spending time with his adorable wife and daughter. He likes traveling to new places and playing basketball with his friends.

Roxana Colorado is a business strategist dedicated to helping you launch, grow or rescue your business. Founder & CEO of @Dare2BNYC.

Roxana has lived in seven countries throughout Europe, Latin America and Africa for work, volunteer, and study abroad opportunities. In addition, she brings over ten years of project management experience working with Fortune 500 corporations. Since leaving the financial sector in 2010, Roxana has leveraged her entrepreneurial experience coupled with her philanthropic accomplishments to provide clients with the clarity, knowledge, and skills required to establish the businesses and lifestyles they desire.

Zach is the Chief Executive Officer at Mindsize, where he leads a team that designs, builds and optimizes e-commerce storefronts. He’s been active in the e-commerce space for 5 years and has been building websites for over two decades. He’s spoken everywhere from IBM to Ogilvy on topics ranging from Designer/Developer Workflow to What Agencies Need to Know About E-Commerce. When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time behind the lens as a professional concert photographer and photojournalist.

Josh Pollock is the founder and lead developer of Caldera Labs, creators of Caldera Forms, a drag and drop responsive form builder for WordPress. He is also a WordPress core contributor, author of two books about WordPress development and a member of The WPCrowd.

Miles, who is currently 11, lives to learn about tech. With several years of programming study already under his belt, Miles specializes in Python but has also studied C/C++, HTML, PHP, CSS, JavaScript and more. Born in to a wired world, Miles sees technology as a positive asset. He believes there is room for technology in everyone’s life and room for anyone, of any age, within the tech community.

Miles has contributed as a passionate committee member for Be The Difference Foundation, Sofia’s Hope, and Polyblox Totems educational toys. When hanging out at home, Miles can be found solving Rubiks cubes of all shapes and sizes, practicing American Sign Language and working on his newest web project using WordPress www.LanguageIsNotaBarrier.com a site devoted to fostering world peace.

Cody is an e-commerce consultant focused on helping stores with sales and technical challenges. Co-founder at Mode Effect.

Chris is a full time Back End Developer for Modern Tribe.  Chris has dreamed of working with Tribe for a couple years so he pushed myself to reach the level needed to work there.  Now he can confidently and proudly say he loves his job, and his co-workers and the work he does.  WooCommerce has been his specialty for a three years and he works with it daily at Tribe.

Sandy Edwards has been working in the online marketing space for over 7 years. She started at a niche firm that utilized WordPress to create sites quickly utilizing several options frameworks. Today, she owns Data Driven Labs to bring analytics to all size companies. 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 2018 will bring to the tech space in Florida!

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 or worked in a real office and thus is quite well-versed on the realities of being a successful freelancer, remote contractor, 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.

Carole is a former Luxembourgish government agent on a four-year sabbatical to take care of her health and to find new professionally enjoyable challenges. She lives in the German Eifel since 2014 together with her husband and three French bulldogs.

The magic of WordCamp Europe 2016 in Vienna made her become a true WordPress Community-Junkie. Through several WordCamps as a passionate volunteer, she got involved in the organization of WordCamps without even having used WordPress before. Meanwhile, she works as a WordPress Community Manager for Plesk.

Raquel Landefeld* is a serial volunteer with a young soul. In 2010 she co-founded Mode Effect, a Phoenix-based WordPress agency that specializes in WooCommerce integration. Intentional about community building, she believes that wherever her feet are is where the building happens. Currently she is active in several communities from tech to government to neighborhoods and more. You can usually find her organizing a WordCamp or volunteering pretty much anywhere.

On the personal side of her life she is a wife & mum, an active dancer, a music lover, an amateur photographer, and has a 20-year-curated Wonder Woman collection.

*Loves doing cartwheels

John Maeda is an American executive spearheading a new convergence across the design + technology industries. He joined Automattic in 2016 as Global Head of Computational Design + Inclusion and previously served as Design Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a world-leading venture capital firm and was the 16th President of the Rhode Island School of Design.

His books include The Laws of Simplicity, Creative Code and Redesigning Leadership. He holds degrees in Electrical Engineering + Computer Science from MIT, an MBA from Arizona State U, and a PhD from University of Tsukuba in Japan. Maeda was the recipient of the White House’s National Design Award, the Tribeca Film Festival’s Disruptive Innovation Award for STEM to STEAM, the Blouin Foundation’s Creative Leadership Award, the AIGA Medal, the Raymond Loewy Foundation Prize, the Mainichi Design Prize, the Tokyo Type Director’s Club Prize, and induction into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame.

Based in Arlington, Virginia, Tara Claeys is the owner of Design TLC, and a co-founder of Nice Work, LLC, producing custom websites for small and medium businesses. Tara’s focus is on private school and non profit websites, although she has also worked on business-to-business, restaurant, e-commerce and real estate projects. She works closely with her clients to create effective, clean and personal communication platforms.

Tara is obsessed with digital efficiency and productivity tools and techniques.

In addition to running her own companies, she is a regular attendee at the WordPress DC Meetup and runs the Arlington/NoVa WordPress branch of this Meetup. Tara is also a co-host of the podcast Hallway Chats.

WordPress. BuddyPress. bbPress. Sandhills. Co-host WordPress Weekly. East Troy, WI Village Trustee. Conquistador de la Web.

Just back from four years in the high desert of California, St. Louisan Mary Baum is the founder and principal of RacquetPress, which builds Genesis child themes and more for the tennis industry.

A veteran creative and degreed designer, she speaks on WP design and development and helps organize WordCamp St. Louis.

Since 1998 Birgit Pauli-Haack has worked with nonprofits as a web developer, a technology strategist, a trainer and community organizer. She founded Pauli Systems, LC in 2002, now a team of six. It is a 100% distributed company. Since 2010, her team has used WordPress to build new nonprofit sites and applications.

In her spare time, Birgit serves as a deputy with the WordPress Global Community team, as a WordPress Meetup organizer and a Tech4Good organizer.

Mauricio Dinarte is passionate about Drupal, teaching, and traveling. Over the last few years, he has presented 25+ sessions and full day trainings in 12+ Drupal events across America and Europe, including DrupalCon Vienna.

In Nicaragua, his tropical home, Mauricio serves as a lead organizer of the Drupal community where he had helped to organize meetups, trainings, and a DrupalCamp. He also volunteers with the WordPress community and is part of the program team for WordCamp Managua 2018.

Based in Basalt, Colorado, Lindsay Halsey is a co-founder of WP SEO Hub, a do-it-yourself WordPress SEO platform, and partner of webShine, a search engine marketing agency. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Economics and spent several years in the outdoor industry as a mountain guide and ski patroller. In 2008 Lindsay made the leap into search engine marketing. Her primary interest is search engine optimization for WordPress websites. Outside of the office, Lindsay is a mom, wife and enthusiastic skier and biker. She also is the founder of a nonprofit in Tanzania, To Return.

Melanie G Adcock has been designing websites since the late 90’s. In May of 2010 Melanie became a full-time freelance Web Designer / Developer. She has been using WordPress exclusively since 2011. Her current clients include several small businesses, continuing care retirement communities, churches, and other non-profit organizations.

Melanie Adcock is a past presenter at WordCamp Atlanta, WordCamp Birmingham, and WordCamp Miami and various local WordPress MeetUp Groups. She lives in Stuart, Florida.

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 our her skillset. This combination of disciplines led her to adopt a strategy-based approach to design, focused on solving tangible problems and achieving real goals based on how people think.

She loves the open source community, and when she is not working on projects she speaks/volunteers/organizes at events and workshops around the country. Her passions are communication and empowerment, and she believes in the power of “Why?”

Dwayne has been working in tech and open source sales since 2005. He knew as soon as he started working with Java middleware developers he never wanted to work outside of open source ever again. Dwayne first started building in Drupal and WordPress for the San Francisco Improv teams and projects. He fell in the love the community and then found a position at Pantheon at the end of 2013.

As a Community and Agency Success Manager he has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland to MIT and Stanford.

Andrew currently works for Pantheon providing consulting for their agency partners and giving back to the WordPress community.

As a former web developer, Andrew spent his time on large scale projects for clients such as AMC Networks, Frito Lay, National Van Lines and more. With over 10 years of web development experience, specializing in WordPress, he is a seasoned veteran.

Joshua is a husband, father, smart-ass (his words, not ours), rabble-rouser, co-founder of Pagely, inventor of managed WordPress Hosting. A 15 year veteran of the web industry leading teams in design, marketing, and product development. He thinks an old fashioned work ethic is more important than a round of funding.

Agency and Community Engineer at Pantheon, Tessa has been a web developer for over 10 years. She enjoys front-end development but also loves to build sites from start to finish. She started in Joomla, moved into WordPress shortly after and most recently has been digging into Drupal.

She enjoys teaching others to code, mentoring junior developers and speaking at conferences and youth events. She is an instructor and retired Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It Minneapolis, WordCamp Minneapolis Organizer and founder of Outspoken Women. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations rescue dogs in her free time.

Francesca is the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround. She is part of the WordPress community team, organising 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.

Lead Mobile Engineer at Crossfield, I build awesome mobile products with a special care on crafting slick and engaging user experiences. He pioneered live video streaming back in 2008 on the very first iPhone SDK (that’s what it was called back then) building the now deceased Orb Live app at Orb Networks, Inc (acquired by Qualcomm in 2013).

Miriam leads the development team at Pondstone, a boutique digital marketing agency in Canada’s national capital, Ottawa. She started playing around with WordPress for personal projects in 2009, and for professional projects two years later. Miriam is also one of the co-organizers for WordCamp Ottawa, and helps run the social media for the Ottawa WordPress community.

Brian Richards is the creator of WPSessions.com and has been using WordPress since 2007 and training and leading development teams since 2011. In addition to investing his time into training, Brian has had the opportunity to work with many amazing WordPress agencies and experts over these last several years. This has allowed Brian to help develop sites for Microsoft, Disney, TIME, YMCA, and numerous others. Brian has an affinity for self-directed learning and helping others to develop skills and workflows to better solve important and complicated problems. He can’t resist helping good people do great things.

Rodrigo Donini is a nerd, developer, teacher, husband, dad, curious about all the things around him and not necessarily in this order. He is speaker, WordPress evangelist very involved with the community and currently is Toptal Software Engineer living in the south of Brazil.

He works as developer remotely for 8 years exclusively with WordPress, working on different projects from the simplest to the most complex. Also, he is an organizer of WordPress Meetups and WordCamp Porto Alegre, in Brazil.

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.