We have the entertainment booked!
We’ve narrowed the list of speakers and they have been notified.
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Andrea Zoellner
Andrea is a 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, Canada, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her adventures on her travel blog capsulesuitcase.com.
Joshua Giowaya
I’m passionate about creating well-crafted, visually engaging and highly usable digital experiences. I have 10+ Years in web design & development at advertising and digital agencies, plus a number of years running my own consultancy. I also bring an extensive background in design that has proven invaluable when contributing to the design process and communicating with creative teams. Currently, I’m a WordPress consultant extremely active in the WordPress community. I regularly attend and speak at local WordPress Meetups. My hope is to give back to a community that has shared so much knowledge with me.
Gayle Williams
Gayle Williams, owner of Vision Marketing in Sarasota, FL, has spent the majority of her career as a marketing professional directing marketing operations for not-for-profits and small businesses. Gayle moved over to agency account management in 2002 and founded her own agency in 2008. From directing strategy and client relations she moved into hands-on design and development—growing in the opposite direction than most designers has had its strategic advantages. Today she runs a thriving digital marketing and WordPress design business from her home office and enjoys the work-family balance it provides.
Gayle was an early inbound marketing adopter as a Hubspot partner agency and maintains her Inbound Marketing certification. She is also a WP Elevation-certified Digital Business Consultant. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and a Masters in Adult Learning and Development.
Jacob Smith
Jacob Smith is the Chief Technology Officer at A Brave New, a Seattle based boutique marketing firm. Jacob‘s work with WordPress spans more than a decade. From theme development to training to design, he has dabbled with it all.
He is excited to give back to this community that has given so much.
Alain Schlesser
Alain is a freelance software engineer and WordPress consultant living in Germany.
He is the maintainer of WP-CLI and is sponsored by Yoast to work on WordPress Core, where he maintains the Bootstrap/Load component and tries to tackle the architectural pain points of this popular CMS.
Passionate about software architecture and code quality, he never misses an opportunity to share best practices and tries to live up to his educational aspirations through public speaking and blogging.
You can read his thoughts on code & other things at https://www.alainschlesser.com or say hello on Twitter under the handle @schlessera.
Jocelyn Mozak
WP Agency Owner, Speaker & Business Strategist
As a Cornell & Stanford University graduate and Intel engineer turned homemaker and entrepreneur; I know the unique challenges of walking away from one’s expected plan in life to create your own unique path.
While my education in engineering certainly refined my technical and analytical skills, it is my passion for what I do that makes me an outstanding WordPress website designer. I’m an expert in thinking outside the box and filtering out the key points amidst all the noise.
I have over a decade of experience building, running and wrangling a 6-Figure WordPress Web Design Agency working part-time while having two boys at home under the age of thirteen.
I love life, family, friends and running my business with my team!
Jessica Ortega
I have been working with WordPress for over a decade, starting in web hosting technical support, server administration, terms of service enforcement for a managed WordPress platform, and now as a technical writer and security analyst. I am passionate about WordPress security and use my position as a technical writer with SiteLock to help educate small business and website owners on the best ways to keep their livelihoods secure. I also host a bi-weekly podcast called Decoding Security that provides cybersecurity best practices for the novice website owner.
Grant Landram
Grant is a leader of digital teams focused on consultative strategy, engineering, and execution of high scale web software projects for companies such as Microsoft, Google, Adobe, AARP, BBC America, and more. Most recently as the Vice President of Client Strategy at 10up, a leading agency in enterprise WordPress development, Grant managed digital strategy and business development teams. In previous positions he was focused on PMO leadership, project and team management, and digital strategy consulting.
Grant is an active member of the WordPress and Seattle community, helping organize Meetups and WordCamps in the area since 2012, volunteering at tech events such as GiveCamp Seattle, as well as speaking at conferences around the country.
David Greenwald
I’m a freelance WordPress developer and performance engineer working solo in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been a full-time WordPress dev since leaving journalism in 2017 after a 10-year career as a music critic and culture writer. I’m passionate about making websites 10s of milliseconds faster.
Rhonda Negard
Rhonda is the alpha dog at Fat Dog Creatives, a full-service design studio…of one. With direct and unfettered access to your designer, you can contact her immediately when you have a need or concern–-no middle-person or gatekeeper. While she works collaboratively with marketing teams and associations throughout the US remotely, she also works with businesses local to the Tacoma/Seattle areas. She moves around the country every few years, so her next or previous (Austin, San Antonio, and Washington, DC) locale may indeed be near you!
Most of her clients are associations, insurance companies, financial services firms, construction and development companies that desire an experienced, educated professional who knows and understand their industries. She holds a BA and MA in communications and speaks on communication and design-related topics. She’s been working as a designer for more than twenty years and freelancing on the side. Three years ago, she started her full time business with Fat Dog Creatives. Her education and experience help her gain a sense of the business climate and clients’ needs. She synthesizes significant amounts of complex information into smaller, digestible messages both graphically and in writing.
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
JAMIE SCHMID
Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, WI, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content. She has a background in Information Architecture and Content Strategy and a big ol’ enthusiasm for all things WordPress. Now living in Portland, OR, Jamie is a Community Evangelist for SiteLock, traveling the country and helping build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.
Joshua Wold
As a designer turned Product Owner, Joshua has worked on a range of WordPress website projects over the years. Currently he is enjoying the opportunity to help define requirements for enterprise level WordPress site. This gives Joshua the opportunity to have regular interaction with Content Producers, as well as amazing engineering teams. He apples his design background to many of the tickets he’s working on, sketching wireframes and creating prototypes to help bring the tickets to life for their clients.
Robert Nissenbaum
It has long been said that people do business with people, not brands. Why? Personal relationships. We do business with those with whom we connect. We connect with people.
I have spent more than a decade working with individuals and businesses to personify their brands through the effective use of content and social media marketing to create those personal relationships. I have been teaching HOW these relationships and the side benefits social media creates drive SEO, web traffic, and improve conversion rates (this includes HOW to accurately measure results in a quantifiable manner).
My ability to consistently develop those relationships which drive long-term sustainable business starts with the understanding that social media is about social interaction, not broadcasting and promoting.
My strategy is based on the core reason why people use social media and human behavior. My tactics stem from decades of combined experience in sales and marketing, WordPress website development, SEO, social media, and as a published writer.
My goal as a speaker is to ensure my audience leaves with actionable content which can be implemented immediately.
Devin Walker
Devin Walker is the creator of several highly rated and award winning WordPress plugins. His work is actively being used by millions of websites and has been featured in Product Hunt, WP Tavern, Torque, and several other widely regarded online publications.
As an advocate for open source, Walker has given back extensively to the WordPress community in the form of code contributions, WordCamp and Meetup organization and speaking efforts, and fostering and supporting popular online groups like Advanced WordPress (AWP) and WordPress for Nonprofits.
As a business owner, Walker founded his WordPress company WordImpress and has grown it to a team of more than 15-employees within two years of incorporation. Popular plugins include GiveWP, the top-rated donation and fundraising platform for WordPress, WP Rollback, Google Maps Builder, Yelp Widget Pro and WooCommerce Quick Checkout. In total, his plugins on WordPress.org have been downloaded more than one million times and have accumulated more than three hundred and fifty 5-star reviews.
Outside of work, Devin enjoys traveling the world, going to concerts, and a leisurely round of golf.
Mikey Veenstra
Mikey is a researcher, writer, and speaker who specializes in malware identification and taxonomy. He is passionate about information security, data privacy, and the open source community. He holds a GWAPT certification and is a member of the GIAC Advisory Board.
As a Threat Analyst at Defiant, Michael analyzes threat intelligence in order to provide up-to-date malware signatures and firewall rules to Wordfence users worldwide.
Outside of his work he enjoys tabletop gaming and cooking, and dreams of starting a nonprofit to make DFIR more accessible to charities.
Bruce & Josh Hudson
Bruce Hudson – Master Photographer, Author & Educator
Seattle area native Bruce Hudson has led a colorful life. As a professional musician and educator, he had the opportunity to play with such greats as Bob Hope and Kenny G! From 1978 to 1982 he was a band director at Tahoma High School in Maple Valley, WA.
As a nationally recognized professional photographer, he’s photographed President Bush 41, WA Governor Gary Locke and his family, Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson, music legend Marvin Hamlisch, finance guru Dave Ramsey, and nighttime radio personality Delilah. He holds the degrees of Master Photographer, Photographic Craftsman, and is one of 40 active members in the 110-year-old Camera Craftsman of America association. Hudson’s Portrait Design is celebrating it’s 35th year in business and is know servicing the 3rd generation of clientele. Bruce also recently finished the 2.0 version of his popular book The Relationographer: The Art of Relationship Marketing.
Josh Hudson – Marketing Guru & Speaker
Josh literally grew up around business and entrepreneurship. With a degree in Political Science from Washington State University, Josh’s path was heading straight towards law school. During the interim from undergraduate school, Josh worked at the studio. This interim job quickly turned into a passion for business and marketing… has since never left!
Now his 12th year in the business, Josh manages the day to day operations and the marketing at his family’s studio, Hudson’s Portrait Design. He manages multiple brands and niches and keeps a constant flow of pre-qualified clientele coming to the studio. As a much sought-after speaker, Josh has spoken to professional and business organizations in nearly all 50 states and Canada. In 2009 Josh started a social media management and marketing agency called H5 Creative with his wife Melissa, which caters to the needs of small to medium-sized businesses in all industries!
Bruce and Josh recently were featured in marketing guru and best selling author Bill Glazer’s new book, Outrageous Marketing Campaigns. They were also invited to speak at his event in San Diego and present along side Ryan Diess of Digital Marketer and Russell Brunson of Click Funnels.
Allison Kinnear
For over 22 years, Allison has worked with women as they navigate their vulnerabilities as children, mothers, daughters, employees and leaders. Her career has been grounded in understanding human development and the social-emotional dynamics that support positive relationships, deep connections and authenticity.
Allison has a passion for supporting emerging women leaders who struggle with their confidence and are on the verge of burning out. She helps them find effective ways to step into their power, build a toolkit to navigate difficult situations at work and create a life that keeps their energy tanks full.
Allison honed her skills as a manager during her seven year tenure at Google in the People Ops department. She has a Master’s degree in Human Development and is a Certified Life Coach. She spends her time speaking to groups, working one-on-one with clients and being a mom to her two young children. To learn more, visit her at www.voiceofherown.com.
Zachary Brown
As Director of Systems Engineering at 10up, Zachary leads a team that focuses on the infrastructure side of WordPress, establishing scalable, performant, and secure hosting solutions. Working for the past 7 years in partnership with many WordPress managed hosting providers as well as on the major cloud computing platforms has given Zachary a unique perspective into the best practices needed for a fast and scalable WordPress website.
Zachary has a Master’s degree in Meteorology from North Carolina State University and brings the same rigorous attention to detail to his work with WordPress as he did his thesis on hurricanes.
Kronda Adair
Kronda Adair is the founder of Karvel Digital, an agency that helps mission-driven service based businesses automate their marketing to create a predictable sales pipeline.
She is a regular speaker at WordPress meetups and WordCamps and has been featured on podcasts such as The Matt Report, and WP Elevation.
Her latest project is Working Websites, an online course to give small business owners the training and tools to create successful online marketing strategies that grow their business.
When she’s not working, she can be found enjoying time at home with her wife, two cats, and Vizsla puppy, reading dead-tree books, riding one of her five bikes, or enjoying the postcard vistas of the state of Oregon.
Bob Dunn
I am a blogger and podcaster on BobWP.com that focuses on WordPress, eCommerce and monetizing your blog. Been active in the WordPress space since 2007 and spent many of those years educating WordPress users through workshops, online training, coaching and blogging. I tend to blog a lot and run two podcasts. One is a WordPress eCommerce podcast and the other is Do the Woo, a WooCommerce podcast. When I’m not WordPressing I am devouring fiction and old, old movies with Judy and our cat, Chester.
Chris Teitzel
As a third-generation tech nerd, Chris has a passion for technology and its ability to create an impact on lives around the world. After graduating with a degree in Biology, he started Cellar Door Media to create the latest in mobile applications and websites for clients.
In the years since, it has taken him all over the world. He has worked with some of the largest enterprises, e-commerce in the emerging markets of Africa, and even aid work in Haiti and Washington DC. He was at the front lines of the responsive web by being involved in one of the largest themes in Drupal, has worked in both WordPress and Drupal to bring strong encryption to the systems, launching a new startup Lockr to provide secrets management as a SaaS platform.
Imei Hsu
Imei Hsu is an RN and Psychotherapist with an interest in productivity and technology. For over 25 years, Imei has worked in the healthcare field supporting many corporate employees and start up employees and owners with wellness-oriented counseling and coaching. Imei is a two-time Ironman Finisher, ultrarunner at the 50K distance, and still loves Applehead Siamese cats to the level of obsession. She and her husband and furball live in Redmond, WA.
Amy Hall
Amy Hall is a MailChimp expert and builds and maintains WordPress websites. In her 9 years of experience with MailChimp, she’s learned the in’s and out’s of building a list and creating emails that people love and buy from. In her 9 years of experience with WordPress, she’s learned the in’s and out’s of integrating the 2 seamlessly and flawlessly. She knows the strategies that make people find a website, sign up for a list, make an email engaging and get people to buy.
In her free time, she loves to build fairy gardens and craft with her 5 grandkids.
Jennifer McKnight
Jennifer McKnight is the owner of Jenn Marie Writing & Marketing, a content marketing agency that specializes in branded content for individuals and small businesses worldwide. An avid WordPress user, Jennifer has been creating on WordPress both externally and internally since 2011. In addition to her content marketing agency, Jennifer freelances full time as a UX writer for Slickplan and a blog manager for a WordPress hosted eCommerce site. A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, she resides in South Pierce county with her four children.
Taylor Waldon
Taylor Waldon is the Content Writer for GiveWP, a WordPress product company focused on providing solutions for nonprofit websites. She has a passion for WordPress and over 8 years of professional experience in marketing, website content management, and article and documentation writing and editing. She spent the past 2- 3 years traveling and living in various locations around the United States while supporting herself through remote content management and social media management work. Recently, Taylor resettled in her hometown of San Diego, where she lives with her two dogs and explores San Diego through mini hiking adventures.
Val Vesa
Valentin is the Social Media Specialist at Sucuri. He is very passionate about technology and online marketing. Some of his interests include CMS hardening and tech writing. He loves to play ping-pong, go swimming, and spend quality time with his family. Follow him on Twitter at @adspedia.
Rory m Heaney
Rory Heaney has led and created successful, tailored application and website solutions for top brands, including Betsy Farms and PetAction Plus as well as for celebrity personalities such as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Emily Henderson.
As the Senior Front End Developer for Cie Digital Labs, Rory steers the ideation/execution of web applications as well as mobile and portal development for clients across industries, including Pilot Flying J and Nitto Tire.
He’s proficient in CSS, CSS3, HTML, HTML5, JavaScript, jQeury, Vue, and PHP languages, and has successfully built more than 500 websites over the past eight years.
WordPress rules, I’m out!!
Kimberly Gauthier
Kimberly Gauthier is the blogger behind Keep the Tail Wagging® and author of A Novice’s Guide to Raw Feeding for Dogs. Kimberly and her Significant Other raise two sets of happy, healthy littermates and one demanding cat (all raw fed) in Marysville, WA. When she’s not digging into the latest sci-fi program or Marvel movie, Kimberly is hanging out with friends and plotting to morph the world into a dog-friendly planet.
“The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!” ~ Brain
Mitch Britt
Mitch Britt is the owner and creative director of Bold Eye Media, a Bellingham based web design and development agency.
Bold Eye Media supports clients that include nonprofits, entrepreneurs, artist and small businesses. The agencies passion to help manage the client’s website so they can get back to work in their businesses, and not on their website.
Mitch helps the Bellingham community with WordPress education by being one of the organizers of Bellingham WordPress Meetups.
Matt Kopala
Matt is the founder of SiteDistrict, a powerful & flexible WordPress hosting platform. He has a degree in Computer Engineering, and started off his professional career as a member of 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, so that you can focus on your business while your host takes care of the rest. He enjoys travel and previously spent 3.5 years backpacking non-stop across South America, Oceania, and Asia.
Andrew Taylor
Andrew currently works for Pantheon as a Developer Programs Engineer providing consulting to their agency partners around complex workflows and automation. He also enjoys giving back to the WordPress community through the hosting group, plugin development and speaking at WordCamps.
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.
Jonathan Peck
A full-stack developer with two decades of industry experience, Jon Peck now focuses on bringing scalable, discoverable, and secure machine-learning microservices to developers across a wide variety of platforms via Algorithmia.com.
Justin Nealey
Justin Nealey has been helping people get their ideas online for most of his adult life. WordPress, social media, podcasting, and assisting businesses to execute on their goals are incredible passions of his. When he’s not leading a team of business consultants at GoDaddy, he’s starting yet another side hustle, the latest being Branding Fit helping personal fitness brands break through the noise and get recognized.
Liz Coursen
Liz Coursen is an award-winning author, editor, and professional speaker from Sarasota, Florida, where she owns EditNation.com. The author of 17 books, including Self-Editing for Content Editors and Beyond SEO: 3000 POWER WORDS for Content Writers, last year Liz presented 11 editing and writing programs in India, including editing workshops at Citrix and Oracle.
Closer to home, Liz is an active, three-club member of Toastmasters International, a member of Business Network International, and a professional member of the National Speakers Association. In addition to offering corporate training and editing services, she presents an original, 42-topic repertoire of educational programs in libraries, historical and genealogical associations, and museums.
A lifelong entrepreneur, Liz put herself through Atlanta’s Emory University by starting a lawn care service and played ice hockey all four years—as the only girl on the team.
Kyle Maurer
Kyle works at Sandhills Development on Easy Digital Downloads which is a WordPress plugin that makes selling digital products ridiculously simple. He’s a native of Jackson, Michigan, co-hosts the Get Options podcast, and helps organize meetups and WordCamps in the region while brewing fine beer and playing guitar as often as possible.
Larry Swanson
Larry Swanson is a lifelong publisher and 20-year digital strategist. He hosts the Content Strategy Interviews podcast, gleaning insights from luminaries like UX guru Jared Spool, Lynda.com instructor Morten Rand-Hendriksen, “toxic tech” warrior Sara Wachter-Boettcher, and dozens of other content-strategy experts. He’s always looking out for the interests of small-business owners like WordPress agencies and independent professionals like freelance designers and coders, hence his development of the “DIY Content Strategy” concept. He contributes to WordPress as a community deputy and event organizer.
Bridget Willard
“I believe community is more than an ethereal concept. It’s what we need to breathe. Community is about our behavior. It is how we’re wired.”
Bridget Willard is a marketing consultant and educator with a passion to help small businesses. She began in construction and worked in franchise development, nonprofits, and tech. She is known for her brand building for Riggins Construction and GiveWP.
She is the co-host of WPblab, a show on the WPwatercooler network, and Marketing Team Rep for Make WordPress.
When she’s not writing about marketing, she is spending time with her Sully Dog, learning languages on Duolingo, or walking by the ocean.
Say hi to her on Twitter at @youtoocanbeguru and check out her site at bridgetwillard.com.
Kathy Zant
Kathy Zant is a seasoned digital executive with over 20 years of web development experience for companies large and small. She’s been using WordPress for over a decade. In the last two years, she’s been a security analyst for Wordfence, developing services for WordPress users to better understand and manage their site security.