This year’s WordCamp speakers are a stellar mix of WordPress developers, designers, and business leaders. We invite you to learn more about each speaker:
Dre Armeda
Dre was Co-Founder and founding CEO of Sucuri Inc. After a successful acquisition by GoDaddy last year, Dre now heads the Enterprise Sales and Partnerships Group for GoDaddy’s Website Security business unit.
Ellen Goodwin
Ellen Goodwin is a TEDx speaker, trainer and productivity expert who inspires digital entrepreneurs to cut the BS, turbo-charge their results and become the Action Hero of their business and their life!
No stranger to the entrepreneurial roller coaster, she nearly fired herself from her own graphic design business after procrastination, uninspiring projects and playing way too many computer games nearly shut it down. Something had to change. And fast.
So, like any good Action Hero, she pulled herself up by the bootstraps and dove headfirst into the world of neuroscience to understand the brain’s natural triggers and signals related to productivity and focus. Through trial and error, she took what she learned, coupled with 20+ years experience as a business owner, and transformed her life and livelihood… in record time. And has made it her mission to help others do the same. Today she is founder and CEO of EllenGoodwin.com where she empowers other entrepreneurs to create the business and life they’ve always imagined too.
When she’s not talking about brains and saving the world one entrepreneur at a time, Ellen can be found podcasting, bike riding or hosting a Dive Bar of the Month club.
Kitty Lusby
Kitty Lusby is a long time professional blogger based in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she blogs both at a day job and as her nighttime gig. About 5 years ago, Kitty decided to start a blog to hone her writing skills and build an audience, and after a perfunctory Google search for “how to start a blog,” she created her first WordPress site. That simple search led to a full-time career within 6 months, and today, Kitty spends most of her day on a WordPress dashboard. She’s known for her humor and wit, her knack for picking up a brand’s voice in her writing, and also for her minor obsession with all things taco. You can find Kitty’s personal blog at kittylusby.com, her most prominent professional blog at NeONBRAND.com, and articles with her name on them all over the web.
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, a passion for all things WordPress, and a whole lot of cats back home in Portland, OR. In her role as SiteLock WordPress Evangelist Jamie helps build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.
Jason Knill
Jason is a partner at co-founder of GiveWP.com, a WordPress donation plugin powering more than 40k+ active installs. He works on managing the businesses growth, buys the ads and does pre-sales support tickets, too. He grew up in Jefferson Park (blue line), too—though he lives in San Diego now, he’s a Blackhawks and White Sox fan.
Ben Meredith
Ben is the Senior Support Technician at WordImpress, the makers of Give, the most robust donation platform for WordPress. He also created Better Click To Tweet, the most popular WordPress Plugin for adding Click to Tweet boxes to WordPress posts and pages. A lifelong North Carolinian (with a 4-year break in Middle Tennessee just after college), Ben is also one of the organizers for WordCamp Raleigh, leading the team in 2017 and 2018. When not coding or solving code puzzles to support users, you’ll find him with a guitar in hand or perhaps playing a round of disc golf. He’d lobby for it being called just “golf” and making that other game “ball golf” or perhaps “expensive ball golf.”
Lindsay Halsey
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. Her primary interest is search engine optimization for WordPress websites. Lindsay enjoys teaching business owners about holistic SEO practices with a focus on actionable tactics that create results.
Mike Demo
Mike “Demo” Demopoulos is a longtime lover of Open Source Software. He currently works at BoldGrid (a WordPress Site Builder) as an Evangelist. He has spoken at numerous open source events around the world. Mike is also a contributor to Huffington Post as well as other publications. In addition, he volunteers as Treasurer for Open Source Matters.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema is Vice President of Products & Innovation at Liquid Web, a blogger (at chrislema.com and leaders.blog), the author of several ebooks and a public speaker. He loves to tell stories – helping people learn how to leverage technology for their business and personal use.
Natalie Bourn
Natalie Bourn is currently a freshman in high school. She’s been a WordPress blogger for four years and writes about adventures, life lessons, her journey through school and being a teenager, and her friends and family. She has recently started a YouTube channel sharing videos about her life and travels. When she’s not busy with homework and exploring with her family, she loves to dance and choreograph, read, write, and play with her brother. Check out nataliebourn.com for more.
Michelle Ames
Overextended, overcommitted, entrepreneur, volunteer, and social butterfly. Avid Scrabble player. Photographer. School board member. Marketing enthusiast. 11th hour expert. WordPress fanatic. Lead organizer of WordCamp Rochester, NY. Co-organizer of WordCamp Buffalo. Michelle is the Head of Customer Success at GiveWP.com.
Rob Marlbrough
Rob launched Web Wizards over 20 years ago, now rebranded to Press Wizards® Inc. as CEO and Chief Developer, and today is a leading WordPress services and managed WordPress hosting provider. He launched the monthly WordPress maintenance service, WP Site Dr. He also co-founded 5 Star Plugins, with over 20K active installs, and is developing a suite of WordPress marketing plugins. He also co-founded Fandom Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency in 2010, and serves as the CTO. He has over 20 years of experience in web technology and ecommerce, integration, and digital marketing.
Pete Nelson
Pete is a full-time senior web engineer with 10up. He’s been working with WordPress the past 5+ years, has been doing web development professionally since the mid 90s, and is the creator of baconipsum.com
- Website: http://baconipsum.com
- Twitter: @GunGeekATX
Cory Webb
Cory Webb is a senior full stack developer at Reaktiv Studios hailing from Waco, Texas, home of Dr. Pepper, Baylor University, and shiplap (that’s a reference to HGTV’s Fixer Upper for the uninitiated). Before joining the team at Reaktiv, Cory ran a small web development company specializing in WordPress and Joomla development. His educational background is in engineering and business, but his true passion has been web development since he built his first web page as a freshman electrical engineering student at the University of Texas in 1997. When he’s not busy manipulating 1’s and 0’s, you can usually find him spending time with his wife and 3 kids, traveling, watching movies, and serving at his local church.
Behzod Saidov
Behzod is an experienced full-stack web developer currently working at Investor’s Business Daily (investors.com). He previously worked at The Walt Disney Company as a Tech Lead where he oversaw development of new websites and maintained dozens of websites mostly built using WordPress.
He has been using WordPress since 2007. Enjoys building websites and web applications using WordPress and Laravel.
Behzod lives in Los Angeles with his wife and 2 kids.
Greg Taylor
After working in marketing and business development for over twelve years, Greg decided to pursue his passion for WordPress development and content marketing by starting his own company. Tired of seeing sites that look great but don’t achieve results, he Co-Founded Trinity Web Media & Development to help business owners find the best of both worlds. In addition to leading the company, Greg has become well-known in the WordPress community as a speaker and teacher. He has presented at several conferences (including TechPHX, WordCamp LA, WordCamp Phoenix, WordCamp Orange County and WordCamp Vegas), been featured on industry podcasts (such as EOFire, WP Elevation, BusyMarketer and Excellence Expected), and hosts his own podcast The New Marketing Show. When he’s not working on code or content, Greg spends his free time mentoring, taking in and playing live music, or listening to baseball on the beach.
Lara Schenck
Lara Schenck is a freelance front-end and WordPress developer living in Los Angeles. She is passionate about exploring technical concepts and loves to share her findings through teaching, writing, and mentorship. Lara inspires all of us who work with the web to seek a deeper understanding of the code we write and the tools we use.
Phil Crumm
I’m a seasoned technologist, entrepreneur, and strategic leader focused on creating delightful user experiences with sensible, robust approaches.
I’m currently Director of Strategic Opportunities at 10up; previously, I worked as an engineer at Pogoseat and Automattic. In my free time, I contributed to a handful of open source software projects, and occasional dabble in my own projects, too.
I’m an avid auto enthusiast, recreational pilot, and occasionally pretty-decent golfer.
Jen Miller
Combining her lifelong journalism, public relations and website experience, Jen Miller created NeedSomeoneToBlog.com, a highly-targeted, hyperlocal blogging service and sought ways to further enhance client authority, trust and engagement, so launched her agency, Need Someone To, LLC. As host of Be Seen Blogging and co-host of Community Connections, a WP Watercooler network show, Jen helps people gain skills and share their stories. In 2018 in an effort to better understand Gutenberg, Jen enrolled in Udacity’s Front-end Developer program. One of her most valuable take-aways has been recognizing that, “You don”t have to start as a developer to become one.”
Jen Miller has served on the organizing boards of Word Camp, Los Angeles, WordCamp, Orange County and WordCamp, Riverside. She founded WomenWhoWP.org, a nonprofit and Meetup to support women in WordPress. She volunteers as a Team Rep on the make.WordPress.org Marketing Team. Jen also actively participates in several civic groups, serves on the Public Affairs Council for her church, and has been instrumental in publicizing civic events in Southern California since 1989.
Kevin Hoffman
Kevin Hoffman is a Pittsburgh-based WordPress Engineer at WordImpress. He has contributed as a designer and developer to several plugins including GiveWP and the upcoming WP Business Reviews. After graduating from Drexel University with a degree in Digital Media, Kevin navigated a career that included time as a freelancer, agency developer, business owner, and his current role as a WordPress plugin developer. As an advocate of scalability and modularity in plugin design, Kevin enjoys sharing that perspective with the community.
Roy Sivan
Roy has been using WordPress since the early days. Nowadays he is a senior software developer that specializes in WordPress & front end tech at The Walt Disney Company. He loves seeing how far he can take development and think outside of the box to build new and crazy things, or combine bleeding edge tech with WordPress. He is also socially awkward, but apparently people say hi to him all the time anyway.
Matt Cromwell
Matt is Head of Support and Community Outreach at GiveWP.com and WordImpress.com. He is the author of several popular free plugins and the Lead Admin of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group (which boasts over 30K+ members). He’s a popular blogger at his personal site (mattcromwell.com),wordimpress.com, givewp.com, and mediatemple.net.
Mark Uraine
Mark is an interdisciplinary designer dedicated to making the web more accessible and human friendly by facilitating the transfer of information through design. Mark works at Automattic contributing to the open source project, WordPress.
Dave Woods
Dave is the founder of Deedub Inc., a San Diego area brand strategy and customer experience (CX/UX) consultancy. He got his start in web design in 1998 when he took an HTML class in high school, and he subsequently graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a BS in Graphic Communication. Dave then went on to serve a variety of schools, non-profits, and businesses in both in-house and consulting roles, including a nearly six-year stint as the Branding and New Media Specialist at California State University San Marcos. During his time at CSUSM, Dave was involved in a number of high-profile strategic marketing initiatives for the university, and he was a leader in two campus website redesigns. Today, he helps his Deedub Inc. clients transform their customer experiences through a blend of research, strategy, and design services (which often includes highly-customized WordPress design and development projects).
Christina Hills
Christina Hills, the creator of the Website Creation Workshop™, has been passionately teaching WordPress non-techie small business owners, authors, experts, coaches and consultants. She puts the fun into teaching technology and empowers business owners to be in full control of their marketing and online presence. She has been running her online WordPress training program to an international audience since 2008. Before becoming a WordPress entrepreneur, Christina Hills worked as a digital artist for the network promotions division of NBC-TV, and then as a senior technical director in the Feature Film Division at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic with film credits for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and ET the re-release. She now lives in San Diego, California with her husband and daughter.
Jennifer Bourn
Jennifer Bourn is founding partner at Bourn Creative a full-service design and development company specializing in WordPress. With twenty years in the industry under her belt, she is an award-winning designer who consults on branding, website strategy, and content strategy. Jennifer speaks often, delivering workshops and keynote presentations, co-organizes the Sacramento WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Sacramento and writes regularly about freelancing, client services, blogging, marketing, websites, and branding. Learn more at jenniferbourn.com
Amber Hewitt
Amber Hewitt is a front-end web developer who has created websites for a wide variety of clients for over 15 years. With a strong background in design (graphic design degree from Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design), she has developed a passion for good imagery and typography in print and on the web.
Christopher Tuttle
I have been teaching WordPress for the last 3 years and I currently run a premium WordPress consulting team called WP-Live for Mojo Marketplace. I love helping people and small business get a start on something they didn’t think they could do on their own.
Chris David Miles
Chris is a Product Manager for Bluehost in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has done freelance web design and front-end development for over a decade. He discovered WordPress in 2011 and has used it to build sites for clients and non-profits ever since.
Jason Adams
I’m a friendly, goofy guy who is a bit a Frankenstein engineer. I started in home automation, then worked in software, from there server and database development, machine automation and development, and finally web development. My wife — my best friend — and I moved to San Diego two years ago from Detroit and have enjoyed the weather! I’ve contributed to WP core, am an author of Piklist, and like to contribute where I can. Feel free to approach me and chat about anything!
Carl Alexander
Heya! I’m Carl.
I’m a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada. I live and breath advanced programming topics (and memes). I share a lot of my passion for those topics on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis.
It’s my way to help you with these hard-to-learn topics. That’s also why I’m excited to speak at WordCamp San Diego. It’s another way for me to help you.
Besides that, I’ve been a WordPress Montréal organizer since 2010. I also help organize other WordPress events during the year. You can find me on Twitter and GitHub.
Adam Rasheed
Adam Rasheed is a UI designer and front-end developer who runs a design consultancy at Creatix Online Marketing. For 5+ years, he’s directly helped small businesses reach their audiences online.
Mika Epstein
Mika Ariela “Ipstenu” Epstein works for DreamHost as a full stack WordPress developer on DreamPress, Mika helps make the internet better for everyone. She is passionate about code, open source technology, open data, and mindful development practices. The cofounder of LezWatchTV, the greatest database of queer characters and shows, she develops software and trawls queer representation on television to make the data visible.
Tessa Kriesel
Developer Advocate 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 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.