Devin Sears
After giving up on his aspirations to play in the NBA, Devin has found his place in the marketing world. As the Field Marketing Manager of Bluehost, he travels the country in quest of the perfect milkshake while working with the WordPress community to help SMBs grow a successful online presence. In his free time he can be found in the middle of a marathon (Netflix, not running), cruising on his motorcycle, swinging from a hammock somewhere in nature, or playing ping-pong.
Carol Stambaugh
Carol is the Principal and co-founder of FreeUp Web Studio and runs RadiateWP maintenance and support service for WordPress websites. She is the current Arizona WordPress Meetup Organizer with a membership of 2300+ around the Phoenix metro area. In her spare time, she can be found on deck cheering on her 16-year-old at swim meets, or in the stands cheering on her 10-year-old in basketball and baseball. She is the embodiment of the term “Mom-taxi”.
Angela Jin
An inveterate volunteer since 2005, Angela Jin has cultivated a passion for building strong, inclusive communities. She took this literally for some time, and worked at a commercial real estate consulting firm where she endeavored to align progressive development with community goals. It was through this role that Angela discovered WordPress, which in turn inspired her to join Automattic as a Community Organizer for the WordPress open source project. Angela hails from Seattle, Washington, and delights in reading, hiking, and traveling.
Cami Kaos
Cami lives, works, parents, and plays in the rainy city of Portland, Oregon. She’s had a love of WordPress and WordCamps since she stumbled upon the first WordCamp Portland where she became a reluctant and then excited volunteer. She now works at Automattic as a community organizer for the WordPress open source project where she gets to work with WordCamps and their organizers every day.
Patrick Rauland
Patrick Rauland is an eCommerce Educator & Entrepreneur. He’s written books, created video courses for LinkedIn Learning, he helped run WooConf all three years, and he’s the co-founder of WooSesh.
He’s obsessed with eCommerce & entrepreneurship. He wants to help you succeed. He’s also launching his own physical product Fry Thief early 2019.
Tracey Wallace
Tracey Wallace is the Editor-in-Chief at BigCommerce, Founder & CEO of Doris Sleep and a content & SEO growth consultant for B2B and B2C brands. She has 10 years of experience in retail and ecommerce, on both the technology and consumer-facing side. Outside of BigCommerce, you can see her work on Mashable, Refinery29, ELLE.com, Time Out New York, Hubspot, and more.
MikeDemo
Mike “Demo” Demopoulos is a lover of open source first, specific tools later. Because of this, he speaks at Ignite! Conferences, Meetups, WordCamps, Joomla! Events, and more. Mike volunteers with The Joomla! Project as the treasurer of Open Source Matters (the not for profit organization for Joomla!) as well as serving on the Joomla! World Conference and Capital teams. He also co-organizes JoomlaDay Minnesota.
Mike Demopoulos has spoken on various open source topics including WordPress and Joomla! in addition to marketing related talks which include A/B testing content.
Before coming to BoldGrid as a community evangelist, Mike spent years building a strong client base in the financial and insurance industries. He believes in sharing his business acumen and marketing insight as it fits within his main goal of building community.
When he’s not spending time with his wife Kayla, you may find Demo at a Disney Theme park, collecting artwork, or hanging out with his dog B’Elanna.
Be sure to say hi to Mike Demopoulos on Twitter at @MPMike.
Joe A Simpson Jr
Joe A. Simpson, Jr. is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During sun-soaked days he works at a top-five transit agency, fighting the good fight to ease gridlock around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history. Over ten years later, he manages a WordPress blog network consisting of dozen project-specific or transit news sites and growing.
Faced with a life-altering heart event in 2017, he pivoted on all things WordPress, leveraging his creative past, teaching tech, and truly giving back by sharing a motivating story of re-igniting your dreams. He actively contributes the WordPress Community, founding the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup, speaking or volunteering at WordCamps, and plans to host his area’s first WordCamp.
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
David Blackmon
David is the CEO and CoFounder of Aspen Grove Studios, a WordPress product development company. We create products for WordPress, Divi and WooComerce. I also share my passion as co-host of WP the Podcast and Divi Chat.
Cory Crowley
Cory is a Partner and Lead Developer at Fly Plugins, a WordPress plugin company that develops WP Courseware, S3 Media Maestro, and Churnly.
When not developing plugins, Cory can be found playing guitar, a round of golf, and spending time with his family.
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.
Dallin Harris
Dallin is the Founder and President of Skyhook Interactive, a Phoenix-based website design & development firm that builds high performance websites for brands and the agencies that serve them.
Dallin has been involved in web design, development and Internet marketing since the late 90s. Over the years, he has had the privilege of doing digital work for a number of national brands including Banner Health, American Express, Subway, the 2015 Super Bowl Host Committee, Make-A-Wish Foundation, AT&T and The Salvation Army.
Dallin is active in the community and speaks regularly on topics related to entrepreneurship and technology. He sits on the boards of the Arizona Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) and the Arizona Interactive Marketing Association (AZIMA), and is engaged in the local WordPress community. In 2012, Dallin was named one of the “Top 35 entrepreneurs, age 35 and under” by The Arizona Republic.
Shayda Torabi
Shayda Torabi has been called one of the most influential Women in WordPress. She’s currently the Co-Founder of RESTART CBD, a THC free CBD wellness company. She’s formerly held positions at WP Engine and WebDevStudios. Additionally, she runs a popular travel and lifestyle blog called “With Shayda” which has afforded her the opportunity to work with brands ranging from Soul Cycle to The Westin. Shayda has spoken at over a dozen WordPress related events, and has been to over 30+ WordCamps globally. When she’s not busy traveling the world, you can find her in her hometown of Austin, Texas pursuing her passions for fitness, wellness, and self care.
Ryan Kanner
Ryan Kanner is a senior software engineer for Digital First Media based out of Denver, Colorado. At DFM he works on a portfolio of WordPress powered news sites and digital tools for online publishers. Ryan has been working with WordPress for close to 10 years and has been an active community member for most of that time. Currently, the organizer for the WordPress Denver Meetup, Ryan enjoys giving back to the WordPress community through organizing and speaking at events, as well as open source contributions.
Roy Sivan
I have been using WordPress since the early days. Nowadays I’m a senior software developer that specializes in front end technologies at The Walt Disney Company. I love seeing how far I can take development and think outside of the box to build new and crazy things, or use combine bleeding edge tech with WordPress. I’m also socially awkward, but apparently people say hi to me all the time anyway.
Michelle Schulp
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?”
Francesca Marano
Francesca is the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround, web hosting company. She is also part of the WordPress community team, organising Meetups and WordCamps in Torino.
She has years of experience as a small business owner, having transformed her passion for the web into a successful WordPress business.
She published three books in Italian to help freelancers with business planning, productivity and websites.
She also founded C+B, a blog with an editorial staff of sixty authors offering advice to more than 35.000 Italian female creative entrepreneurs that reads it every month.
Francesca is a passionate speaker and you can find her in Italy and around the world talking about WordPress, community, open source, women in tech and small businesses.
John Gough
I’m the Principal Strategist at Skyhook Interactive, an interactive agency focused on designing and developing high-performance marketing websites.
My background is in research and design; specifically, I like thinking and talking about how people use technology to improve their work and world.
Jamie Schmid
Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences, and a big ol’ enthusiasm for all things WordPress. Formerly Community Evangelist at SiteLock, she is now a WordPress Strategy and Development consultant based in Portland, OR, taking site concepts through a well-managed process that encourages communication, planning, and smart use of content.
Aaron D. Campbell
Aaron is the WordPress Security Team lead, has been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than a decade, and is currently funded by GoDaddy to work full time on the WordPress open source project. He has over eighteen years of web development experience and worked with clients ranging from small local businesses to Google, Yahoo, Disney, and Harvard. He’s been called both a coffee snob and a beer snob, but considers both to be compliments. When not buried in code, he enjoys spending time with his wife and son, riding his motorcycle, and reading sci-fi/fantasy books.
Steph Orsini
Self-identified as a detail oriented, easy-going, hard-working, problem solver.
A perpetual student, always refining processes and embracing critique as well as the perspectives and experiences of others.
Owner of Distill Mill and recent add to the awesome team at Skyhook Interactive, one of the top WordPress Marketing and Development agencies in the valley of the sun – and excited by the prospect and good fortune of getting to collaborate with other creative minds.
My skillset runs the gamut – from graphic design, print, branding, and UI/UX, to traditional front-end development and some light plugin and theme development.
As a former profession, and now just for fun – I perform with various musical groups, playing electric and upright bass in an array of styles ranging from jazz to rock, and r&b to folk and more.
Vicki DeLuzio
Vicki DeLuzio is a wife to her WordPress Loving Husband Scott and mom to three wonderful kids. She spends her time blogging about things to do with travel, kids, exercise and lots of fun things and has been named a top blogger in the Phoenix area and in all of Arizona. Vicki enjoys running, hiking and exploring the world around her.
Topher DeRosia
Topher is a WordPress developer from Grand Rapids MI, where he lives with his wife, daughters, and two little dogs.
Tim Strifler
Tim is the founder of Tim Strifler Online Solutions, a WordPress web design agency, and Divi Life, a leading Divi product company focused on creating plugins, child themes, and tutorials for the Divi theme framework. Tim is also the cofounder of WP Gears, a WordPress online learning platform, the co-host of the daily WP the Podcast show, as well as a panelist on Divi Chat, a weekly live YouTube show. When not behind the screen, Tim enjoys hiking, mountain biking, and anything else that gets him outdoors.
Tessa Kriesel
Teaching and mentorship come naturally to dog-lover and Developer Outreach Manager at Pantheon, Tessa Kriesel. She wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including instructor for Girl Develop It, lead organizer for WordCamp Minneapolis, and founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.
Tessa has spoken on many topics including helping beginners with workflow, mentorship, configuration management, and shedding light on continuous integration and deployment. She has also been a panelist on a wide range of topics at Conferences and Meetups.
When Tessa isn’t working on her development chops or mentoring junior developers, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.
Steve Ryan
I am WordPress Engineer for the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Although I’m fairly new to developing for higher education, I’m a WordPress enthusiast and have been happily hacking away on various WordPress projects for at least ten years.
In my spare time, I’m a husband and a father. I enjoy playing basketball and tennis whenever I can. I’m a big Stephen King fan and my favorite colors are (and forever will be) maroon and gold. #goDevils
Stephen Greer
Stephen loves building applications with JavaScript, PHP, React and WordPress. He is a Senior Developer at FanSided, a media company running 300+ sport and entertainment websites.
Seth Carstens
Well renowned WordPress evangelist of Arizona. Director of Technology and architect of WordPress at scale. Specialized in Media and Editorial technology. Current major project is called OneCMS built on WordPress would the responsible for 19 brands and would create content that reaches 2/3rds of the US population.
Scott DeLuzio
Scott is a prolific plugin developer, as well as a husband, father of three, and Army veteran, who unintentionally stumbled into web development while getting his degree in accounting. After graduating, he worked in the finance industry for six years, but continued to build websites on the side for family, friends, and local businesses.
Rahul Nagare
Rahul has been working in the web hosting industry since 2005 and started using WordPress in 2008. Since then he has helped scale web and cloud infrastructure for companies like General Mills, Saks, CSX, and PetSmart. Rahul is now the co-founder and CEO at ScaleDynamix, where he manages 10,000+ WordPress and WooCommerce sites.
Pam Aungst
Pam is the owner of Pam Ann Marketing and Stealth™ Search and Analytics. Both specialize in SEO, PPC, and Analytics. She is a passionate advocate of WordPress and regularly gives talks at WordCamps around the country about SEO, Google Analytics, and business topics. Pam also has a personal mission to talk openly about mental health and the importance of taking care of oneself in order to survive and thrive at work and at home.
Mike Jones
An Arizona Brand Builder
Remarkable brands require authenticity and a die-hard commitment to values & purpose. Mike passionately preaches these beliefs as Co-host on AZ Brandcast and pursues them with clients as the Managing Partner of Resound – an Arizona brand agency. (He also founded an apparel brand devoted to American history lovers, called Taftly. But that’s neither here nor there. In recognition of the work he’s done, this AZ native has been named one of the state’s top entrepreneurs under the age of 35.
He lives in the very sunny vale of Mesa with his wife and two kids. If you want to connect, Twitter’s usually where you’ll find him – @remarkamike.
Michael Hunter
On his 21st birthday, he started a marketing company out of his dorm room in college – creating WordPress websites & social media strategies for small businesses.
For the past 5 years, he’s exclusively worked with thought-leaders, influencers, authors and speakers – and climbed to the pinnacle of that industry. He’s worked with some of the biggest personal brands in the world including Brendon Burchard, Larry King, Harvey Mackay, and Jim Kwik to name a few.
Today, Michael is focused on building software and educational tools to help people increase their income, and make a bigger impact in the world.
Over the past 3 years, Michael and his business partner Jeremy Abraham have built a software company called Spiffy, that has helped influencers, and small business owners collect over $200M in sales.
Michael is passionate about helping people share their knowledge with the world, and create a business around their expertise.
He is the founder of PersonalBrand.com, an education and branding firm that helps people increase their income and impact by developing a strong personal brand.
Matt Perry
Matt Perry works as an engineer for WordPress VIP / Automattic, and therefore gets to spend his days helping large enterprises across media, technology and government achieve their missions with WordPress.
Lindsay Halsey
I am a co-founder of Pathfinder SEO and webShine. I don’t think you need to be an SEO expert to get found in Google. Rather, you just need a process or a map. I enjoy sharing that process and teaching site owners and freelancers about holistic SEO.
I live in Basalt, Colorado and enjoy hiking, biking, and skiing with my family.
Leigh Beaty
Leigh Beaty is referred to as the Marketing Funnel Queen at 4ChicksWithaWebsite.com. She thrives on Lead Magnets, Funnels and Segmented Lists and knows that with a little education will remove the confusion and overwhelm that everyone feels when asked to describe their sales funnel.
In addition to being certified in many marketing aspects of websites, she is also proficient with WordPress, eLearning and membership sites, eCommerce as well as with Infusionsoft, ActiveCampaign and various email marketing systems.
Leigh lives in Tucson, Arizona but spends her summers traveling in a motorhome with her husband Richard and her Australian Shepherd, Kelsey.
Kevin Marshall
Kevin Marshall is the founder of Ristretto Apps, a small but passionate company dedicated to creating practical solutions for online-learning and e-commerce entrepreneurs. Kevin has been a programmer for over 20 years and has been an avid WordPress fan since 2011. He spent over 7 years in corporate I.T. at a Fortune 100 company and a nationally recognized school system focused on improving inner-city education. In 2013, after quitting the corporate life, he and his wife, Alyssa, started a thriving e-commerce store and e-learning company in the dental industry built on WooCommerce. Excited by the power that WordPress and WooCommerce had in helping their business grow, Kevin decided to offer some of the custom-made plugins he’d built for their business to everyone.
Kevin lives in Phoenix with his wife and co-founder, Alyssa, along with their daughter.
Joe Howard
Hi! Joe here. I’m the Head Buff at WP Buffs, a 24/7 WordPress website maintenance service for serious website owners and white-label partners. Whether you’re looking after 1 site or 1000, we’ve got your back! I also run WPMRR, a robust video course that teaches WordPress professionals how to implement, sell and execute ongoing care plans for their clients and increase their revenue every single month. Or you can just tune into The WPMRR WordPress podcast entirely focused on growing successful WordPress businesses and monthly recurring revenue without taking itself too seriously. Boom!
Jeremy Scott
Jeremy Scott first used WordPress around the time of version 1.3 and has been using it for business and personal projects ever since. Today, he has his hands in many honeypots, including freelance advanced WordPress development, running a small premium WordPress plugin for staffing agencies, and running a company that educates both kids and grown ups alike in creativity, collaboration, and communication skills with LEGO. He calls Phoenix home, where he lives with his lovely boyfriend and two cats. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking and camping, kickboxing, video games, and live storytelling and poetry (as both audience and presenter).
Cody Landefeld
Adopted by Christ. Saved by grace. Husband, Father, and Pet-owner. Co-Founder at Mode Effect. ECommerce consultant and strategist. Music, Sports, and Comics.
Cate DeRosia
A writer, editor, and nearly retired home school teacher, I have worked alongside my developer husband for over 20 years. I currently focus on communication and business operations for other developers.
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 Phoenix. 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.
Art Enke
A digital marketing professional with substantial in-house and agency SEO experience. Art has lead multiple SEO teams and works directly with Fortune-500 brands and high-growth accounts.
He grew WritersDigest.com (a WordPress site for the writing community) by a factor of 400% in less than 6 months and is passionate about sharing technical insights in a post Panda/Penguin world. He has helped dozens of additional companies grow exponential traffic through organic traffic channels through both on-page and off-page SEO strategies.
He was a contributor for the Moz Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors/contributors and currently is the SEO Manager at BIG YAM – The Parsons Agency.
April Wier
April helps individuals and businesses become the best versions of themselves. This may come in the form of a new, or better, web site or coaching to break through self-imposed limitations. She specializes in helping high-performers reach their goals online. She is heavily involved in the Metro Atlanta WordPress community, is a co-organizer of the Woodstock WordPress Meetup and is a former organizer team member for WordCamp Atlanta. Her day job is running Sugar Five Design, a WordPress exclusive digital marketing shop. (sugarfivedesign.com)
Aaron Edwards
CTO of WPMU DEV (140+ premium plugins, services, and support) and Edublogs (hosting 3 million+ education blogs), managing a team of 30 developers and sysadmins around the globe. cloud architect and WordPress plugin developer specializing in Multisite for 10 years, working from home in Dallas. Proud father of 3 and a world travel nut.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.
He is also the creator of ADVANCE Coaching, working with WordPress business owners individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their businesses.
Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com.
Machielle Thomas
After nearly a decade in finance, Machielle Thomas turned her love for content into a more fulfilling career. Machielle has written content for small agencies and major corporations, such as Golfsmith and Marriott Hotels. She currently manages all things content and social for Bluehost. Machielle believes that great content starts with strategy and ends with analysis.
Her life passions are wedding and portrait photography, spontaneous travel, and the oxford comma. A southern girl at heart, Machielle lives and learns in Austin, Tx.
Crystal Taggart
Crystal Taggart is an entrepreneur and data scientist. She is the founder of Atlas AI, an Open Source marketing analytics platform that enables SMBs to leverage AI and analytics to map their customer journey to improve conversions, targeting, and customer experience.
Chris Klosowski
Chris is a partner and lead developer at Sand Hills Development, LLC, the creators of plugins like Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, Restrict Content Pro, and others.
Jocelyn Mozak
Jocelyn Mozak has over a decade of experience building, running and wrangling a 6-Figure WordPress Website Design Agency all while having two boys at home under the age of thirteen.
In addition to running her Agency, Jocelyn is a mentor & coach to other WordPress professionals helping them to create businesses that serve their needs; not the other way around!
Pattie Reaves
Pattie Reaves is a senior user experience developer at Alley Interactive. Her passion is building accessible, delightful, and beautiful experiences online. She has more than 10 years of experience building websites for publishers and nonprofits, such as the American Alliance of Museums, the National Science Foundation, and Digital First Media. Prior to her work at Alley, Pattie worked as a editor and audience manager in newsrooms.
Drew Jaynes
Drew has been heavily involved in the WordPress community since 2011, contributing to the core, documentation, and meta teams, writing plugins, and helping with support. He’s been a core developer since 2013 and served as the WordPress documentation lead until 2016. He’s contributed to every major WordPress release since v3.3.
Drew works remotely from Arvada, Colorado for Sandhills Development, the parent company for cool plugins like AffiliateWP, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, Sugar Calendar, and more.
Maura Teal
Maura is a Software Engineer at Pagely and previously developed for WordPress at scale at Time, Inc. She is an open source and emoji enthusiast, and is a firm believer that speaking about —and sharing— life experiences (both failures and successes) builds lasting connections.
Zac Gordon
Zac Gordon is a professional educator, with a current focus on JavaScript development with and alongside WordPress at javascriptforwp.com. Zac has years of experience teaching at high schools, colleges, bootcamps and online learning sites like Treehouse, Udemy and Frontend Masters. In addition to teaching, Zac also runs Web Hosting for Students, one of the world’s largest hosting companies dedicated to students and teachers. You can also catch his free Office Yoga sessions on OfficeYoga.tv.
Jason Bahl
I’m a Senior Web Engineer at Digital First Media in Denver, CO where I work on high-traffic, high-volume publishing websites built on WordPress.
I’m the creator and maintainer of WPGraphQL, a free open-source WordPress plugin that brings the power of GraphQL to any WordPress site.
Joshua Strebel
Co-Founder & CEO of Pagely & NorthStack
Throughout Joshua’s career he has only known the path of an entrepreneur, leading teams in creative web services, and Web hosting at the companies he has founded. Never having a ‘real job’ after college Joshua is a self taught professional in design, development, marketing, and business.
Off the clock Joshua is a husband and father, automobile enthusiast, aging snow sports participant, and connoisseur of single malt scotch.
Joshua will be a Keynote Speaker at WordCamp Phoenix 2019.
Speakers are being reviewed and selected, check back soon!