Speakers

Visit our Schedule page for times and locations and our Sessions page for descriptions of this year’s talks.

Aaron Campbell

Aaron is an international speaker, open source advocate, and outgoing introvert. He’s been a regular contributor to WordPress for more than a decade, and is currently employed by GoDaddy as the head of WordPress core and ecosystem.

He has more than 18 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. Connect with Aaron on Twitter @aaroncampbell.

Aida Correa

Aida Correa, a New Yorican and self-described Renaissance woman, is an artist, writer, poet, designer, teacher, and a regular WordCamp volunteer and speaker.

Now living in Jacksonville, Florida, she’s the owner of LoveBuilt Life LLC, a Creative Arts & Lifestyle company, where she teaches how to live life more creatively. She also uses her experience as an entrepreneur and the knowledge she’s gained from WordCamps to coach women on how-to creatively rethink their business strategy. Plus, she builds websites for start-ups on a budget.

Aida enjoys spending time with her family, volunteering in her community and traveling to WordCamp conferences, where she seeks to inspire and motivate others. She also has a thing for Wapuu.

Connect with Aida on Twitter @lovebuiltlife.

Aisha Adams

Aisha Adams is a social media influencer with a heart for community economic development. Through her personal platform, Nappy Thoughts, Aisha has been a resource to individuals and families healing themselves from mental, emotional, and physical trauma. Her written work has appeared in publications like The Asheville Citizen Times, The Asheville Grit, and The Final Call.

Aisha has a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. She has a master’s degree in post-secondary and adult education. Aisha is also the founder of the Aisha Adams Media Group, a firm that specializes in assisting small businesses with remaining relevant within their communities as they increase their revenue through marketing. Currently, Aisha is working on Equity Over Everything, a project to advance equity by closing the gaps in homeownership and business and social equity in under resources communities.

Connect with Aisha on Twitter @AishaAdamsBlog.

Andy Stitt

Andy has been specializing in digital transformations for nonprofits for the past decade, with a focus on web. He currently works for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia as their WordPress website manager and email marketing manager.

You can learn more about him and his work at at andystitt.com. Connect with Andy on Twitter @andystitt829.

Beth Soderberg

Beth Soderberg is an independent developer and digital communications strategist based out of Alexandria, Va.

She focuses on building thoughtfully architected websites that enable her clients to optimize their online presence while being empowered in managing their content. She is obsessive about clean code, solid design execution, and the implementation of cutting-edge, front-end technologies.

In her spare time, Beth is a co-organizer of WordCamp DC and the WordPress DC Meetup, has contributed to the WordPress Training Team, and was a founding organizer of the annual DCFemTech Hack for Good in Washington, DC. Connect with Beth on Twitter @bethsoderberg.

Bud Kraus

Most WordPress site developers are not instructors and are not really interested in teaching WordPress to clients who want to learn it. That’s what makes Bud Kraus very different. As he likes to say, “I don’t just make web sites. I teach too.”

Bud brings more than 20 years of experience teaching best practices with WordPress in New York City and beyond to every project he gets involved with. No matter the project, Bud is willing to work with clients the way they want to work and not the other way around. He finds the best ways to collaborate with others to accomplish their goals. He always encourages every student to learn whatever they want with WordPress.

Bud is very active and well known in the WordPress community in and around the New York City and Northern New Jersey regions. His Joy of WP site includes two free courses with more than 60 WordPress videos. Connect with Bud on Twitter @joyofwp.

Chip Edwards

Chip is a partner at CreateMyVoice.com, and is dedicated to helping content producers engage their audience in a voice first, smart speaker world. He has created voice apps for well known bloggers and podcasters including William Jackson’s MyQuestToTeach, Seth Godin, and Maxwell Ivey’s The Blind Blogger.

Chip is a teacher, speaker, designer, and technologist who is passionate about connecting WordPress content to the new voice technology platforms.

Connect with him on Twitter @CreateMyVoice.

Chris Berkley

Chris is an SEO and website analytics consultant based in Philadelphia, with extensive experience using WordPress to help grow businesses. Connect with Chris on Twitter @BerkleyBikes.

Daniel Olson

Dan is the chief operating officer of DigitalCube, a company committed to supporting WordPress and its communities. He’s a web developer, AWS superfan, JAMstack advocate, and design thinking enthusiast.

Formerly a branding agency front-end lead working on projects for universities, nonprofits, and e-commerce, Dan has given workshops at events all over the world including WordCamp Europe, Serverless Conf Tokyo, DevOpsDays, Generate Conference, and WordCamp for Publishers on topics such as Docker, SaaS, security, design, and WordPress.

He calls Philadelphia home. Connect with Dan on Twitter @emaildano.

David Ryan

Dave Ryan is an interdisciplinary WordPress developer at Bluehost, where he focuses on helping build WordPress and supporting the WordPress community. In the past, Dave has worked for large publishers and universities, scaling high-traffic WordPress sites by blending his skills in information design, journalism and web development.

Dave lives in Phoenix, loves a good taco, and will like every photo of your dog on Instagram. Connect with Dave on Twitter @DaveRyan.

David Zimmerman

David Zimmerman is an internet marketing consultant who specializes in search. He has several years experience working with B2B companies, especially manufacturers. He started his own consultancy, Reliable Acorn LLC, after working in several agencies.

David’s core marketing belief is that all marketing should be measured. Measured marketing is more effective and less expensive. There’s no excuse, in David’s mind, for marketing efforts whose results are not measured.

Connect with him on Twitter @reliableacorn.

Drew Poland

Drew Poland is a WordPress developer in the Baltimore area specializing in custom theme design and development, with a focus on e-commerce.

He is also a regular WordCamp speaker, Meetup organizer, and contributing member of the community. Connect with Drew on Twitter @bmoredrew.

Eileen Violini

Eileen Violini is a UX/UI Designer and WordPress developer working to solve problems through smart design.

Connect with her on Twitter @_iviolini.

Jason McClintock

Jason is a product advocate and designer at DigitalCube, a company committed to supporting WordPress and its communities. With a background ranging from non profit to agency work, Jason’s current role involves design, development, and customer support.

Connect with Jason on Twitter @getshifter.

Jeff Matson

Jeff Matson is the documentation manager for Pagely/NorthStack, a developer in the WordPress community, and a contributor to everything open source.

Formerly, Jeff led the marketing efforts for the well-known Gravity Forms plugin.

In his spare time, he can be found creating fun open source projects or restoring classic arcade machines. Connect with Jeff on Twitter @TheJeffMatson.

Jodie Riccelli

Jodie Riccelli is the director of business development at WebDevStudios. Since starting with the company in 2016, she has been responsible for creating unique web strategies and solutions for clients including Viacom, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and the Society of Women Engineers.

Jodie brings 20 years of sales and marketing experience to WebDevStudios. Her marketing expertise and ability to restructure and to systematize businesses has been recognized by business leaders in many fields including media, consumer product goods, and nonprofits.

She was on the organizing team for WordCamp US in Philadelphia and can be found speaking at WordCamps across the country. In her downtime, she shares life experiences about screwing up on Izzabeth.com, and has been known to get lost in old bookstores avoiding the fact that there is no more shelf space at home. Jodie lives in Philadelphia and constantly talks about her pups, Sir Frankie and Arya Bark. Connect with Jodie on Twitter @Jodie_Riccelli.

Joseph LoPreste

Joseph is a father of two amazing daughters who motivate him to get better every day. He also has a passion for experiencing all the things this world has to offer.

He owns a web development company that specializes in web accessibility, and he travels around North America teaching developers, designers, and agencies how to be ADA Section 508 compliant. He truly loves what he is doing. He is able to combine his passions for helping people and technology with his passion for web accessibility. He feels good knowing that he is helping a lot of people access the internet when they use a website built using WordPress.

Connect with Joseph on Twitter @JosephLoPreste.

Kim White

Kim has been building websites for more than 20 years and using WordPress for more than half that time. Connect with Kim on Twitter @MrsCRW.

Koa Kekuna

Koa is a web developer and consultant hailing from Allentown and specializing in site speed and performance. He loves optimizing workflows and generally making things more efficient. You can often hear him muttering, “You gotta pump those numbers up – Those are rookie numbers!”, while checking his PageSpeed score.

Koa’s education and background blends a healthy mix of business, science, and technology. He currently works as a front-end developer at a healthcare marketing and advertising agency specializing in pharmaceutical branding for drugs to treat rare diseases.

Connect with Koa on Twitter @koa_kekuna.

Laura Byrne Cristiano

Laura started her first WordPress site back in March 2006 when she and a friend decided to start a website about a then little-known book called Twilight where fans could discuss the novel on a blog and forums. What started as a small site with maybe 30 visitors a week rapidly grew into the most popular Twilight website on the Internet, with millions of visitors each day from around the globe.

Laura was suddenly thrust into a media vortex that included set visits, a book deal, speaking engagements, and too many surreal experiences to count. This led to Laura transitioning from a career in education to one in marketing as she hit the ground running with a whole new skill set including podcasting, video editing, SEO, social media management and content marketing.

Since then, she’s created and written for more than twenty WordPress sites in a variety of industries. She is currently a content specialist at Bet Hannon Marketing. She also does freelance marketing and social media work.

Connect with Laura on Twitter @NewYorkerLaura.

Lou Fuiano

Lou has owned and operated his own graphic design studio since 1990. One of his first jobs out of art school was working for a typographer in Philadelphia, where he learned to love the visual impact of typographic form.

Early design years were spent doing marketing communication for retailers and corporate clients, as well as designing award winning book covers for publishers in Philadelphia and New York. Between 1999 and 2006, Lou taught visual design for print and new media at Temple University and at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. These days, brand marketing and web design is where the rubber hits the road.

Lou has several years of experience across all marketing platforms – including corporate identity, print advertising, package design, posters, brochures and catalogs, and of course design for the web and multimedia. He started working with a CMS called Expression Engine in 2009 and discovered WordPress shortly after. He soon began to befriend members of the WordPress community. The support throughout gave him the confidence to build in WP and sell those services to his clients.

Connect with Lou on Twitter @LouFuiano.

Lynne Williams

Lynne Williams is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Area Great Careers Group, a 501(c)3 nonprofit providing career education and networking. Lynne presents unique research-based workshops on LinkedIn, resumes, the Applicant Tracking System, the Art of Networking In Person & Online, and other career-related, social media, and technology topics. She has done extensive doctoral research on social media applications and is a contributing author to Find Your Fit: A Practical Guide to Landing the Job You Love along with the late Dick Bolles, the author of What Color is Your Parachute?.

Find Lynne on Twitter: @GreatCareersPHL or on LinkedIn: LynneWilliams

Paul Barthmaier

A dreamy full-stack developer who loves to explore all that is WordPress, and currently embracing the wave of React JS pervading the WordPress experience.

Connect with Pail on Twitter @_pbrocks.

Sal Ferrarello

Open Source veteran Sal Ferrarello has a list of accomplishments to rival any of the who’s who in WordPress, including contributing repeatedly to WordPress Core and Genesis, and authoring the Bootstrap Genesis Theme. If you have time, check out his GitHub account.

Along with his volunteer work in the WordPress Community, Sal has spoken on a wide variety of topics including Gutenberg, introducing people to post meta, and avoiding the pitfalls of DNS, as well as encouraging developers to blog.

When Sal isn’t wowing you with his magic or calculus skills, he can be found writing custom code for a variety of clients. He also enjoys spending time with his family.

Say hi to Sal on Twitter at @salcode and check out his site salferrarello.com.

Tessa Kriesel

Building community and teaching come naturally to dog-lover and Developer Community Manager at CircleCI, Tessa Kriesel. She wears many hats in her life — all with sass and finesse — including founder of Outspoken Women and Coders of TMRW.

Tessa has spoken on many topics, including helping beginners with their development workflows, mentorship, building communities, 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 building community, she is using her extroverted super hero skills to make people feel welcome and included at whatever event she attends.

Connect with Tessa on Twitter @tessak22.

Tim McKenna

Tim McKenna is a design professional with 13 years of experience creating meaningful products and services. He is the director of experience design at Pennsylvania Interactive, part of NIC Inc, where he leads a team of designers and developers to creating products and services for state government.

Connect with Tim on Twitter @azraelgroup.

William Jackson

William graduated from South Carolina State University, earning a bachelor’s in education, a master’s in teaching from Webster University. His career includes teaching with NASA as an internet and technology instructor, working as a technology consultant with the Florida Department of Education, providing low-cost workshops in social media and STEM, and offering workshops to inner city community groups to prepare youth, teens and young adults to use various levels of tech high or low to understand STEAM.

He has been involved in the field of education for more than 30 years and is always looking to teach, mentor, contribute and encourage students at all levels. He is involved in diversity discussions, panels focusing on diversity, inclusion and community engagement with tech and the WordPress Community.

William volunteers with the local WordPress Meetup in Jacksonville, Florida, Orlando, Florida and has for the past three years volunteered, spoken, organized at the WordCamp Jacksonville conference.

Connect with him on Twitter @wmjackson.

WordCamp Philly is over. Check out the next edition!