Travis Totz
Travis started his love affair with WordPress at version 1.5, since then it has driven him to build and create countless WordPress projects. Travis was born and raised in Minnesota. After being amazed by Photoshop and it’s limitless possibilities, he decided that a career in design was his goal. After graduating college with a degree in Graphic Design, Travis enjoyed working at various design agencies and traveling the world with his wife, Jenna. In one of his travels, he crossed paths with David Morgan and Jeff Milone of Organic Themes. After doing some digging into WordPress, Travis and WerkPress co-founder Nick, identified a need in the WordPress industry: an agency dedicated to customizing themes. That was the beginning of WerkPress. The rest is history. Travis’ passions outside of WordPress are reading non-fiction, making music, traveling, and living a vegetarian/healthy lifestyle.
Josh Leuze
Josh Leuze is a WordPress developer from Minnesota who loves making themes. He is the author of the popular Meteor Slides plugin.
When not building themes and plugins in his basement, Josh can be found doodling with his kids at the kitchen table, digging in the garden, or pedaling his bike around town.
Nick Pelton
Nick currently is the Technology Director at WerkPress, a WordPress focused design and development studio, and working on his latest startup {Track:js}. He spends most his days developing, planning, and consulting for WordPress based solutions. When he isn’t working he is spending time with his wonderful wife Jennifer and his two children Amelia and Brodrick.
John Havlik
First introduced to WordPress in 2005, John Havlik has been an avid WordPress user, theme creator, and plugin author ever since. Among his various plugins is the popular breadcrumb plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT. When not working on his own projects, John helps support the small, 150 user, WordPress community at Weblogs.us. He also helps organize and frequently presents at MSP WordPress User Group meetings.
Helena Denley
Helena Denley wants to live in a world where every woman entrepreneur has a gorgeous website that works exactly as it should and brings in all the business (& money) she needs.
As a WordPress Consultant, she’s spoken at WordCamp Melbourne (Australia), WordCamp Chicago and her local WordPress meet up group and attends conferences such as Pressnomics and WordCamps in Australia and the US to keep her skills fresh and up-to-date.
When she’s not creating websites and learning about website best practices, you can find her answering copious questions from her 5 year old son and learning how to be an Unschooling Mum. Website: http://diywebsitecoach.com
Matthew Meyer
Matt is a local WordPress front-end and back-end developer employed at Thomson Reuters working towards his 10,000 hours having spent the last year working exclusively in WordPress.
Outside of web works, he enjoys most anything that involves creativity and spending time with his wife and one year old daughter.
Kyle Unzicker
I am a designer and developer who has an insatiable desire to build things worth putting my name on. Currently, I am an active member of a number of remote development teams, including Modern Tribe where I am learning how to help teams become helpful, happy, curious and accountable. Website: http://kyleunzicker.com
John Hawkins
John considers himself lucky to have found WordPress just 3 months after it’s initial release. He switched his blog over to the brand spanking new platform and hasn’t looked back. Over time his curiosity caused him to start looking under the hood to add in his own tweaks. This eventually turned in to creating themes and plugins for his own site and then for friends and eventually for people willing to pay him. In 2009 he quit his day job and started 9seeds.com where he builds custom WordPress sites for clients for a living.
When John isn’t at his desk he also enjoys… who are we kidding, he’s never not at his desk.
Reid Peifer
Reid is a co-owner of Modern Tribe , a ridiculously awesome fully distributed digital agency specializing in large scale WordPress projects. He’s designed, coded, and managed brochure sites, giant blogs, massive MU networks, iPad magazines, and a thriving premium plugin (Events Calendar Pro) all on top of WordPress. In his free time he’s a giant coffee snob, is training for another marathon, is dad to a small human, and husband to a nice lady.
Jamie Schmid
Jamie Schmid is a WordPress developer and Information Architect. Her experience in user-centered interaction design led to an interest in developing for user experience in administrative interfaces (known as the “author experience”) as well. She enjoys taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning and smart use of content. Website: http://www.ascedia.com
Dave West
Before joining forces at Westwerk with his twin brother Dan, Dave spent over 12 years designing interactive solutions as creative director for multiple agencies across the Twin Cities. His extensive experience includes years of managing teams of designers and developers, as well as embracing new technology and identifying innovative ways to put it to work for clients.
Joshua Vandercar
I serve as IT & e-Media Manager with World Mission Prayer League in Minneapolis and am a member of the Pressgram Leadership Team. I enjoy making things both functional and beautiful and have developed several plugins, including Pressgram and appear.in WP. I am a man of faith, music, coffee, reading, nature, and good times with good friends. Find me online @UaMV and http://vandercar.net.
Josh Broton
Josh spends his days building interactive infographics, cool ways to visualize data, and high performance NodeJS web apps at Lemonly. There, he fills the roles of both senior developer and curmudgeon. He also helped build the Spring Theme and Sassquatch Sass mixin library with 3themes.
Alec Rippberger
Alec Rippberger is a responsive WordPress developer based in Minneapolis Minnesota. Alec first cut his teeth on WordPress 5 years ago updating and maintaining the University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies’ website. From there he did a two year stint running the digital marketing efforts of local business law firm, Thompson Hall Santi Cerny & Dooley. Alec is currently working/taking on various WordPress projects in a freelance capacity. He can be reached through his website, http://alecrippberger.com.
Tony Perez
I’m one of three co-founders at Sucuri, Inc. We’re a website security company specializing in the various online threats that website owners face today. I’m a Marine Corps veteran that has been living in the underbelly of the web for various years. I enjoy speaking in front of crowds and finding ways to engage the crowd on the very serious subject of website security.
Lindsey Guajardo
After seven years of managing projects for a large communications company I left the corporate cubicle world for small agency life at WestWerk. In the last year I’ve worked with clients all over the world and a fantastic team of developers across the US and Canada.
Heather Acton
Heather Acton is a WordPress developer at Helio Interactive, a boutique digital agency in Chicago, IL. She’s passionate about good practices, mentoring others, and drinking craft beer with colleagues and friends.
Carolyn Sonnek
Carolyn is a life-long Minnesota resident and has been using WordPress since 2005. She can whip up a mean tater tot hotdish and thinks this winter sucks.
Carolyn is currently working for Automattic as a Happiness Engineer on the Jetpack plugin.
Julie Kuehl
I’m Julie Kuehl. I have a thing for websites, WordPress, and Harley-Davidson. I build hard-working websites for hard-working people at straightFORWARD Web Solutions.
Beth Backen
Beth is the owner of Backen Website Development, a website development company that specializes in WordPress Content Management Systems. With a background in letterpress printing and the photography industry, she enjoys projects that combine visual elements with technical challenges. As a person who thrives on learning, she is at home in the ever-changing world of the web, where there is always a new technique to discover. Beth is also an accomplished vegetable gardener with an interest in urban food production, food security, and sustainable agriculture. She has steadily increased backyard food production for her household since 2005. A lover of all things outdoorsy, she enjoys birdwatching, and takes trips to the Boundary Waters a couple of times per year.
Julie Kosbab
Julie Kosbab has worked with literally hundreds of small and large businesses developing measurable web strategies. Her skills including bridging the technology gap between design, development, and business users, editorial development, and advanced analytics. She is Individually Qualified in Google Analytics, and experienced in the use of multiple data platforms to help businesses grow web traffic effectively.
In her legendary abundant spare time, she serves on the Board of Directors of streets.mn, blogs quite occasionally at rideboldly.org, and posts pictures of her cats on Twitter at @betweenstations.
John James Jacoby
BuddyPress, bbPress, BackPress, WordPress, JJJ.
Nick Ciske
Nick Ciske has a degree in Multimedia Design and over fourteen years of experience working in web development and digital media.
His past clients include Carmichael Lynch, WeWorkForThem/YouWorkForThem, Michael Cina, The Billy Graham Association, Augsburg Publishers/Sparkhouse, and many others.
Nick’s development expertise is sought after because he delivers solid results that are client focused. He is an excellent communicator who can break down complex technical subjects into everyday language. He is passionate about his work and enjoys staying up to date on the latest trends, techniques and technologies.
Alison Barrett
Alison Barrett has been developing themes and plugins for WordPress since 2008. She is a big fan of open source ideals, believing that collaboration beats competition every time. Alison is a senior web engineer at 10up by day, and a gamer and LEGO enthusiast by night. She lives in Eden Prairie, Minnesota with her husband and their three cats.
Jesse Pollak
I’m a co-founder and the head of product at Clef where I help architect our cryptographic architecture and lead development of the open source Clef for WordPress plugin. I’m a dropout of Pomona College and I blog about the Internet on WordPress.
Joe Dolson
Joe Dolson is a WordPress plug-in developer and accessibility consultant. He’s the author of several popular WordPress plug-ins, including WP to Twitter and My Calendar, and works to promote accessible development with WordPress. He teaches a course at the University of Colorado at Boulder on developing accessibly with WordPress, and works with the WordPress Accessibility task force on the accessibility of WordPress itself.
Joe has been working in marketing and web development since 2001, providing web consulting and development services to clients in the US and in Europe. Joe writes and speaks regularly on important topics in accessible web development and web standards. Keep up with Joe at Joe Dolson Accessible Web Design or follow Joe on Twitter.
Suzette Franck
Suzette Franck is the WordPress Evangelist at (mt) Media Temple in Culver City, California, where she educates and advocates for WordPress and the WordPress Community. In 2013, she attended 80 WordPress meetups where she presented at 25 of them, spoke at 12 WordCamps in 8 different states and two countries, as well as presented online on Designing For WordPress at WordSesh #2 with Natalie MacLees. In January of 2014, she started her own weekly podcast with BFF Natalie MacLees called, “WP Girlie Show.”
Suzette blogs frequently at suzettefranck.com about WordPress and is a regular contributor on the weekly podcast WPWatercooler.com, which has been running for over a year and has almost 5 million views. She was also the host of the popular WordPress podcast DradCast Episode 017.
Suzette is passionate about teaching the wonders of WordPress through her participation in local WordPress events and her written articles. She loves to explore new solutions using WordPress as an application platform. She enjoys learning about web development and digging into code, which she has been doing for over 20 years. She discovered WordPress in 2007 and has used it to create over 200 websites with a variety of designs and requirements, mostly with custom hand-coded themes.
Besides living and breathing WordPress and traveling about, Suzette loves to collect art and paint, and has been involved in the local Los Angeles Art movement for almost ten years. She loves to craft and has documented some of her personal projects on her photo blog at http://suzettefranck.me.
Amy Abt
Amy works at Twin Cities design and development firm Westwerk, specializing in new business, budgeting, profitability and account management. As Account Executive, Amy has had the opportunity to manage projects of all sizes and types – from branding and identity to enterprise-level web design and development. She’s managed such clients as Flipboard, Minnesota Opera, Pollen, Sandow and King Solutions. Amy spends her free time planning her summer wedding (down to the penny) and learning new Excel tricks.
Brennen Byrne
Brennen Byrne is the CEO and cofounder of Clef, a security plugin for WordPress. He speaks about security across the country with a focus on making security approachable and interesting to non-technical audiences. Modern security requires safer communities, not just safer sites, and Brennen is dedicated to helping the WordPress community protect itself. @brennenbyrne on Twitter
Scott Offord
As an entrepreneur, Scott enjoys identifying and reaching new business markets, growing online communities, and partnering with business start-ups.
Scott is president of the not-for-profit community organization, Meetupery Inc, a coworking space in Waukesha county, Wisconsin. His background is in the field of web development. Scott is the Director of Internet marketing at Orion Group, which is the founding sponsor of the Meetupery. Along with his business partner, Bill Knoernschild, Scott profitably built Orion Group from zero to ten employees in the span of two years.
In his off time, Scott enjoys organizing the Milwaukee WordPress meetup and the annual Milwaukee WordCamp, as well as spending time with his wife, Stephanie, and walking his Great Dane, Squiggles.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is a graphic designer and co-founder of Marktime Media, a multimedia design and video production company based in Chicagoland. She was formally schooled in many aspects of design including print, branding, packaging, etc., with additional education in Psychology and Sociology, all tying together in a love of How To Solve Problems. Lately she has been specializing in WordPress websites, infographics, and high-end presentations for her clients. She is a lover of WordCamps and the WordPress community, a Meetup junkie, @3themes contributor, and WordCamp Chicago lead organizer.
Patrick Rauland
Patrick spends most of the work day slicing and dicing code to help WooThemes customers. He develops extensions for Ninja Forms and loves to blog. He also organizes the Appleton WordPress Meetup. Being outside, running, and practicing yoga are some of his favorite activities. His ultimate goal is to figure out a way to code websites while in a headstand.
Toby Cryns
Toby has invested over 10 years of his life helping small businesses connect to the world and sell more using WordPress.
When he isn’t playing hide-and-seek with his kids at home, he helps small businesses do things in smarter ways at The Mighty Mo! Design Co.
John Heimkes
I’ve been building sites with WordPress since I began a career in web development, back in 2008. I graduated from the Art Institutes Intl. of Minnesota back in 2010 and have since worked at a few companies in the Twin Cities. Most recently, I was at The Nerdery as a WordPress developer from 2011 through January 2013, and now I’m at Ackmann & Dickenson as a Web Developer, specializing in WordPress. Website: http://heimk.es
Thomas McMahon
Thomas McMahon is a web developer at The Nerdery in Bloomington, MN where he specializes in WordPress, Facebook and front-end development. His WordPress experiences include working with small businesses to fortune 100 companies. He’s been working with WordPress for over 6 years and continues to educate clients through training, podcasts, webinars, and blog posts.
Nikhil Vimal
Hi, I’m Nikhil, also known as NikV online. A WordPress developer working with plugins and theme and a WordPress Core contributor.
Marc Benzakein
Marc Benzakein has been working online since the mid 90s, starting as a Network Administrator for a small, independent ISP in Southern California and has been involved in almost all aspects of technology. In 2009, he started developing in WordPress, first for his own purposes and then for clients. In early 2013, he got involved with ServerPress, LLC, makers of DesktopServer, a local development tool created for WordPress designers and developers.
He is passionate about the WordPress Community and loves to share that passion with anyone who will listen.
Marc lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife and two children, Eli (8) and Brenna (3).
James Barrett
Jim has been active in the WordPress community since 2008, first as a designer, then as an advocate and a speaker. He brings over 10 years of UX, front end, and visual design expertise to the 10up design team where he current works. Before coming to 10up, Jim worked for various agencies and companies in the Minneapolis area, crafting design solutions for both small businesses and Fortune 500 companies.
Dan Beil
Hi, I’m Dan and I make stuff for the web. I have been working with WordPress since 2009 and it’s been quite a ride. In my free time I foster Siberian Huskies, sketch, and am starting to blog again at AddActionDan.me