Andrea Edstrom
Andrea Edstrom is a Senior Web Developer and Designer at Minnesota Public Radio. She enjoys designing, illustrating, painting and using her creatives skills to do unique projects such as live sketching for the Terrible Thanks for Asking podcast. Andrea can be found on andreaedstrom.com and andreasartgallery.com
Andrew Norcross
when i was about 3 years old, my daycare was at a church, which my father was the minister of. i would sneak off from the group and hide behind the organ pipes, since i knew how to get in there. they’d find me asleep or laughing, and then take me to my dad for “punishment”.
i was never punished.
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 open source community through thought leadership, open source development and speaking at conferences.
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.
Andrew Wikel
I am your friendly neighborhood geek. I am passionate about my family, coffee, and other nerdy things.
I work for Automattic on WooCommerce Payment Gateway Support.
Barbara Schendel
Barbara got her start doing graphic design and static HTML websites back in the 1990s when hover effects were a huge deal. She’s been developing exclusively in WordPress since 2010, and now specializes in custom websites for small and medium sized organizations.
Bill Rice
Bill Rice is the Founder/CEO of Kaleidico, a digital agency focused on lead generation. Bill regularly writes and speaks about designing lead generation systems and platforms that deliver consistent sales growth.
Kaleidico’s specialty practice areas include Banking (Lending & Wealth Management), Legal (Personal Injury & Mergers and Acquisitions), Emerging Technology, and Senior Living.
Cami Kaos
Cami lives, works, and parents in the rainy city of Portland, Oregon. She’s had a love of WordPress and WordCamps since the last century, when she happened to stumble upon the first WordCamp Portland. Since 2013, she has worked at Automattic, as a community organizer for the WordPress open source project. In that role, she gets to work with WordCamps and their organizers from around the world, every day.
She continues to write on an irregular basis at camikaos.com where she explores concepts from the plight of modern parents to mental health to marveling at the seemingly mundane. Cami is active on a number of social platforms but can be most readily found as @camikaos on Twitter.
Candy Phelps
Candy Phelps is the founder of Bizzy Bizzy, a Madison, Wisconsin-based experiential creative company. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their dream working for themselves, whether they are freelancers or small business owners in another industry. She is the creator of the 1 Day™ Website and other 1 Day™ digital marketing services and author of “Grow Your SEO: Search Engine Optimization Concepts Even Your Grandma Could Understand.”
Fun facts: Candy once got to drive a police car from Chicago to Milwaukee as a civilian. She has been known to eat other people’s leftovers. Her first job was a milk route when she was in 4th grade!
Cari Twitchell
Cari Twitchell has spent more than 12 years helping business owners and professionals harness the power of words to grow their networks, define their brands and increase leads. In 2013, she started Custom Content Solutions LLC (customcontentllc.com) to deliver personalized web copy for professionals that connects with visitors and converts them into paying clients. She’s also the proud creator of the online copywriting course, Write That Site (writethatsite.com).
When Cari’s not working or at Disney World, you’ll find her doing all sorts of fun, geeky things with her husband and son. Warning: She’s a hugger.
Carl Alexander
Heya! I’m Carl. I’m a PHP developer from Montréal, Canada. Whenever I’m not targeted by various memes, I’m helping developers improve their skills. I share a lot of that on my website where I publish articles on a regular basis. I’m often confused with my much more popular and attractive cardboard double.
Courtney Deer
Courtney Deer is an experience designer and entrepreneur living in Minneapolis. She’s a Minnesota Business Magazine Mostly to Succeed and Twin Cities Startup Award recipient, and her work has earned multiple awards including SIlver at Ad Fed’s The Show, and a Webby Honoree. Awkward conversations for the greater good are her favorite kind of conversations to have.
Dan Flies
Dan Flies has been making large scale projects with WordPress since 2010 for the education and SMB markets. Currently working with Gannett and the LOCALiQ brand who’s mission is to simplify local marketing and provide businesses with a smarter way to reach local customers.
Dan has had a varied career starting as an IT auditor for KPMG, General Mills and Lawson Software. Dan then was co-founder of education startup Kidblog, using WordPress to teach students how to write for audience of the peers and the greater world. He then worked in the marketing world with Ciceron and Relationship One before joining Gannett to be the technical lead on it’s WordPress based Websites product.
Dwayne McDaniel
Once he dipped a toe into the world of Free and Open Source Software, he knew never wanted to work outside of it again. Over his years of sales and marketing roles, including Developer Advocate at a Pantheon, he developed a passion for optimizing business processes and project workflows. He has since founded Process Digital Consulting to focus on helping people design internal procedures to improve productivity. A a speaker, Dwayne has had the privilege of presenting at dozens of community events from Paris to Iceland and from MIT and Stanford.
Reach out at processdigitalconsulting.com or on twitter @mcdwayne
Gary Kovar
A native Floridian, Gary is a backend developer at Modern Tribe. After attending his first WordCamp in 2015, he cleaned up a few of his own plugins and put them in the WordPress repository. Often dabbling in a side project to satisfy his own curiosity, Gary can be found attending and sometimes speaking at Florida WordCamps. He is also one of three hosts of the free-style podcast, Binary Jazz.
When he’s not in front of his computer, Gary is playing with his kids or trying to learn a new obscure stringed instrument.
James Grumish
James Grumish is a Minneapolis-based developer and account manager at Windmill Strategy where data-backed websites are built for smart-minded business marketers. Aside from creating and maintaining agency-built websites, James’ 10+ years of software experience includes specific roles in marketing/SEO and hosted e-commerce application development. James believes that the best developers work to improve their listening and analysis skills in order to identify systems and recognize patterns.
Jeff Holland
Jeff Holland has been working on Rails and Javascript projects full time since 2011. He has worked in several different spaces including Education, Health Care, and Digital Marketing. He has a variety of work including performance centric Javascript, UI rewrites in React, and managing large scale WordPress deployments.
Jeff is interested in tackling the difficult problems and finding valuable solutions that help the team save time, money, and headaches. He enjoys new challenges such as learning new frameworks or new languages. Jeff also is a big supporter of local dev communities and mentoring new developers. Outside of work he enjoys family time, motorsports and travel.
Jeremy Ward
A native of St. Paul, Minnesota, Jeremy first got his start in web development as a hobby, when he learned to build static websites for his bands and friends. This part-time curiosity blossomed into interests in database queries and server-side languages, and by 2013, he began a full-time career in computer programming.
Today, Jeremy works as a Senior Backend Engineer at WebDevStudios, where he’s passionate about software architecture, modular design, sussing out acceptance criteria for website features, and promoting the merits of the hottest new board games.
Joe Thomas
Joe is the Lead Designer on the Design Systems team at U.S. Bank. Originally from Mankato, he and his wife and 2 girls now call Apple Valley home. In college he taught himself how to code while in design school and although he his career has been geared heavily in design, he has been actively practicing both ever since. It is this space and connection between design and code that draws him to design systems, especially at the scale of a Fortune 500 company like U.S. Bank.
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.
Justin Foell
In 2003 Justin started doing web development in Las Vegas, building the backend of several sites using home-grown PHP libraries.
After moving back to his home state of Minnesota in 2008, he attended WordCamp Minneapolis in 2010, and has been steeped in the WordPress world ever since. Justin helped reboot and co-organize WordCamp Minneapolis in 2013 after going dormant for a couple years. It has been going strong every year since.
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. For the last 3+ years, she’s been a security analyst for Wordfence, developing services for WordPress users to better understand and manage their site security.
Lon Koenig
Lon Koenig is a communications technologist with a broad background in education, advertising, and games. And he’s been at this awhile; writing his first programs on a teletype. A coder and writer who has embraced the dark disciplines of Marketing and Advertising. Dabbling in WordPress in the early days, it became his main platform about 10 years ago.
By day, he creates websites that scale, and manages Google Analytics and other integrations for commercial clients. Under cover of night, Lon uses the skills he picked up “in the early days” to develop for Arduino and similar IoT microcontrollers.
Lynn Winter
Lynn is a digital strategist who works with nonprofits in the open source community. She combines 19 years of experience in content strategy, user experience, and project management to bring a holistic approach to her work. She has spoken at numerous local and national conferences on a variety of topics and hosts an annual conference for Digital Project Managers called Manage Digital (managedigital.io). You can connect with her at lynnwintermn.com.
Matt Christenson
I was very young when I was born. 😉 I am a GEEK and I am proud of it! In 1985 I got my first computer, an Apple IIc (which I still have!). Once I got my hands on it the GEEK Presence was born, and the rest, well, is history! I’ve been using WordPress since 2005 and been full time freelancing since 2013. I never dreamed I’d be a freelancer, but it has been a fantastic journey that I wouldn’t trade for anything. My focus is on WordPress website design, monthly maintenance, training, and SEO.
In my spare time I write instrumental acoustic guitar music, obsess about finding and eating the best food in town (just ask!), take awesome naps in my recliner, and I love to make people laugh!
Mia Mian
Startup and Tech Enthusiast byways of San Diego, CA.
WordPress was my true entry point into the world of development and I wouldn’t have it any other way… from working in agencies to now as a client facing lead for a WP development firm. I’m stoked to represent and advocate for the non-technical WordPress user.
Michelle Schulp
Michelle is an independent graphic designer, recently relocated to Minneapolis from Chicago. She was formally schooled in 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 loves the WordPress community and speaks/volunteers/organizes at WordCamps and events around the country.
Mika Epstein
Working 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 LezWatch.TV, the greatest database of queer characters and shows, she develops software and trawls queer representation on television to make the data visible.
You can find her traveling internationally to speak about the intersection of software, fandom, and humanism.
Nate Finch
Nate has been building websites since 2011. He loves web development because it is the perfect mix of problem solving, building, and lifelong learning. As VP of Development at The Digital Ring, Nate splits his time between developing websites and developing developers. Prior to joining TDR, Nate freelanced, working with dozens of clients through platforms like Toptal and Codeable, and completed a brief stint as a web engineer with 10up.
Nate collects masters degrees, has traveled to six continents, lived on four, speaks Spanish, and outside of work, family, friends, food, coffee, and cooking are his favorite activities. He lives in Wisconsin with his wonderful wife and two daughters.
Nile Flores
Nile Flores is a long time WordPress designer and Developer. While she grew up a military brat, she’s settled in the St. Louis metro east region. Nile blogs at Blondish.net, where she covers topics on WordPress, Blogging, SEO, Social Media, and Web Design. Nile also works as an Infection Cleanup Specialist at WP Fix It, and a regular contributor to the GoDaddy blog.
She also loves contributing to WordPress, and that includes speaking at WordCamps across the United States. She loves helping people and supporting Open Source projects. When Nile isn’t knee deep in coding and design, she’s spending time with her son, who is also a WordPress user.
Pete Klein
I’ve been a professional developer since 2006, working with and researching technologies such as WordPress, Vue, React, .NET, Ruby on Rails, Bash scripting and Python scripting. I like the WordPress community for it’s inclusive, practical and down-to-earth attitude.
I’ve been fairly active in the non-profit world as well. I was the Director of Technology for AIGA Minnesota for 4 years, during which we did user testing and redesigned and re-engineered our website.
I live in Minneapolis and currently work at Ackmann & Dickenson as a Senior Web Developer.
Reid Peifer
Reid Peifer is a co-owner and Chief Creative Officer of Modern Tribe, a ridiculously awesome fully distributed digital agency specializing in enterprise WordPress projects. He’s designed, coded, and managed websites of all imaginable makes and sizes, and a thriving premium plugin business (Events Calendar Pro) all on top of WordPress. In his free time he’s a giant coffee snob, runs long distances very slowly, is dad to two small humans, and husband to a nice lady.
Sherry Walling
Dr. Sherry Walling helps smart people do hard things. She works with leaders around the world to tackle the common mental health and relationship challenges that go along with running businesses, and disrupting the status quo. As a clinical psychologist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, yoga teacher, podcaster and best-selling author, she draws from her professional expertise as well as her personal experience in the trenches. Her best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together, combines the insight and warmth of a therapist with the truth-telling mirth of someone who has been there. She can also be found at ZenFounder.com or SherryWalling.com.
Stacy Clements
Stacy Clements is the owner of Milepost 42, a technology partner for small business owners who want to work on their businesses, not the “techie stuff” needed to support it.
Before starting her business, Stacy spent 23 years in the Air Force, working primarily in cyber operations. Dubbed “a fixer, a problem solver, and a pitbull”, she now focuses on fixing WordPress sites, solving technical problems for small businesses, and relentlessly promoting cybersecurity practices.
Steve Persch
Steve is a Lead Developer Advocate at Pantheon with more than 12 years of experience building large-scale sites. He started out of college as a freelance developer building sites in WordPress 2. Steve built sites for a range of clients including The Joffrey Ballet, Foreign Affairs, Marketplace, Public Radio International, and many higher education institutions. You can find commits from Steve all over Pantheon’s WordPress plugins and example repositories.
William Ranney
Wil Ranney is the founder of Aboundant, a 100% remote firm that specializes in WordPress design and development with Nonprofits and Religious Institutions. He occasionally teaches design at Wartburg College. He’s a political junkie who likes to put his design skills to use fighting for social justice. Wil recently gave a Tedx talk titled, “#HotTake: Why Civility on the Internet is Overrated” where he argued what the internet really needs is good allies. He is a husband and father of two, including a newborn. Wil hails from Waverly, Iowa.
Zach Stepek
Founder of Mindsize, an eCommerce and enterprise WordPress consultancy that helps businesses focus on improving their investment in the web by improving customer experience and engaging customers where they live. Head Geek at Geekbotchery. Editor-in-Chief and Lead Photographer at Rock Insider Magazine. Serial Entrepreneur. If you find my free time, let me know! I seem to have misplaced it long ago.