Morten Rand-Hendriksen
Morten is a senior staff instructor at LinkedIn Learning and Lynda.com with 60+ courses published on WordPress, web standards, design and UX, and future technologies. He also teaches Interaction Design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and contributes to WordPress core and community projects.
When he’s not working you’ll find Morten playing with his son, reading philosophy and science fiction, talking to people about the internet and how it shapes our society, and wearing out his shoes on the ballroom dance floor.
Twitter: @Mor10
Morten’s slides: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wordpress-changing-here-3-things-you-need-know-morten-rand-hendriksen/?published=t
Sandy Edwards
Sandy Edwards has been working in the online marketing space for over 5 years. She started at a niche firm that utilized WordPress to create sites quickly utilizing several options frameworks. Today, she owns CESquared a WordPress focused Agency that engages in SEO, online marketing, and Development.
She loves to give back by teaching kids about coding, WordPress, and other technical skills. Sandy is very active in the Orlando WordPress community and is excited to see what changes are coming to the tech space!
Twitter: @SunSandDesign
Sandy’s Slides: https://datadrivenlabs.io/blog/kids-code-talk-wordcamp-us/
Michael Hill
Mike Hill is the Director of Web Development for Erickson Living. He manages a team that develops and manages the development and digital strategy for over 40 web properties for Erickson. He has been involved in web design and development for over 20 years, with experience as a Creative Director, designer, and front end developer. His recent focus has been on bring accessibility and UX considerations to digital efforts focusing on the unique needs and interests of older users.
Twitter: @HillArts
James Tryon
I’m Creative Director & Founder of Easily Amused, lead ambassador of Wapu.us, and a father of 3. I’m also one of the co-organizers of WordCamp Orlando and the WordPress Orlando meetup group. I’ve been in the creative industry for more than 18 years and have an eye for design and usability. I also possess the know-how to plan, design, code, and market it all if needed.
An avid collector of random awesomeness from garage sales, thrift store, and eBay, I’m always finding something interesting to spark my creativity. When I’m not working, I am more than likely building something, playing with toys, or hanging with my friends and family. Or at a WordCamp.
Twitter: @JamesTryon
Chris Taylor
Chris is Chief Marketing Officer at Automattic, where he is responsible for growth and brand development across the company’s various products. Prior to Automattic, he was SVP of Marketing at 1800Flowers, where he led led customer acquisition efforts across online and offline channels. Chris began his marketing career at E*TRADE, where was VP of Analytics and Marketing, overseeing the relaunch of etrade.com and a redesign of the customer communications program.
Before getting into marketing, Chris worked in strategy consulting for Mars & Co. He graduated from Duke University.
Chris lives in suburban New York with his wonderful wife and three amazing kids.
Twitter: @CTdotLive
Matt Mullenweg
Matt Mullenweg, co-founder, WordPress; founder & CEO, Automattic
Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of the open-source blogging platform, WordPress, the most popular publishing platform on the web, and the founder & CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Jetpack. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company.
He has been recognized for his leadership and success by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc Magazine, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired, University Philosophical Society, and Vanity Fair.
Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is an avid photographer. Matt splits time between Houston, New York, and San Francisco.
Vivek Jain
Vivek is co-founder and Key Accounts Manager at rtCamp, an eight-year old WordPress.com VIP agency headquartered in India.
He is passionate about making successful enterprise project delivery and about maintaining ongoing client relationships. He is an active community member and has volunteered at WordCamps in US and India.
He loves Jazz, follows Premier league football and (he believes😉) is a good Sunday football player.
Twitter: @SVivekJain
Vivek’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/svivekjain/handling-clients-the-human-way
Tammie Lister
Tammie works at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. She has a varied background including psychology, design, front end development and user experience. She is a contributor to WordPress, and passionate about Open Source.
Twitter: @Karmatosed
Tammie’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/tammielis/media-matters
Andrew Nacin
Andrew Nacin is a Lead Developer of WordPress. He’s led major releases, mentored contributors, and spearheaded new development. He has strong feelings about the core philosophies of WordPress, among them “decisions, not options” — software should be opinionated in lieu of burdening the user with too many options.
In January 2014, he joined the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, where he works to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country’s most important digital services.
Twitter: @Nacin
Jonathan Brinley
Jonathan began tinkering with WordPress websites and plugins a dozen years ago, taking the plunge into full-time freelancing shortly thereafter. He has collaborated with the distributed team at Modern Tribe for seven years, and currently leads a team of developers to build delightful and creative solutions on top of the WordPress platform.
When he’s not coding, Jonathan is busy homeschooling his two children and enjoying the beautiful weather of Northeast Florida.
Twitter: @JBrinley
Jonathan’s Slides: http://flightless.us/wcus2017/
Gary Pendergast
Gary is a WordPress, web and music geek who writes poetry with Automattic. He likes making large architectural changes to WordPress Core, completely unnoticed.
He can be observed in his natural habitat at pento.net, or usually in Melbourne, Australia.
Mika Epstein
Mika Ariela Epstein is better known as Ipstenu, the Half-Elf Rogue. Working for DreamHost, specializing in WordPress, Mika helps make WordPress and hosting better for everyone. When she isn’t reviewing plugins she’s speaking at WordCamps worldwide about code and open source technology. A self-taught guru on Multisite and .htaccess, she has a passion for writing and technology and blogs about them whenever possible.
Twitter: @Ipstenu
Mika’s Slides: https://slides.halfelf.org/wcus2017/
Monique Dubbelman
Monique started working as a graphical designer and engineer somewhere in the 20th century. She discovered the web in the early 90’s and has been online ever since, exploring new possibilities.
Her expertise shifted towards marketing, communications and web design. About 10 years ago, she started selling online and therefore built and designed her own web shop. She works as an entrepreneur in her own company BOE!media since 2011, advising SME’s on their digital (marketing) strategy.
In 2016, she graduated from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences as a bachelor in information management. Building websites with WordPress is an important part of her work.
When she’s not glued to her phone or computer, she likes to whisper to earth worms on her allotment.
Twitter: @BOEMedia
Monique’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/mdubbelm/wcus-the-importance-of-information-architecture
Zandy Ring
I have been a Happiness Engineer with Automattic for the past 4.5 years. I have worked in forums, live chat, mobile support, tickets, and have lead a team of 18 Happiness Engineers from across the globe. Currently I lead a WooCommerce Happiness team.
I am based in North Carolina and blog at zandy.blog.
Twitter: @Zandys
Elizabeth and Zandy’s Slides: https://elizabeth.blog/2017/12/09/wordcamp-us-2017/
Elizabeth Urello
Elizabeth Urello is a Happiness Engineer with Automattic, the fully distributed company behind WordPress.com. Currently, she works with multiple support team leads across three divisions, helping them to lead their remote teams to achieve shared goals.
Elizabeth lives in Austin and blogs at elizabeth.blog.
Twitter: @Eurello
Elizabeth and Zandy’s Slides: https://elizabeth.blog/2017/12/09/wordcamp-us-2017/
Winstina Hughes
Winstina Hughes views the world through the lens of a regional planner. She’s worked at a state transit agency and in local government on market research, community development, and vision zero initiatives.
She created her first WordPress blog for a Geographic Information Systems assignment, and followed it soon after with one on community development and suburban planning. Winstina started her company Planning Write six years ago and is a WordPress NYC Meetup Organizer.
She bleeds scarlet (Go Scarlet Knights!), loves hip-hop, and adores WordPress software.
Twitter: @PlanningWrite
Winstina’s Slides: https://goo.gl/nRgNp8
Dmitry Mayorov
Dmitry is a Moscow-based web designer and web developer. He runs a theme shop called ThemePatio, creates custom themes for his clients, and helps the local WordPress community in Russia to grow by co-organizing meetups as well as WordCamp Moscow.
Twitter: @dmtrmrv
Dmitry’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/iamdmitrymayorov/designing-a-theme-navigation-heres-7-things-to-keep-in-mind
Nicole Kohler
Nicole Kohler works on content, communications, and marketing at Automattic.
When she’s not at work, you can find her playing video games, chasing her pets around the house, or trying new craft beers in search of the perfect porter.
Twitter: @nicoleckohler
Nicole’s Slides: https://nicoleckohler.com/speaking/
Mike Schroder
Mike Schroder is a cross-cultural kid, coffee-drinking sailor, and lover of Open Source.
He’s a WordPress Core Developer, WordPress Media component maintainer, and works as Director of WordPress Strategy at DreamHost. You can find him blogging on geeky things at GetSource.net.
Twitter: @GetSource
Mike’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/tammielis/media-matters
Yoav Farhi
Yoav Farhi is an Iñtërnâtiônàlizætiønër at Automattic, who works on everything related i18n (that’s internationalization) and l10n (localization) and of course, translation.
A core contributor to WordPress for 8 years now, Yoav works hard to make the web a better place.
Twitter: @YoavF
Jennifer Dodd
Jennifer M. Dodd is a developer at Automattic Inc. She is a contributor to WordPress and bbPress and is part of the forums group on the Meta team for WordPress.org. In the summer of 2016, she upgraded the WordPress.org support forums from bbPress 1 to bbPress 2.
Twitter: @jmdodd
Weston Ruter
Weston has been using WordPress for over ten years, and for the past few years he’s been contributing heavily. Weston is a WordPress core committer, and he is the Customizer focus tech lead. He is also involved heavily in the Customizer and widgets, and most recently the new Gutenberg editor.
Weston works at XWP as CTO, and he lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two boys.
Twitter: @westonruter
Weston’s Slides: https://weston.ruter.net/2017/12/02/slides-for-building-with-javascript-in-the-customizer-wcus-2017-talk/
Tracy Levesque
Tracy Levesque is the co-owner and co-founder of YIKES, Inc. a web design and development agency located in the lovely Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia. YIKES specializes in extending the functionality of WordPress through professional design and development. Women and LGBT owned, YIKES is also a proud B Corporation focusing on sustainable business practices and observing the triple bottom line: People, Planet, Profits.
Twitter: @liljimmi
Tracey’s Slides: http://slides.thetracyl.com/wcus2017/#/
Bob Visser
Passionate about technology and value creation, Bob is often described as a ‘pragmatic tennis-playing geek’. His accent will quickly give away that he’s a Dutchman, who has been soaking up American culture since 2007.
Currently, he is the COO of CoffeeCup Software, creators of the 1st HTML Editor at the dawn of the Web in 1996. Using a crazy pizza combination of skills and technologies, he and his team launched a series of visual design apps that do NOT generated bloated code. These apps are used by thousands of designers, business owners and large companies such as PayPal, Men’s Warehouse and OpenTable to create responsive sites and (email) newsletters.
Bob authored several frequently viewed articles and tutorials such as A website needs to adapt…or die and Designing with flexbox. He speaks at local events and conferences — most recently he captivated his audience at Convergese 2017 with his presentation ‘Liberating Layouts Through CSS Grid’.
His current endeavor is to develop an intuitive theme and website design app for…WordPress!
Before CoffeeCup he did a lot if interesting stuff that he does not want to bore you with.
Twitter: @weldebob
Aaron Douglas
Aaron was that five year old taking apart appliances and never really grew out of wanting to see how things work. In 2013 he started working remote with Automattic as an engineer focusing on WordPress and Simplenote for iOS. In 2016 he became the lead of one of the mobile teams.
Other than software development, Aaron enjoys camping during the summer, running, biking, taking his dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, and pretending to be a storm chaser while sitting at home.
Twitter: @astralbodies
Aaron’s Slides: https://aaron.blog/2016/03/25/how-working-remote-probably-saved-my-life/
Christie Chirinos
Christie Chirinos is a Partner in and; the Business Manager at Caldera Labs, a WordPress plugin company. Caldera Labs is the company led by Josh Pollock behind Caldera Forms, a leading drag-and-drop form builder for WordPress, and a handful of other free and premium plugins.
Christie started selling online at the age of 14. She launched her own ecommerce site, sold on third-party platforms, monetized a blog, and created sites for lead generation for service businesses, eventually focusing on tech for nonprofit organizations before moving on to digital downloads.
Christie received her Master of Business Administration degree with a specialization in information systems management from Florida State University, and is currently based out of New York City.
Twitter: @cicichirinos
Christie’s Slides: https://calderaforms.com/WCUS2017/
Brooke Dukes
Brooke, a West Coast native, currently resides in Seattle, WA. After Brooke received a degree in graphic design, she learned she was more passionate about people than pixels. Even so, she still can’t pass up a good conversation about design. When she isn’t engineering some happiness you will find her cycling, enjoying vegetarian food with friends and family.
Twitter: @bandonrandon
Jeremy Felt
Jeremy Felt is the senior WordPress developer at Washington State University, a WordPress core committer, and the maintainer of VVV. He believes in free and open source software and enjoys being part of the WordPress community. Will encourage you to share your work.
Twitter: @jeremyfelt
Jeremy’s Slides: https://content.jeremyfelt.com/uploads/2017/12/jeremyfelt-wcus-accessibility-2017.pdf
Shawn Hooper
Shawn Hooper is the Director of IT at Actionable.co where he builds tools to integrate the many systems used in a distributed company.
Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Shawn has been building web applications since the late 90’s, with a focus on WordPress since 2011. He is a core contributor to the WordPress open source project, and has spoken at WordPress events in Canada, the United States and Australia. Shawn is also the co-organizer of WordCamp Ottawa.
Twitter: @shawnhooper
Shawn’s Slides: https://www.shawnhooper.ca/presentations/wordpress-multilingual/
Josepha Haden
Since college, Josepha has gathered together people with similar interests to learn more and create better communities. In 2008 that passion for connecting people spread to technology, and she’s never looked back.
With a training in music, and a background in data, Josepha is a digital literacy advocate who talks about WordPress, the Open Source Software community, and non-traditional paths to STEM fields.
Josepha works at Automattic as a community organizer for the WordPress open source project and can be found on Twitter as @josephahaden.
Twitter: @JosephaHaden
Meg Delagrange
With over 22 moves between New York and Tokyo, Meg currently finds her home in the always-beautiful Denver, Colorado. She is a partner and Marketing Director at Urban Southern where she is strategically building a strong brand presence both online and offline.
Born into an Amish family, she has embraced her heritage with a unique approach to life and business. After hours, you may find her painting in her studio or sharing heart to heart thoughts on Instagram.
Twitter: Meg Delagrange
Katherine White
Katherine is a Solutions Architect with a proven track record spanning over 15 years of client-facing technology leadership, strategy and development team management. As an experienced cross-functional team leader and full-stack web developer, she guides project teams while serving as a solution focused, trusted client partner. Katherine has provided technology project leadership for clients ranging from small businesses and high-growth startups to global business and consumer divisions of Fortune 500 enterprises.
Katherine’s technical expertise is focused on open source content management in both WordPress and Drupal, and she is a passionate advocate for universal accessibility, rewarding user experiences, and future-proof development methodologies.
Twitter: @katherinemwhite
Katherine’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/katwhite/documentation-for-developers
Joe McGill
Joe McGill lives in St. Louis, Missouri, where he works remotely as a Senior WordPress Engineer at Human Made.
Joe is a Contributing Developer to WordPress and helps maintain the Media component. Find him on online at https://joemcgill.net at on Twitter as @joemcgill.
Twitter: @JoeMcGill
Joe’s Slides: https://joemcgill.net/2017/12/media-handling-in-wordpress-explained/
David Laietta
David has been a professional web developer for well over a decade, with the last nine years being focused on WordPress development. His focus is on helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.
Twitter: @davidlaietta
David’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/DavidLaietta/running-your-service-business-on-wordpress
Andrew Roberts
andrew@ephox.com Andrew is the CEO of Ephox, the company behind TinyMCE. TinyMCE is the online editor in WordPress and tens of thousands of other applications and used by millions worldwide.
Originally from Australia, Andrew started several web technology companies straight out of the University of Queensland in the late 1990s. By 2000, he had launched one of the first online editing tools and was a recipient of a Young Australian of the Year award for science and technology. Since then Andrew has based himself in Silicon Valley and has grown Ephox to 45 staff in Australia, Sweden, and the United States.
Twitter: @Andrew_Roberts
Andrew’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/ephox/project-to-product-to-profit-lessons-learned-trying-to-commercialize-a-major-open-source-project/1
RC Lations
RC is the lead developer at the Institute for Nonprofit News, where he works to help others democratize publishing using WordPress.
Twitter: @RCLations
K Adam White
K. Adam White is a senior web engineer in Boston, Massachusetts, where he writes complex web applications, contributes to open-source projects, and evangelizes the web as an open platform for technology and collaboration.
A veteran of the data visualization consultancy Bocoup, K. Adam is also an artist and enthusiast photographer, a WordPress core contributor, and the Design Lead for the WordPrest REST API.
Twitter: @KAdamWhite
K Adam’s Slides: https://kadamwhite.github.io/talks/2017/wcus/#/
Francesca Marano
Francesca is the WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround. She is part of the WordPress community team, organising Meetups and WordCamps in Torino and taking part in many other WordPress events worldwide.
She founded C+B, a blog with an editorial staff of more than sixty authors offering daily advice for Italian female creative entrepreneurs.
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.
Twitter: @FrancescaMarano
Brianna Privett
A passion for the web as a medium for art is the foundation for my twenty-year long career in web development and UX design. I’m the founder of TechnoSiren, and I help web users become web creators.
Twitter: @Briannaorg
Alain Schlesser
Alain is a freelance software engineer and WordPress consultant living in Germany.
He started out as a government agent working in prison administration in Luxembourg, and has recently made the switch to self-employment to enjoy productive work without the bureaucratic hurdles.
He has worked with numerous platforms and programming languages for the past 25 years, and is now trying to settle down on modern web development with the WordPress platform. He is passionate about software architecture and code quality, and he never misses an opportunity to share best practices.
He offers his WordPress services and expertise through his company Bright Nucleus, while you can catch some of his more personal ramblings at https://www.alainschlesser.com.
Twitter: @Schlessera
Alain’s Slides: https://schlessera.github.io/wcus-2017/#/title
Nathaniel Schweinberg
Nathaniel is a Systems Engineer living in sunny Vacaville, California. He manages Human Made’s server infrastructure and fights to keep all the chaos monkeys at bay. He has the cutest kitty ever.
When he’s not working, you can find Nathaniel spending time with his friends around a board game or off on a hike in the hills.
Twitter: @Nathanielks
Nathaniel’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/nathanielks/scalable-highlyavailable-wordpress-on-aws
Mel Choyce
Mel is a Boston-based Product Designer and a WordPress core contributor.
She loves big type, cold brew coffee, and printmaking.
Twitter: @MelChoyce
Mel’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/melchoyce/ten-tips-for-better-type
Marc Benzakein
Hailing from the Great State of Wisconsin, Marc is the Operations Manager of ServerPress, LLC, a software development company focused on products and services pertaining to the WordPress Community. He has spoken, organized, and worked as a sponsor for several WordCamps over the past four years, and he believes strongly that the Community is what makes WordPress so powerful. He has spoken on topics ranging from Business, Marketing, Development, to WordCamps.
Marc lives in Milwaukee with his wife, nine children, three cats, two dogs, his son’s snake, and a bunch of fish. In between times with the family and work, he enjoys his photography and working out. OK, that working out part isn’t true. Marc actually hates working out. He does it anyway.
Twitter: @MarcBenzak
Kathryn Presner
Kathryn Presner thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012. She’s currently Theme Whisperer on the Theme Team, where she helps folks with customization, configuration, and troubleshooting.
Kathryn is also a member of the WordPress.org support crew and enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress and encouraging new public speakers at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events.
Non-WordPress obsessions include vintage Pyrex mixing bowls and growing garlic.
Twitter: @Zoonini
Kathryn’s Slides: https://zooninidev.com/css-secrets/#/
Felix Arntz
Felix is a WordPress freelancer based in Germany, where he has been implementing client solutions and plugins for several years now. He is a Back-end developer with a major focus on Multisite environments.
Aside from occasionally creating open-source plugins to give back to the WordPress project, he is also involved in core development, where he has been a component maintainer for Multisite and Post Thumbnails for awhile, and he became a committer in late 2016.
When he is not doing WordPress stuff, Felix spends his time producing music, playing the piano, and playing soccer. He does all of that while drinking a lot of Mountain Dew.
Twitter: @FelixArntz
Felix’s Slides: https://slides.leaves-and-love.net/contributing-to-wordpress-core-wcus-2017/#/
Sarah Benoit
Co-Founder and Lead Instructor for JB Media Institute, Sarah is an online marketing, SEO, keyword research, and social media strategist dedicated to making the field of internet marketing accessible and understandable to businesses and marketing professionals. She has worked in the internet marketing field since 2003 and began teaching and presenting on related topics in 2006.
Sarah provides timely, relevant, and engaging classes and seminars designed to help both advanced and beginner students expand their skills and gain a better understanding of the role websites and the internet play in business promotions, networking, and marketing. She has presented to groups, large and small, on referral marketing, WordPress, Google analytics, SEO, social media, personal branding, event promotions, and more. A business owner herself, she founded Creative Original, Inc., a small business web development, consulting, and training firm in Asheville, North Carolina.
Sarah is also an ongoing WordPress, SEO, Google Analytics, and social media instructor for A-B Tech Community College, the A-B Tech Small Business Incubator, and Asheville SCORE. She routinely presents at conferences throughout North Carolina and beyond including WordCamp Asheville, WordCamp San Diego, the Western Women’s Business Center Annual Conference, the Prospering Conference at the BRCC Small Business Center, and more.
Twitter: @SarahDBenoit
Sarah’s Slides: http://www.jbmediagroupllc.com/wcus/
Jason Bahl
Jason is a Senior WordPress Engineer at Digital First Media in Denver, CO where he works on large publishing sites that use WordPress such as DenverPost.com, OrangeCountyRegister.com and TwinCities.com. He is passionate about using WordPress in non-traditional ways. In fact, he first discovered (and fell in love with) WordPress in 2008 when he was trying to find a CMS to populate content in a Flash site. Within a year he was working full-time as a WordPress developer and hasn’t looked back.
Jason continues to use WordPress to populate interfaces outside of the WordPress stack, and maintain the WPGraphQL plugin to make it easier for everyone to use WordPress data outside of the traditional WordPress stack.
Twitter: @JasonBahl
George Stephanis
George is one of the folks behind the Jetpack plugin, and is a frequent core contributor to the WordPress core software. He is also a regular on the WPWatercooler podcast, and a frequent WordCamp Speaker. Whilst not behind a computer, he enjoys making things from solder and wood.
Twitter: @daljo628
Chris Teitzel
As a third-generation tech nerd, Chris has a passion for technology and its ability to create an impact on lives around the world. After graduating with a degree in Biology, he started Cellar Door Media to create the latest in mobile applications and websites for clients.
In the years since, it has taken him all over the world. He has worked with some of the largest enterprises, e-commerce in the emerging markets of Africa, and even aid work in Haiti and Washington DC. He was at the front lines of the responsive web by being involved in one of the largest themes in Drupal, has worked in both WordPress and Drupal to bring strong encryption to the systems, and recently launched a new startup Lockr to provide secrets management as a SaaS platform.
Twitter: @TechNerdTeitzel
Chris’ Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fWDX0DC6CdUGK9RJpaoSfBwRBXsQrYGhP_Y6OyunBe8/edit#slide=id.p5
Bianca Welds
Bianca lives in Kingston, Jamaica (though she’s been known to get restless and has lived in Belgium, USA, and Italy). Having studied technology at university, she now works in more general and project management areas, while freelancing through her WordPress consultancy, L’Attitude Studios.
Bianca has been using WordPress since 2005 when she set up her first personal web site. She decided to get more involved in the global WordPress community, including speaking and starting a local meetup. When she’s not working, you can find her playing steel pan, writing poetry, or salsa dancing.
Twitter: @BiancaWelds
Sonja Leix
Sonja is a location-independent Web Designer and Digital Strategist. She’s an active member of the WordPress community, contributes to various teams, and co-organizes WordCamp Europe. She helps businesses create unique online experiences that connect deeply with their customers.
Twitter: @SonjaLeix
Ryan Markel
Ryan engineers happiness for WordPress.com VIP from St. Louis, and loves helping others have great experiences. He’s been blogging in some form or another for a very long time, eventually learning and loving WordPress.
He enjoys the study of games and helping his wife (try to) control his five children.
Twitter: @RyanMarkel
Ryan’s Slides: https://ryanmarkel.com/84441/wordcamp-us-2017-presentation-security-the-vip-way/
Rian Rietveld
Rian is a WordPress engineer who has enthusiastically worked with WordPress since 2009, and has a strong interest in web standards and making the web usable for everybody. She works for the WordPress agency Human Made and is part of the WordPress Accessibility Team.
When not coding, you can find her working in her garden.
Twitter: @RianRietveld
Rian’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/rianrietveld/accessibility-testing-tools-and-workflow-82902044
Philip John
Philip John has been working with WordPress since (almost) the beginning. He spent most of his career as a freelancer before joining the WordPress.com VIP team as an engineer, looking after some of the most high profile, interesting and challenging implementations of WordPress on the web.
Apart from WordPress, Phil’s other big passion is politics. He’s a contributor to an open source manifesto and co-founder of a political party in the UK, and sees these two passions as inextricably linked.
Twitter: @PhilipJohn
Philip’s Slides: http://philipjohn.blog/2017/12/08/wordcamp-us-2017-5-steps-to-better-wordpress-performance-for-non-developers/
Brian DeConinck
Brian DeConinck is a front-end designer and developer with NC State University’s Office of Information Technology. As part of the OIT Design team, he builds custom WordPress themes and plugins for academic and administrative units on campus, helps run campus Multisite environments, and advises campus clients on their content strategy. In all of his projects, Brian is committed to universal design principles of accessibility, usability and user empathy.
Brian is also co-host of the WPCampus Podcast, where he gets to talk to interesting people about the interesting things they’re doing with WordPress in higher ed.
Twitter: @BrianDeConinck
Brian’s Slides: http://slides.com/briandeconinck/wcus-2017#/
Tessa Kriesel
Agency and Community Engineer 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 started in Joomla back when it was 1.0.x and worked her way into WordPress and Drupal about 7 years ago. She enjoys teaching others to code as well as speaking at conferences and youth events. Tessa is a northern Minnesota native, but now lives in the Twin Cities with her husband and four children – three boys and a baby girl. She loves dogs and enjoys helping local organizations rescue dogs in her free time.
Twitter: @TessaK22
Tessa’s Slides: https://speakerdeck.com/tessak22/wordcamp-us-conquering-continuous-integration-and-deployment
Susan Walker
Susan is the unofficial “Department of WordPress” at Rutgers-Camden, which hosts more than 200 sites in its multisite installations as well as a number of standalone sites. She develops plugins and themes, administers the WP ecosystem and manages web content and social media for OIT-Camden. She became a full-time university web developer in 2003 and joined Rutgers in 2011. Previously she was staff writer and city editor for a daily paper and later a public information officer. Susan is a graduate of Lamar University (mass communication) and the University of Oxford (computer science). She is a co-organizer of the Philly WordPress meetup and WordCamp Philly 2017.
Twitter: @SusanWroteThis
Susan’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/susanwrotethis/web-content-as-usability-83409600
Patrick Garman
Formerly a WooCommerce extension developer, WooCommerce Ninja at WooThemes, a developer at WebDevStudios & Maintainn, e-commerce specialist at ColourPop Cosmetics, and now Managing Partner at Mindsize… Patrick has a unique set of skills and experience in e-commerce, product development, enterprise WordPress development, and scaling of WordPress & WooCommerce.
Twitter: @pmgarman
Josh Pollock
Josh is a WordPress developer and educator. He is Founder/ Lead Developer/ Space Astronaut Grade 3 for Caldera Labs, makers of awesome WordPress tools including Caldera Forms — a drag and drop, responsive WordPress form builder.
Also, he is a WordPress core contributor, the author of two books about WordPress development and a member of The WPCrowd.
Twitter: @Josh412
Josh’s Slides: https://www.slideshare.net/Shelob9/five-attitudes-stopping-you-from-building-accessible-wordpress-websites
Andrea Zoellner
Andrea is a freelance copywriter and digital content creator at Automattic. She trained as a broadcast journalist and worked in corporate communications before risking it all for a career in tech. Now she blogs and develops video tutorials for WordPress.com. She’s also a WordCamp Montreal organizer. Andrea loves wordplay, coffee-shop-hopping, and blogging about how to pack the ultimate carry-on. When she’s not at home in Montreal, Canada, she’s sampling the digital nomad life and documenting her travels on her blog capsulesuitcase.com.
Twitter: @AndreaZoellner
Andrea’s Slides: https://andreazoellner.com/speaking/