Missy Sorg
Missy is the Operations and Logistics Specialist at Sorgatron Media, where she has the job equivalent of herding cats – or in this case podcasters. Missy helps to produce podcasts – developed both in-house and externally. She and her husband live in the up-and-coming Beechview neighborhood of Pittsburgh with their long-haired chihuahua and tuxedo cat. When not working on podcasts, Missy enjoys reading and playing video games. Missy is also an organizer for PodCamp Pittsburgh, a local conference about new media. More information is available at PodCampPittsburgh.com,
Kevin Hoffman
Kevin Hoffman is a Pittsburgh-based web designer and developer who has been working with WordPress for the past nine years. As a Digital Media major at Drexel University, he studied a combination of web design, photography, and videography. Ever since then, Kevin has taken an interest in the way media is presented on the web. He has followed the development of responsive images since the beginning and enjoys teaching others in the WordPress community what he has learned along the way.
Joe Howard
Joe is the Head Buff at WP Buffs, where he tries to live life to the fullest while making sure all the WordPress websites his team works with are secure, fast and taken care of. He lives in beautiful Mt. Pleasant, Washington, DC and loves astronomy, Scrabble and a good cup of bulletproof Earl Grey! Joe just got back from Burning Man a few days ago, so his sense of community is very strong right now. Perfect timing for his talk here at WordCamp Pittsburgh: How to Build a Strong Network in the WordPress Community
Lee Drozak
Lee Drozak, from LeeDrozak Biz, helps small business owners and solo entrepreneurs build more that a website, she designs customer journeys. Her design and development abilities are supplemented by her digital strategy skills to give her clients user-friendly, attractive websites. Lee now focuses mainly on website re-design & development for those who are tired of fitting into everyone else’s mold and want their website to reflect the value only they can offer to their clients. Lee is a sought-after consultant and host of Pittsburgh Biz TV’s technical segment, Finding Your Website Wow. She has a feature in Soar To Success magazine along with several other podcasts and news sources. When not emerged in the world of digital, Lee spends her time in her small Amish town enjoying the quiet lifestyle or traveling around in her RV. She also likes anything outdoors, bacon over a campfire and sharing a glass of wine with friends.
Christoph Trappe
Christoph Trappe (aka The Authentic Storyteller™) is a career storyteller who has worked as a journalist, a nonprofit executive, and a content marketing strategist and consultant. He is a global keynote speaker, frequent blogger and author. His digital initiatives have been recognized globally. He is currently helping hospitals across the United States share their authentic stories.
Benjamin Bradley
You may know my face, but I’m pretty sure you know my voice. I’m Benjamin Bradley, and for the past 20+ years, I have been training and assisting small business owners to take their skills to the next level. Over the years, I have generated thousands of hours of business and technical training materials. I’m currently building a community for freelancers to learn, grow, and develop their WordPress, web design, development, and business skills at WPStudio.com.
Nara Kasbergen
Nara Kasbergen is a full-stack developer in NPR (National Public Radio)’s Digital Media group, where she’s worked on a variety of projects, most notably the third-party developer platform for NPR One. She recently joined the tech conference speaking circuit because of her interest in Developer Experience (DX), community-building, the intersection of humans and code, and her volunteer work for Open Sourcing Mental Illness, a non-profit organization raising awareness about mental health in the tech industry. Though she has no noticeable accent, she hails from The Netherlands and lived in Munich, Houston, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, and New York City prior to settling down in Washington, DC. In her spare time, she satisfies her foodie habits by trying out all of the best restaurants in the city, collects board games, and watches too much Netflix.
Lauren Pittenger
Lauren Pittenger is a designer and developer for a consultancy called LBDesign where she creates websites for clients with WordPress. She lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her cat and likes to read, listen to podcasts, and go whitewater kayaking.
Jadon Naas
I am currently a product developer for InMotion Hosting. I specialize in researching and developing new hosting products and improvements to existing hosting products with an emphasis on providing a better experience for self-hosted WordPress websites. I also develop internal applications using WordPress as an application programming framework for pure PHP applications and for single-page JavaScript applications using WordPress as a customized API and authentication provider. In my spare time, I study programming and software development. I also do Taekwondo with my wonderful wife, and I am a student in the Computer Science program at a local university. I really like to learn new things, and I greatly enjoy creating software and scripts.
Tiffany Kuchta
Tiffany is the co-founder and lead developer at Quandarymat. She does some work in each part of the stack, but doesn’t like the term full stack developer, preferring just “developer” instead. (Ask her why; she loves talking about this.) She has been building web things since 1999 and WordPress since 2.0.1. Tiffany is passionate about erasing the gap between design and development, inclusion in tech, solving problems with code, building things out of other things, empathy always, and sassy t-shirts usually.
Kimberly Norris
Kimberly is the Website Developer at Carnegie Museum of Natural History where she crafts online experiences to meet the needs of a diverse audience. Her primary focuses over the last year have been website accessibility and user experience. She also teaches WordPress development to small business owners across the Pittsburgh area. Kimberly is equal parts tech geek and farm girl. She strives to connect people and technology in tangible ways, applying principles from her garden–like sustainability and simplicity–to develop the most fruitful online experience.
Alexander D. Riddle
Alex Riddle is obsessed with inbound marketing and entrepreneurship. He taught himself to code when he was just 12 years old, and started building websites for clients before he could drive. At just 18, he founded Monarch Wave Marketing determined to overcome the biggest challenge with marketing today – users don’t like being sold to.
Kim White
While the www was just getting popular I learned to build websites to show off my growing family. In 1999 I made it my career and later returned to school to build up my skill set. I love WordPress and started the Lehigh Valley Meetup in 2014. Currently, I serve as a chapter leader for GDI Lehigh Valley.
Stacy Harrison
Stacy Harrison is currently a software developer, though formerly worked as an award-winning designer, marketing specialist, and copywriter for women entrepreneurs. This talk pulls from Stacy‘s freelance experience where she learned rapidly and intensely the best, cheap strategies for running a small business on WordPress.
Melinda Helt
Melinda Helt is a Happiness Engineer for WooCommerce and has over seven years experience building WordPress sites and training WordPress users. She also helps organize WordPress Meetups and WordCamps in her hometown of Pittsburgh and is a member of the WordPress Community Training Team.
Rene Morozowich
I’m Rene, a Pittsburgh-based Freelance Web Developer who specializes in building and customizing awesome WordPress sites. In former lives, I’ve been a Business Intelligence Developer, a SQL Developer, a programmer and an instructor. I love learning something new (taking classes especially), reading non-fiction, setting goals and tracking my progress, organizing and planning, personal finance and spending time with my favorite people.
William D Jackson
William Jackson graduated from South Carolina State University earning
a Bachelor’s in Education degree, he furthered his education earning a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Webster University with a focus on Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM.
William’s career involves past teaching with NASA as an Internet and Technology instructor, technology consultant with the Florida Department of Education and current Professor with Edward Waters College teaching Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM.
He has been involved in the field of education over 25 years in elementary and higher education. Teaching STEM and STEAM curriculum in higher education at Edward Waters College to prepare students for the diversity of education and business.
William is not only an educator, he is a Social Media Consultant, presenter on Bullying and Cyberbullying, Internet Safety and his passion Blogging and Writing that allows him to embrace being a thought leader and
Social Media Visionary
A national and international blogger that is published in the United States
Canada and on the continent of Africa
John Centofanti
John’s background spans nearly everything creative for business, including content writing, branding, graphic design, and more.
He serves as a marketing consultant and content developer for B2B, Technology and Retail clients throughout the US. His background ranges from Marketing to Store Operations Management, HR, as well as Customer and Employee Relations. The retail chains he’s served range from smaller, multi-site chains to publicly-traded, national retail chains with 100+ locations.
In 2006, John founded Creative Stream Marketing (www.creativestreammarketing.com), serving national retailers, tech companies, and B2B companies across the US. John has worked with numerous start ups, early stage, and established companies both strategically and in providing tactical marketing services, developing brands and increasing response to their businesses.
Ben Meredith
Ben is the developer of the most popular WordPress plugin for Click To Tweet boxes, the Senior Support Technician at WordImpress, a husband, a dad (both foster and biological), and a musician.
A lifelong North Carolinian (with a 4-year break in Middle Tennessee just after college), Ben is also one of the organizers for WordCamp Raleigh, having led the team in 2017.
When not coding or solving code puzzles to support users, you’ll find him with a guitar in hand or perhaps playing a round of disc golf. He’d lobby for it being called just “golf” and making that other game “ball golf” or perhaps “expensive ball golf.”
He was the first full-time remote hire for WordImpress, and works mainly supporting the popular Give plugin.
Adam W. Warner
Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since. To feed his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded several WordPress-focused businesses that provide education, plugins and consulting services for online business owners.
He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that also happens to be his job title with SiteLock.com.
Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything.