Presenters

Sylvia Bass is a web developer at the University of California, Irvine in the Office of Information Technology (OIT).

She is responsible for UC Irvine's simple web hosting solutions using WordPress Multisite - UCI Sites and Faculty Websites . She is also responsible for the Office of Information Technology's public website which is currently using WordPress as the content management system.

Sylvia is an avid baker, loves to draw, and is well on her way to becoming a cat lady.

Adam Berkowitz is a web developer for the University of Connecticut’s office of University Communications. In his position there, Adam has taken an active role in the area of web accessibility. Other technical interests of Adam’s include: javascript application development, learning about Docker and containerization, and blogging. A  self-taught developer, Adam switched careers from music performance and education to web development in 2016. Outside of work, Adam enjoys spending time with his family.

Kim Charles has worked on small and large websites at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) for nearly 20 years, relying on her experience in internal and external communications, integrated marketing and library and information science.

For the past year, Kim has worked as the business/UX lead for UIC's migration from decentralized, multi-platform web development to a single WordPress multisite in partnership with UIC's central IT web services team.

An integral leader in website strategies at UIC, she has worked to make information more easily accessible for students, faculty and the public. Her primary focus is the effort to prioritize content and the development of mission-critical websites, while overseeing information architecture, content management, usability, accessibility – all while maintaining consistent brand identity standards, and measuring analytics.

In her free time, you will find Kim reading, researching the latest in technology, or biking along one of the many Chicago paths with her husband and two sons.

Rachel Cherry is the Director of WPCampus, as well as a freelance software engineer and consultant with with over ten years experience in back and front-end web development and digital design. Her main areas of focus include accessibility, higher education, and WordPress.

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".  She's also an unofficial "consultant" for her husband who works in higher ed and is always interested in free help for his WordPress-related projects.

Before starting her business, Stacy spent 23 years in the United States Air Force, working in communications, cyber operations, and project management. 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.

I was once introduced as a cheerleader for faculty. I am okay with just that. After ten years of teaching high school English and nearly twenty years teaching and instructional designing I have learned that faculty, like all of us, need good, healthy relationships and support. On a good day, I can be that. I work to help faculty dream about the wonderful ways we can create learning places and spaces. I do that because it is important work and I am lucky to be able to contribute.

Brian DeConinck is a Chicago-based front-end designer and developer with NC State University’s Office of Information Technology. He is committed to inclusive design principles and empathy for the users he supports.

Over a 30+ year career Randy has been a physicist, teacher, engineer, project manager, IT manager, freelance web developer, business analyst, Zen chaplain, and is now a User Experience Manager. In all roles he was trying to get at the root of a problem and work with others to provide creative solutions. In all cases he found something to tickle his curiosity and to share with others.

After a first career as an academic, John’s been working in digital agencies for the last 19 years, and with WordPress for the last 10. He has been one of the organizers for WordCamp Boston since 2010, and is the CEO of 10up. He now lives in Salem MA with his wife and dogs. He blogs (very occasionally) at Open Parenthesis.

Jeremy Felt is a developer and co-owner of Happy Prime, a WordPress focused web agency. He's been a contributor to WordPress core for 7 years. And he created and maintains VVV, which is now led by a fantastic set of lead developers. Jeremy believes in free and open source software and enjoys the intricacies of community.

Matt Fields is a systems programmer at NC State University with a passion for innovation and problem solving. He works primarily on infrastructure and back-end development for the web environment for the College of Engineering at NC State University, and has designed and implemented much of the core WordPress infrastructure for the college.

Charles Fulton is a web developer at Lafayette College and frequent train rider. He has worked in higher education web development for over a decade. At Lafayette he helps manage the web infrastructure, broadly defined. He architected Lafayette’s continuous integration and delivery environment, based on GitLab and Docker. Charles maintains over a dozen WordPress and Moodle plugins. He has previously served on the Steering Committee for the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP) and helps maintain CLAMP's Liberal Arts Edition distribution. In his spare time he builds model railroads and reviews B-movies.

Programmer/Analyst-Principal at the University of Missouri. Web application security and accessibility evangelist. Software instructor. Conference lecturer and presenter. Runs on passion and coffee.

Programmer/Analyst-Principal at the University of Missouri. Web application security and accessibility evangelist. Software instructor. Conference lecturer and presenter. Runs on passion and coffee.

Joel G Goodman has been working in higher education web marketing since 2007 when he took his first university job in Southern Illinois. Since then he has worked with dozens of institutions designing, developing, and consulting on their various web properties with his service design and product development agency, Bravery Media. With Bravery's team, he creates daring solutions to the core challenges facing institutions of higher learning.

Based in Austin, Texas since 2012, Goodman works with institutions all across America and abroad. He holds a master of arts in Media Studies from The New School for Public Engagement in addition to more than a decade of applied higher education experience. His focus has always been to propel higher ed toward its potential.

Ben Greeley is Director of Engineering at 10up, finely crafting websites and tools for content creators. Previously he worked in higher education for nearly a decade as web manager and developer. In his spare time, Ben keeps active by training for marathons, climbing mountains and exploring the world. He lives in Brunswick, Maine and holds degrees in Computer Science and German from the University of Maine.

By day, David Dashifen Kees is a mild-mannered programmer living in Virginia working for the Web Services unit within Georgetown University's Information Services department. By night ... they're pretty much the same thing except asleep. Programming since the sixth grade, Dash has been writing web applications in academia since 1998 and evangelizing WordPress since 2010.  When not coding, they enjoy comics, movies, games, fantasy novels, and walking their dog, Jill.  They program with tabs, use two spaces after a period, and you can pry the Oxford comma from their cold, dead hands.

Pronouns: they/them 😁

I fell into web development when I was a TA in grad school. I needed a way to share information and readings with my section and a website seemed to make the most sense. That was over 15 years ago and since then, while I have worked for software shops, web development shops, and of course Pantheon, the vast majority of my time has been spent working to help solve Higher Education needs.

I am the Migrations Lead at Pantheon, which means I get to talk to a lot of people about a lot of websites.  I try to lean what their pain points are and get to find better and better ways to help them.

I'm excited to be at Word campus to not only share my experience, but also to learn from everyone else!

Nikki Massaro Kauffman is a unique combination of front-end developer, multimedia specialist, and educator. Nikki uses the web and educational technology to give learners of all backgrounds access to education. It is more than job to her; it is her calling. She has degrees in both computer science and in education and has been working in these fields since 1998.

Nathan works at SMILE, an agency helping educational organisations become more authentic, timely and personalised with a suite of creative services and digital products.

Serving up to 100,000 students a year, Portland Community College is the largest institution of higher education in the state of Oregon. As a web analyst for the college, Nagmay works with a small, but very dedicated team who is charged with providing web services for the entire PCC community.

Pam Patterson is a digital scholarship technologist in the Yale University Library. She’s been providing technology support for faculty and students for over 20 years. Her focus has been on creation, management, and presentation of digital assets in the classroom and in research workflows. For the past 10 years she’s been the primary support and lead on the use of WordPress at Yale, for courses, professional identity, and research. She also engages in the support of other web based tools for teaching and learning and has a strong skill set in using web technologies to promote active learning and digital citizenship.

Morten is a Senior Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda.com) with 60+ courses published on WordPress, web standards, design, 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. Morten enjoys playing with his son, reading philosophy and sci-fi, having conversations about the internet and how it shapes our society, and wearing out his shoes on the ballroom dance floor.

Maryann is a member of the web team at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY, where she develops WordPress sites and other various systems for the college. She has a focus on data automation, accessibility and fostering an environment of life-long learning.

Eric Sembrat (he/him/his) leads web development at the College of Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Eric’s work as Web Manager, spearheads campus- and college-level initiatives including a campus-wide WordPress multisite installation, a thriving web development users group community, and exploration of new web opportunities.

Eric attended the Georgia Institute of Technology for his Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science, then received his Master’s of Science in Information System from Kennesaw State University, also completing a certificate in Leadership.

Eric is currently enrolled at Georgia State University in the Learning Technologies doctoral program. Eric’s research is in the area of activity theory embedded within a design-based research project – specifically, on how web application development is conducted and mediated throughout a research project timeline.

Elaine is a web developer for St. Mary’s University who loves to look at the whole picture. She specializes in designing and building solutions that work well for both end users and the people who maintain the web.

As a user experience designer and as a speaker, Robin Smail’s mission is to connect people. Whether advocating for accessibility and universal design, helping to shape conferences and communities of practice, or designing applications, Robin’s goal is to collaborate, motivate, and transform. Recent work includes designing an open educational question bank application for instructors at Big 10 universities, Penn State’s Digital Badging Platform, an open education resource bank that offers students resources based on individual learning preferences, and the administrative usability of an intelligent collaboration research application. Robin holds a B.S. in Information Sciences & Technology from Penn State, and is an award-winning speaker and passionate user advocate. She can be found online everywhere misbehaving as Robin2go.

Donna Talarico is an independent writer and content marketing consultant, and she also is the founder of Hippocampus Magazine and Books. She has more than two decades of experience in marketing and communications, and about half of that time has been in higher education. Donna has contributed to many higher ed trade publications, alumni magazines, and other general consumer publications. Her creative work appears in The Los Angeles Review, The Los Angeles Times, and Wanderlust Journal, and she’s on the faculty of the graduate creative writing programs at Rosemont College and Wilkes University. Donna lives in Lancaster, PA, and loves diner breakfast.

Rich is fortunate to work with a fantastic team who run, maintain, and build WordPress-based teaching and learning platforms at the University of British Columbia. Passionate about the student experience, inclusivity, and accessibility, Rich has been working in the WordPress world - mostly with Multisite - for the past 10 years.

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.

Mikey is a researcher, writer, and speaker who specializes in malware identification and taxonomy. He is passionate about information security, data privacy, and the open source community. He holds a GWAPT certification and is a member of the GIAC Advisory Board.

As a Threat Analyst at Defiant, Mikey analyzes threat intelligence in order to provide up-to-date malware signatures and firewall rules to Wordfence users worldwide. Outside of his work he enjoys tabletop gaming and cooking, and dreams of starting a nonprofit to make DFIR more accessible to charities.

Find Mikey on Twitter at @heyitsmikeyv.

At Georgetown University Nathan oversaw the development and maintenance of websites and related technologies for the Office of Advancement. He has been building WordPress solutions for e-commerce, government, non-profit, and higher-ed sectors for the past 10 years. Nathan believes in making design standards and ADA compliance a priority at his organization and works closely with UX, Design, and Communication teams to make this possible. Nathan is currently WordPress Team Lead at the US Mint in Washington, DC.

Gian Wild is the CEO of AccessibilityOz, with offices in the United States, Europe and Australia. She has worked in accessibility industry since 1998, when she worked on the very first Australian accessible web site. Her major achievements include: six years’ active membership in the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group contributing to WCAG2; her speech on the importance of web accessibility at the United Nations Conference of State Parties in 2015; and the release of the ICT Mobile Site Accessibility Testing Guidelines as the Mobile Sub-Committee Chair of the ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium. Gian speaks at conferences in Australia, US, Canada, South America and Europe.

I'm a WordPress web designer and educator working to help small business owners and nonprofits be successful on the web. I'm active in the local WordPress community and a regular speaker at meetups and WordCamps. Before becoming a web developer, I spent many years as an electrical engineer designing hardware for computers. In my spare time, I play music, design quilts, and hike. You can find me on twitter @kelliawise.