Presenters

Peter works as a product specialist focusing on content management systems and academic applications at NYU.

Joe Bacal manages the WordPress multisite and Moodle installations at Smith College, in Northampton, MA.  He trains faculty and students to use WordPress in all kinds of ways, and develops plugins and themes for projects that need it.  Before becoming a Web Developer Joe was a fourth-grade teacher, high school history teacher, and school counselor.

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.

Sean leads a virtual team of 10 fine folks shaping and shipping bits at MIT Sloan Management Review, a digital-first publication targeted at management practitioners, leaders and academics.

A 60 year old publication, MIT SMR launched on WordPress 2.7 (Coltrane) nearly 10 years ago. Its GitHub repository has over 5,000 commits and 240+ releases.

When AFK, Sean is a hiker, MTBer, trail builder and backyard farmer.

Mike is a web developer with over 15 years of experience. Currently, he works at Carleton University where a small team and he manage 250+ WordPress sites. When he's not up to his neck in code or banging his head against his desk, he enjoys playing music and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

Brian DeConinck is a Boston-based front-end designer and developer with NC State University’s Office of Information Technology. In all of his projects, Brian is committed to universal design principles emphasizing 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.

April Ebacher is a front-end web development team lead at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has over a decade of experience building rich internet applications utilizing and evangelizing for accessibility, usability, industry standards and best practices throughout the development life cycle. She has spent the last 4-5 years in academia, contributing to and assisting in the campus WordPress community.

After a first career as an academic, John’s been working in digital agencies for the last 18 years, and with WordPress for the last 10. He has been one of the organizers for WordCamp Boston since 2010, and the CEO of 10up since early 2014. He lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife and dogs. He blogs (very occasionally) at Open Parenthesis.

Jeremy Felt has been building on the web for over 20 years. He’s a WordPress core developer and maintainer of VVV. He believes in free and open source software and loves to help people share their work.

Kevin Fodness is the Director of Software Development at Alley. Kevin leads Alley's JavaScript practice, developing everything from front-end data visualizations to full-stack JavaScript applications written in React and Node. He has experience developing WordPress sites for publishers and nonprofits, and was formerly the lead developer on the Publish to Apple News WordPress plugin.

Programmer Analyst. Web application security and accessibility evangelist. Software instructor. Conference lecturer and presenter. Runs on passion and coffee.

Joel G Goodman is the principal founder of Bravery Media, a service design and product development studio for higher education. He has spent the past 12 years working in and across the sector, driving web marketing, branding, and strategy aimed at increasing both student enrollment and alumni engagement. Joel holds a master of arts degree in media studies from The New School for Public Engagement in New York City where he researched transnational media messaging and semiotics in digital media. Joel and Bravery are based in Austin, Texas, where the sun shines warmly and the tacos never run out.

Aaron is one of the luckiest WordPressers in St. Louis since his day job is doing theme and plugin development for Washington University’s WordPress sites.

Outside of work he enjoys helping wrangle the St. Louis WordPress meetup and listening to as many  podcasts and audiobooks as he can during his hour long commute.  When he eventually gets away from technology he enjoys spending time with his awesome wife while they play with their pets (a  Yorkie, two black cats, and two chickens...OK the chickens aren't much for playing), hike, fish, and camp.

In an alternate universe, he ended up becoming an auto mechanic since his 4th love (behind his wife and the animals) is his 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle which he spends more time tinkering with than actually driving.

Mike Henderson is a web application developer at Adams State University, located in Alamosa, Colorado. He enjoys updating apps and reading the change log and what’s new sections. When not in front of the computer you can find him mountain biking southern Colorado.

Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Shawn has been building web applications since the late 90s, with a focus on WordPress since 2011. He is the Director of IT at Actionable, a learning and development startup based in Toronto. 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 the lead organizer of WordCamp Ottawa 2018.

Sue Jenkins is a fine art photographer, designer, illustrator, writer and founder/creative director of Luckychair.com, a full-service web and graphic design studio serving companies across the U.S. Sue worked as an Adobe Certified Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Illustrator software instructor at Noble Desktop in New York City for eight years. Sue currently works as an assistant professor of art at Marywood University teaching courses in graphic, web and interactive design. In addition to authoring several “For Dummies” and other instructional books on web design, Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Photoshop including "Web Design All-in-One For Dummies" (Wiley) and "Smashing Photoshop: 100 Professional Techniques" (Wiley/SmashingMagazine), she is an award-winning Adobe Certified Expert and Adobe Certified Instructor appearing in several internationally renowned online courses at Lynda.com and LinkedIn Learning. Sue holds a BA in sociology and an MFA in photography, and lives with her family in Pennsylvania.

I've been building websites long enough to remember when Angelfire was rad and the capitalization of HoTMaiL was clever. I survived the Dot Bomb, the advent of the "blog," and the days when every small business client was sure they could clone eBay, only just for Beanie Babies, and make a mint. Having spent somewhere in the vicinity of 15 years building and managing web and social media in higher education before being lured away by the siren's call of a remote position with Modern Tribe, today I'm managing a really smart team building really cool stuff. I talk about content strategy, governance and accessibility anytime someone gives me a microphone.

Shelley Keith has building websites long enough to remember when Angelfire was rad and the capitalization of HoTMaiL was clever. She survived the Dot Bomb, the advent of the "blog," and the days when every small business client was sure they could clone eBay, only just for Beanie Babies, and make a mint. Having spent roughly 15 years building and managing web and social media in higher education before being lured away by the siren's call of her dream job with Modern Tribe, today she's managing a really smart team building really cool stuff. She talks about content strategy, governance and accessibility anytime someone gives her a microphone.

Matt is a member of the Web Services team at Carleton College, and his primary focus is on infrastructure and automation tools used to power many of Carleton's flagship web applications including Reason CMS, WordPress, Moodle, and Carleton's identity portal. Recently he's been leading the implementation of Google Kubernetes Engine for WordPress as part of Carleton's Web2020 initiative to migrate to WordPress as the primary campus CMS.

Stephanie is a full-time WordPress consultant specializing in higher education and government. Prior to striking out on her own, she worked in-house for the Texas A&M University Writing Center, the Texas A&M System Offices and  the Texas A&M Health Science Center.

She has been active in the web design community, mostly in CSS, standards, accessibility, WordPress and higher ed. She is the author of Content Strategy for WordPress and WordPress for Web Developers.

Keegan Long-Wheeler is an educational technologist in the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Oklahoma. Keegan uses his background in science, pedagogy, Domain of One's Own, and technical expertise to provide instructors with holistic solutions to their instructional and technological needs. Additionally, Keegan passionately creates open source professional development curriculum to engage faculty in digital literacy, experiential learning, game design, coding and more! In particular, he is currently immersed in his new curriculum tackling fake news and information literacy as well as his eXperience Play program.

Jennifer Riehle McFarland is the Web Services Coordinator and the Design & Web Services team lead for the central IT unit at NC State. McFarland is active in the WordPress community and helps coordinate the annual Raleigh-area WordCamp. Along with colleague Brian DeConinck she is a contributor to the monthly WPCampus podcast (go listen!). She is psyched to be able to attend her first WPCampus, even though no one says "psyched" anymore.

Joe McGill is a contributing developer to WordPress, is a maintainer of the media component and is a senior WordPress engineer at Human Made, and was formerly the director of web development at Washington University in St. Louis. Find him on online at joemcgill.net and on Twitter as @joemcgill.

Guillaume is a senior web and application developer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he manages 1900+ websites with WordPress Multisite. He has been using WordPress as his CMS of choice for the past 8 years and has contributed to several plugins. Guillaume has a special interest in Agile software development, code quality and DevOps practices.

David Needham is a developer advocate at Pantheon where he focuses on developer education and training. David serves on the board of directors of Enjoy Creativity. David enjoys blogging about productivity at davidneedham.me and sharing his experience by speaking at conferences. David is based out of Champaign, Illinois, enjoys biking with his wife and kids, and playing board games.

As Executive Director of Digital Strategy at Vanderbilt University, Lacy and her team engage the power of creativity and technology to tell Vanderbilt's story (tada!) They plan, build, implement, measure, and optimize a data-driven digital strategy and work collaboratively across the Vanderbilt community to elevate VU's digital presence.  The Digital Strategy team is responsible for Vanderbilt’s online presence, providing web and application development services, and supporting their content management systems and all the users that entails.

Paschal serves on the board for the Higher Education Web Professionals Association, chairs the Management and Professional Development Track at the annual HighEdWeb national conference, and serves as Art Director for LINK, the Journal of Higher Education Web Professionals. She lives in Nashville with her 4-year old son, Hayden.

Pattie Reaves is a senior UX developer at Alley Interactive on the data visualizations and interactives team. She has more than 10 years of experience building websites with WordPress and Drupal. Prior to Alley, she worked as a newspaper editor, where she worked as an editor producing digital storytelling, managing a volunteer blog network, producing social media and running audience analytics.

Kate Reynolds spent over six years working in higher education in a variety of roles. Her work outside of education, including publishing project management and eCommerce management, dovetails with years of working inside higher education, giving her a strong background to navigate the realm of ed tech and online higher education. When she's not using WordPress to make to make education affordable, she's using it to blog about her personal interests - niche academic topics and general geekery.

Cathy Riley is the Project Manager for the WordPress Service at UW Madison.

Jamie Schmid has a particular passion for creating excellent content experiences. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she has been working as a WordPress freelancer and consultant since 2012, regularly taking sites from conception through a well-managed build process that encourages communication, planning and smart use of content. She has a background in information architecture and content strategy, enthusiasm for all things WordPress and a whole lot of cats back home in Portland, Oregon. In her role as SiteLock WordPress evangelist Jamie helps build awareness of website security best practices and solutions.

Eric Sembrat currently works at the Georgia Institute of Technology as a web manager for the College of Engineering. Eric spearheads campus- and college-level initiatives including a WordPress Multisite installation and exploratory projects to expand and extend web for our campus users.

One of Eric's areas of interest is leadership, and he strives to build community and direction throughout organizations around me. Eric serves on the leadership committee for the Georgia Tech Drupal Users Group, is on the steering committee for WPCampus, serves as a track chair for the Drupal Association for DrupalCon North America, and served as president for the Atlanta Drupal Users Group for three years.

Education and professional growth is important to Eric. He attended Georgia Institute of Technology for his bachelor of science in computer science, then received his Master of Science in information system from Kennesaw State University, also completing a certificate in leadership. Currently, he is enrolled at Georgia State University in the instructional technology doctoral program. Eric's research is in the area of design-based research — specifically, on how application development is conducted and mediated through a research project.

Elaine Shannon is not just a web developer, she loves to look at the whole picture: design, development, content, SEO, user experience, A/B testing and analytics. She first learned about WordPress in 2007 and has been using and recommending it ever since. In her current role, she manages St. Mary’s University’s main website and a handful of microsites, always experimenting with ways to make the web a better place.

Malik Singleton trains higher education faculty in best ways to use technology in their courses. His work with NYU IT involves web publishing and instructional media, plus change management. He also teaches web development and data science at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked in online news and software training -- now he applies that experience to education technology.

Robin Smail [noun]: An authentic voice who is never afraid to dissent. Passionate about inclusive user experience. Enthusiastic in that infectious way you just can't escape. A user experience designer, Robin's mission is to connect people and technology in accessible ways. Whether advocating for accessibility, helping to shape conferences and communities of practice, or designing user-friendly interfaces, her goal is always to collaborate, motivate and transform. Robin holds a BS in information sciences and technology from Penn State, knows a thing or two about higher ed and can be found online everywhere misbehaving as Robin2go.

Like James T. Kirk, Jeff Stevens believes the most important three words ever spoken were "Let me help." A self-described meddling do-gooder, Jeff advocates for making connections and for approaching design and content with empathy and humility. At UF Health, Jeff is responsible for content and social strategy for an academic health center consisting of seven hospitals and hundreds of clinics across north Florida. An award-winning speaker, Jeff holds degrees in advertising and history, and likes hiking, cycling, board games, karaoke, and exploring new places. You can find him online @kuratowa.

John Stewart is the assistant director for the office of digital learning at the University of Oklahoma. John manages the OU Create platform, a Domain of One's Own initiative that hosts more than five thousand websites. John is interested in using games in the classroom promoting digital literacy and opportunities for undergraduate research. Before joining the center, John lectured on history of science at the University of Oklahoma and Missouri University of Science and Technology. He earned his PhD in the history of science from the University of Oklahoma.

Donna Talarico is an independent writer and content marketing consultant, and she also is the founder of Hippocampus Magazine. She has more than two decades of marketing and communications experience, and about half of that time has been in higher education, most recently as director of integrated communications at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. In addition to content work for clients in higher ed and B2B, Donna writes a marketing column for Wiley's recruiting and retaining adult learner newsletter, and has contributed to CASE Currents, Guardian Higher Education Network, various alumni magazines, The Writer, mental_floss and others.

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, Michael 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.

Amy Grace is a content strategist and UX designer with nearly 15 years of experience in higher ed, publishing and nonprofit. She holds master's degrees in higher education and user experience design and serves as the editorial director for UX Booth.

Her experiences include leading content strategy at University of South Carolina and Texas A&M AgriLife, where she directed content strategy, information architecture and social media for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and five state agencies. She served as an expert reviewer for “Content Strategy for WordPress,” published in 2015. Bragging rights include holding a sensei rank in karate and singing happy birthday to Muhammad Ali.

Katherine is a solutions architect with 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 focused on client solutions. Katherine has provided technology project leadership for clients ranging from higher education and non-profit institutions to 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 the universal web, content accessibility, rewarding user experiences, and future-proof development methodologies.

Ned Zimmerman has been working on Pressbooks since 2011, and has been lead developer of the project since 2015. He's been working with WordPress as a hobbyist and as a freelancer since 2011. When he's not coding, he runs an artist residency on a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Ned is based in Halifax.