Speakers

Amy Hall

It’s not a surprise that Amy Hall is referred to as the MacGyver of MailChimp. For the last ten years, Amy has been taking content management out of the hands of business owners who are already juggling too many tasks. Not only is she a certified MailChimp Partner & Expert, but she builds WordPress websites, writes optimized content, and provides hands-on WordPress training to her clients.

When it comes to speaking, Amy is a natural. After all, she teaches blogging and WordPress at Mira Costa College. Amy is in her element when showing Meetups and WordPress users how to optimize their forms, perfect their lead generation, and make their WordPress sites perform.

When she’s not training clients on how to best create their business funnel, she spends time with her husband, a minister in Carlsbad, takes her grandkids to museums, painting classes, and enjoying nature.

Say hi to Amy on Twitter at @GenuineAmyHall and check out her bio at amyhall.biz.

Andrew Wilder

Andrew Wilder has been building, fixing, and maintaining websites since 1998. He now provides WordPress maintenance and support services with an emphasis on site speed and security… You know, all the un-sexy stuff that keeps sites running smoothly. This is his second time speaking at WordCamp, and he’s looking forward to helping you fix all the things you’re doing wrong with WordPress.

Arsen Rabinovich

Digital Marketer, SEO, Speaker. Founder @ TopHatRank (Marketing Agency). Husband, father, supreme leader, big giant head.

Behzod Saidov

Behzod is an experienced full-stack web developer. He previously worked at The Walt Disney Company as a Tech Lead where he oversaw development of new websites and maintained dozens of websites mostly built using WordPress.

He has been using WordPress since 2007.  Enjoys building websites and web applications using WordPress and Laravel.

Behzod lives in Los Angeles with his wife and 2 kids.

Bridget Willard

Bridget Willard is a marketing consultant and educator with a passion to help small businesses. She began in construction, and worked in franchise development, nonprofits, and tech. She is known for her brand building for Riggins Construction and GiveWP.

She is the co-host of WPblab, a show on the WPwatercooler network, co-organizer of Women Who WP Meetup, and Marketing Team Rep for Make WordPress.

When she’s not writing about marketing, she is spending time with her Sully Dog, learning to be a karaoke host, or walking by the ocean.

Say hi to her on Twitter at @youtoocanbeguru and check out her site at bridgetwillard.com.

Caity Kelly & Victoria Cole

Caity Kelly & Victoria Cole are the Co-Founders of Carrboro Creative- a Graphic Design Agency whose mission is to empower women- & minority-owned businesses, nonprofits, and sustainable startups to succeed with impactful design.

Caity is passionate about using design as a tool for social change. She brings her experience of working with million-dollar startups, nonprofits, and major corporations to help bring their marketing and product goals to life.

Victoria has a degree in design from Winthrop University and over a decade of experience in graphic design. She brings her passion for helping women succeed in the business world while balancing motherhood.

Cemal Tashan

Cemal Tashan is an enthusiastic WordPress proponent who is an active participant in the WP community. He is one of the Moderators of WordPress TV, has been a speaker at three Word Camps, and attended many WordCamps. Cemal is an experienced WordPress website designer, specializing in small businesses and Seniors. Cemal can be found at Orange County WordPress Meetups, Women Who WP meetings, as well as contributing to WP Watercooler and WPBlab and @tashan on Social Media. He is a regular guest on Turkish radio discussing “all things tech.”

Christina Hills

Christina Hills, the creator of the Website Creation Workshop™, has been passionately teaching WordPress non-techie small business owners, authors, experts, coaches and consultants. She puts the fun into teaching technology and empowers business owners to be in full control of their marketing and online presence. She has been running her online WordPress training program to an international audience since 2008. Before becoming a WordPress entrepreneur, Christina Hills worked as a digital artist for the network promotions division of NBC-TV, and then as a senior technical director in the Feature Film Division at George Lucas’s Industrial Light & Magic with film credits for Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and ET the re-release. She now lives in San Diego, California with her husband and daughter.

Christoph Trappe

Top 25 content marketer | Public Relations leader | Keynote speaker | Author | Publishing exec | Traveler

Dwayne McDaniel

Dwayne McDaniel works in tech and “does” improv.

Evan Stanton

WordPress technical support at DreamHost
Gaming enthusiast
Husband
Dog lover

Gertrude Nonterah

 writer. Your official encourager if you want it.

Glenn Zucman

Glenn Zucman is an artist and arts educator from Los Angles.

Jansen Henschel

I am an 12 year old homeschooled programmer. I code in HTML, CSS, Javascript, C#, Ruby, Rails, Python, and WordPress.

Jarrett Gucci

Jarrett Gucci comes from a retail background that started at Home Depot in Buffalo NY as cashier and 18 months later was asked to be a project manager based out of Carson California with a goal of opening 12 stores in 14 months. This goal was accomplished. He has also been an area manager at Big Lots and Bed Bath and beyond. He left his very last retail career as a district manager at Linens & Things in 2007 to pursue a hobby of website development as hope he could make some money doing it. After 4 years of building and managing WordPress sites, he founded a company called WP Fix It and since 2011 his company has serviced over 48,000 WordPress support tickets. Something you may not know about Jarrett besides all this, is that when he was 15 his neighbor gave him a 1962 dodge dart and he completely took it apart and rebuilt it.

Jen Miller

Jen served on the organizing boards of WordCamp LA, WordCamp Orange County, and WordCamp Riverside. She founded WomenWhoWP.org, a nonprofit and Meetup to support women in WordPress. She volunteers on the make.WordPress.org Marketing Team. Jen also actively participates in several civic groups and serves on a county-wide Public Affairs Council for her church and has been instrumental in publicizing civic events in Southern California since 1989.

Combining her lifelong journalism, public relations and website experience, Jen Miller created NeedSomeoneToBlog.com, a highly-targeted, hyperlocal blogging service. As host of Be Seen Blogging and co-host of Community Connections, a WP Watercooler network show, Jen helps people gain skills and share their stories.

Joe A Simpson Jr

Joe A. Simpson, Jr. is a Front-End Web Developer and Graphic Designer specializing in WordPress solutions. During days he works at a top-five transit agency, fighting the good fight to ease the commute around Los Angeles County. When their lead developer and CSS specialist both left to pursue other opportunities, Joe inherited a Headway-themed design (sans child theme) and the rest is history ten years later with a blog network consisting of dozen project-specific or transit news sites. Toastmaster ATM Silver; actively contributes the Community, founding the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup in hopes of hosting WordCamp SCV in the town centre. Volunteer at WordCamps (WCLAX 2017). Presenting this speech at WordCamp Chicago 4/28-29.

Joseph Dickson

Joseph Dickson started pushing pixels onto screens when 56k dial-up was fast and people still liked ska bands. He’s a fan of desktop Linux and a front end web developer at Pitzer College.

Joshua Giowaya

Leveraging WordPress, Gutenberg and React to empower your Marketing Team. Atomic design & Modular development specialist. Speaker, Developer & Designer.

Karyn Keene

Audio Director & Editor| Web Developer | Storyteller |  Co-Founder | Looking for new adventures everyday.

Konstantin Obenland

Konstantin is a WordPress aficionado, and Core Developer based in Ventura, California. Chairman of Height at @Automattic, WordPress Contributor & retired Release Lead. Founder & CEO of http://obenland.it . Likes to go places.

Lara Schenck

Lara Schenck is a freelance front-end and WordPress developer, originally from Pittsburgh, PA. She is passionate about exploring technical concepts and loves to share her findings through teaching, writing, and mentorship. Lara is an active member of the LA tech community, and co-organizes both the Hollywood WordPress meetup and CSS.la.

In her spare time, Lara illustrates friendly monsters and runs in Griffith Park almost every day. She loves meeting new people, so be sure to come say hello!

Leo Postovoit

Leo Postovoit an open source advocate, designer-developer and coffee geek. He is also an organizer for WordCamp Orange County, an organizer for the Los Angeles WordPress Meetup, a contributor to WordPress Core’s Accessibility team and works as a WordPress consultant for XWP. In the 11 years of his career he has used WordPress at every step of the process. Leo’s work has appeared in publications such as the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, and Lowrider Magazine. Beyond journalism, he’s worked in marketing, education and the film industry (and even spent a few years as an American Sign Language interpreter.) He also double majored in Journalism and Anthropology at San Jose State University.

Matt Cromwell

Matt is Head of Support and Community Outreach at GiveWP.com and WordImpress.com. He is the author of several popular free plugins and the Lead Admin of the Advanced WordPress Facebook group (which boasts over 30K+ members). He’s a popular blogger at his personal site (mattcromwell.com),wordimpress.comgivewp.com, and mediatemple.net.

Matt Kopala

Geek, engineer, world traveler, passionate developer, and father to a little girl and a little dog. Founder of  and .

Miriam Goldman

Bad-ass ballroom dancer martial arts super-hero. Also,  speaker,  co-organizer and @ ambassador manager.

Natalie MacLees

I’m a web developer, UI designer, and founder of the amazing creative agency Purple Pen Productions.

Nathan Allotey

Web Designer and Digital Marketing Consultant. Author. Host of the Freelance Jumpstart Podcast. YouTuber.  Grad.  MBA.

Raquel Smith

Product manager . Enjoys javascript, WordPress, and indie hacking .

Rene Ramirez

SEO & Data Nerd for TopHatRank.

Robert Gillmer

I’m a professional web developer specializing in WordPress development. You can find me at the Las Vegas WP Meetup, and at more than a few WordCamps.

Roy Sivan

Roy has been using WordPress since the early days. Nowadays he is a senior software developer that specializes in WordPress & front end tech at The Walt Disney Company. He loves seeing how far he can take development and think outside of the box to build new and crazy things, or combine bleeding edge tech with WordPress. He is also socially awkward, but apparently people say hi to him all the time anyway.

Sam Jadali

As a cybersecurity researcher and crypto activist, Sam’s dedication and passion in the cloud space has been alive and well before the term cloud was born. He has spent the last 20 years in the hosting industry and he founded Host Duplex 8 years ago. Since the launch of HD, Sam and his company have been not only managing WordPress sites but educating clients on security and performance to assist in their success. His clients include some of the most visited WordPress sites on the internet including MacRumors and even local Southern California companies like Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza. He quickly realized that client education is vital for not only their success but for his success. With his depth of knowledge of plugin security and compliance regulations, he continually educates his clients on how to be defensive with security while maintaining the performance they expect.

An avid Big 10 fan, Sam escaped the Iowa cold and moved to sunny Southern California 7 years ago. He currently resides in downtown San Diego and is currently learning the ropes of raising a new puppy.

Sarah Nicklin

Senior Search Strategist at  LLC, an    and  company. Loves cats, movies, and outdoors activities.

WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 is over. Check out the next edition!