Stay tuned for more speaker announcements!
Allison Tarr
Allison is a front-end developer based out of Toronto, Ontario. As a result of her own lived experience, Allison is a mental health advocate and wants to create a more open conversation to combat existing stigma and provide additional resources. She loves guacamole, Sass, and Dolly Parton (not necessarily in that order) and her favourite flightless bird is the kakapo.
Jeremy Englert
Jeremy is an experienced project manager and web developer with a strong background in WordPress development. He is the creator of JointsWP, a responsive WordPress framework used by thousands of developers worldwide and is also a Foundation Framework Certified developer. Jeremy earned his degree in advertising and marketing from the Southwest University of Visual Arts in Tucson, Arizona.
Duke Speer
By day, Duke is a site builder specializing in cause messages and fundraising for non-profits. By evening, Duke is an Open Source evangelist, being an active contributor in three FOSS projects. He is currently immersed in Recovery Elevated, an open source, Joomla-curated, smartphone-hosted, graph database driven, non-linear learning management application designed for addicts coming out of rehab. This project is focused on replacing substance addiction with electronic addiction and healthier lifelong learning habits. A serial volunteer, in the winter, you will find him volunteering his 38th season as a weekend warrior on the Canyons Ski Patrol.
Kyle Gray
Kyle Gray is an entrepreneur, storyteller and author of the bestselling book The Story Engine. He believes in the power of storytelling to grow businesses. Content is not only a tool for driving traffic and getting customers, but it can grow teams and build relationships with influencers.
Kyle has helped startups grow to seven-figure success using digital marketing content. Most entrepreneurs struggle finding time and energy to create content and tell their story. Kyle loves to take the hassle out of this process. When companies get clear on their strategy and voice they can bring on writers to create great content in their voice while they focus on their own genius.
Brenner Adams
Founder and CEO of the LINK Group, Advisor at Church & State and Adjunct Professor of Startup at the U of U. Former game designer at Xbox. Years of experience in software design, marketing, payments, snowboarding and skateboarding.
Chris Fontes
Founder and CEO of Inbound Brew, Chris Fontes has decades of software engineering, marketing, sales, customers service, and operations management background. His passion is enabling small business by developing tools at a price they can afford.
Father of 4, loving husband, and avid Electric Vehicle enthusiast, Chris loves to talk with passionate people about any topic.
Jo Murgel
Jo Murgel, known online as “jomurgel,” is a front-end developer and designer at WebDevStudios living in Boise, ID. He’s been working in the world of web design and development since 2007. In 2008, quite by accident, he discovered WordPress and has been smitten ever since.
When he’s not in front of a computer, he’s behind the lens of a camera and building furniture for his five fur babies.
Gina Marie Zanutto
Chris David Miles
Chris is a CX Writer and Researcher for Bluehost in Orem, Utah. He has done freelance web design and front-end development for over a decade. He discovered WordPress in 2011 and has used it to built sites for clients and non-profits ever since.
Velda (supernovia)
An artist raised by geeks in the beautiful Utah mountains, Velda has been using computers as a canvas for digital expression for as long as she can remember. She loves to help others do the same. With her ridiculously long list of interests and activities, it’s best to simply say that Velda is a huge fan of the universe and the people in it.
Garth Mortensen
Garth is a software engineer at Sucuri. He’s passionate about information security and pizza.
Susan C. Daniero
Founder and President of Materiell and NeatlyPressed. Materiell has designed and developed WordPress websites for enterprise, government, and education clients throughout the U.S. since 2011.
NeatlyPressed provides comprehensive WordPress site support services, code reviews and audits, and site migrations.
Susan loves coffee, deadlines, snow skiing, Park City, UT, her dog, friends, and family. (not necessarily in that order!)
Dhanushka Samarakoon
Dhanushka received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science and started the career as a .net developer at Virtusa Corporation, developing business solutions for clients, such as Siemens Energy Automation and Xerox. At Kansas State University Libraries, he worked with platforms and frameworks such as Drupal, WordPress, Omeka, Solr, and CodeIgniter. Dhanushka was able to use WordPress to replace some legacy custom coded products at the library. In 2016 he moved to the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. As the Assistant Head of Software Development, he provides the leadership to the Software Development unit. His main responsibilities are developing and maintaining in-house software solutions, customization and adaptation of open source software, and administration of enterprise systems at the library.
Joelle Reeder
I am the owner and creative director of Moxie Design Studios, where I’ve worked to create fabulous online brands for best-selling authors, award-winning businesses, academic institutions and creative entrepreneurs since 2003. I specialize in creative consultation, online branding, and creating responsive WordPress websites from design to development and I especially love working with Genesis framework.
Once upon a time, I was an an award-winning blogger, and I am also co-author of the book, “The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie” (Wiley & Sons Publishing) and have spoken on panels at industry events such as SXSW Interactive and appeared in several publications, podcasts and radio programs, including Entrepreneur Magazine, BlogTalk Radio and The Derek & Romaine Show.
I’m a retrophile who sings jazz, and a brunch enthusiast on a quest for the perfect bottomless mimosa.
Tevya Washburn
Tevya paid for most of his BS in History by doing freelance work on websites and video. After graduating and marrying his wife Jill in 2007, he tried a few “real jobs.” People kept asking him to build websites. He found WordPress in 2009 and has built websites on it almost exclusively ever since.
After a few years of creating WordPress websites as a side project, he decided to turn it into a business and full time job. Fiddler Online was born. He and his small team have now handcrafted over 100 custom WordPress websites for small businesses, and actively maintain and manage 70+ of them. Tevya is also the founder of the Boise WordPress Meetup.
Chris Reynolds
Chris is a Senior Engineer at Human Made and has been working with WordPress for over 10 years. Before joining the team at Human Made, Chris has been a Developer Lead for WebDevStudios, an author of online training videos for Pluralsight, a developer, project manager and support technician at Event Espresso, a freelancer, a one-person WordPress theme shop, and a Specialty Team member at Whole Foods. Though vegan, he can still be snobby about cheese and chocolate. Chris maintains a number of open source plugins on GitHub and WordPress.org and has been involved in WordCamp Salt Lake City since 2011.
When not coding, he may be found chanting for Utah’s own Major League Soccer team, Real Salt Lake.
Michael Sheen
Michael Sheen with Dandelion Platform Design has over 15 years of experience in marketing and branding, and web and graphic design. Michael has worked with NYTimes Bestselling Authors, world-renowned artists and coaches, and worldwide companies to establish and expand their unique online presence. Michael was the Technical Director for the emPOWR Film Festival for the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
Angie Fenimore
Angie Fenimore is the International Bestselling Author of BEYOND THE DARKNESS, a highly effective coach, and the facilitator of Calliope Writing Courses. She has landed six-figure book deals with the Big-6 publishers and signed with the industry’s top literary agents. She has spearheaded legislative reform, programmed film festivals, spoken to thousands, and supports writers of every genre to achieve success.
Mike Selander
I’m a WordPress Engineer at Human Made hailing from Coeur d’Alene, ID and I’ve been building custom websites for more than 6 years. Building everything from full sites to immersive publishing experiences, I have worked with several of the largest publishing sites on WordPress from USAToday to News UK.
Obsessive over QA, testing and code standards, I’m also quite passionate about publishing, front-end performance, photography, and the great outdoors.
Clarence Bowman
Clarence Bowman is the owner of Bowman Design Works, a graphic and web development company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has been an artist, coder and full-stack developer for more than 20 years. Specializing in both front-end, UI/UX design, as well as back-end PHP and mysql development, he has strived to continually educate himself on emerging technologies and the current state of web security as pertains to websites.
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Lisa Sabin-Wilson is co-owner and Chief Operating Officer at WebDevStudios, where our large team of web development experts provides custom web design and development solutions for clients like Viacom, Campbell Soup, Uber, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, Wharton University, University of Pennsylvania, Kaspersky Antivirus and more.
In this role, she provides the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure WebDevStudios has the proper operational controls, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to effectively grow the organization and to ensure financial strength and operating efficiency.
Prior to her role with WebDevStudios, Lisa operated her own freelance business for 10 years, starting in 2003, providing custom design and development services to her WordPress clients.
Lisa is a subject matter authority on WordPress and is the For Dummies™ brand franchise author on all things WordPress due to her extensive experience and knowledge on the platform and shares it as the author of several WordPress-related books, including the best-selling WordPress For Dummies.
Lisa is a regular public speaker at national events on topics such as: WordPress, Development, Design, CSS and Social Media. You can find her on Twitter @LisaSabinWilson.
Tyrel Kelsey
Tyrel Kelsey is a Web Engineer at 10up, Organizer of UtahWP, and a Utah Open Source core team member.
Joseph Stevenson
Joseph Stevenson is a public speaker, author and SEO Consultant. He has over 17 years of experience in digital marketing and is currently the CEO of Joseph Stevenson SEO Consulting.
Theresa Smith
I have more than 13 years of communications, design and development experience and love to make my clients’ visions come to life.
I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication studies and a certificate in graphic and web design from Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts. I work in the Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress, and Drupal and enjoy helping organizations and businesses find the best solutions for their technical and communication needs.
I own a CrossFit gym and primarily specialize in creating fitness-related websites. Because of my experience as a gym owner and my technical and design background, I have found a new specialty in helping other gym owners put their best foot forward in their online presence.
John Hawkins
John Hawkins caught the blogging bug early on. He used several platforms, including hand-coded HTML, to publish posts before installing WordPress for the first time in the summer of 2003. He’s been hooked ever since. In 2009, after growing tired of his corporate job, John turned his love for WordPress into a full-time gig as the founder of a WordPress development shop. He’s currently the Business Development Manager at WebDevStudios.
John is a huge fan of the community aspect of WordPress and loves to give back in whatever ways he can. He founded the Las Vegas WordPress meetup group and was its lead organizer for 4+ years. He’s also a frequent presenter at the meetup and at WordCamp conferences around the country.
John lives just outside of Las Vegas with his wife and two grown children. When he’s not working, John enjoys doing CrossFit and is a CrossFit Level 1 trainer. If you meet him at a conference, there’s a good chance he’ll challenge you to do some burpees with him.
Carrie Forde
Carrie spent the first eight years of her career wrangling sales data in the tech industry. While on work assignment in the UK, she attended a blogging workshop where she was introduced to WordPress. After spending several weekends learning about WordPress child themes, Carrie set up her first WordPress site, California Love Letters, and realized WordPress and front-end development is where her true passion lies.
After moving back to California, Carrie had an opportunity to pursue her passion, and enrolled in the Graphic & Interactive Design program at Foothill College where she learned about the graphic design process, and how to properly write HTML and CSS. Before graduating from her program, Carrie created her first theme from scratch on the Genesis framework, and realized that developing on WordPress is what she wanted to do for a living.
When she’s not doing front-end development, you can find Carrie at home cuddling with her four cats K2, Whitney, Minnie, and Paul; enjoying a latte or cold brew at a nearby coffee shop; or exploring the greater San Francisco Bay Area with my husband Darren.
Scott DeLuzio
Scott DeLuzio is a WordPress plugin developer from the Phoenix, AZ area. He began working with websites while in college in the early 2000s while studying to be an accountant. After graduating college, Scott worked in accounting for several years while continuing to build websites in WordPress. Scott has since made development his full-time job and has released a new service, WP1099, which makes it easy for U.S. based businesses who run multi-vendor marketplaces, affiliate programs, or hire freelancers to issue 1099s to their vendors.