Adam Silver
Adam is a native of California, though relocated to North Carolina in 2017. Currently providing WordPress development and support services through ConciergeWP.com. He produces 2 wkly podcasts at KitchenSinkWP.com & The Get Options Podcast & was the lead organizer for WordCamp Los Angeles 2016 & 2017. In his free time, he speaks at industry events sharing his insights & expertise into all things digital. Married for 19 years to his amazing wife & has 3 wickedly cool kids.
Julien Melissas
Bio coming soon!
Rachel Cherry
Rachel Cherry is 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.
Previously, Rachel was a Senior Software Engineer for Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media and helped build a variety of Disney websites on various platforms, including shopdisney.com.
Before Disney, she spent over nine years working in higher education and is the Director of WPCampus, a community and conferences focused on using WordPress in the world of higher education.
Daniel Swain
“Daniel is the founder of JDS WebDesign, a Digital Marketing Strategy Company that helps small to mid-size companies. JDS WebDesign builds, supports and markets WordPress websites. Daniel has been building websites for 16 + years, and working as a free lance designer for JDS WebDesign since August 2007.
In his spare time, Daniel loves hanging out with his family, playing a round of golf, listening to some jazz, writing blog material, and working on his podcast.”
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. With his depth of knowledge of security and compliance, he continually educates his clients on how to be preemptive with security.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/hd-sam
Twitter: @sam_jadali
David Zimmerman
David Zimmerman is an internet marketing consultant who specializes in search. He has several years experience working with B2B companies, especially manufacturers. He started his own consultancy, Reliable Acorn LLC, after working in several agencies.
After several years of recommending WordPress to his clients, David eventually created his own theme. It was accepted into the WordPress Theme Directory. Although not the most beautiful theme ever created, it taught him a lot about the platform and how to better work with WordPress websites.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/dizzysoft
Twitter: @reliableacorn
Micah Wood
Micah Wood is a WordPress developer at BlueHost. He gets to spend most of his time working on WordPress core and helping the WordPress community.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/woodent
Twitter: @wpscholar
Adam Warner
Adam W. Warner discovered WordPress in 2005 and has been working within the community ever since.
He is a true WordPress Evangelist in spirit and personality, and that happens to have been his job title when joining SiteLock.com. Today, he’s the Open Source Community Manager there, continuing to bring his experience and knowledge of the web, business, and security to many other communities.
Adam is also passionate about his family, robots, and of course Life, the Universe and Everything.
https://wpdistrict.sitelock.com
https://profiles.wordpress.org/awarner20
Twitter: @wpmodder
Susan Schaer
I’ve been a logo and marketing communications designer for over 25 years. I’ve been designing client websites in WordPress for the past 7+ years and feel that I have a lot to share in terms of how to maximize graphic design in website creation, which I’d like to share with the community in Asheville.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/Sberland
Twitter: @NimbleDesignATL
Janine Paris
Janine Paris is a project manager trained in design and development. She currently works for Big Boom Design here in Asheville. She is a human person with real human thoughts and feelings. She also has personal interests.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/janinemarie
Twitter: @janinemarie_
Beth Livingston
Every job I have had since college involved some form of making complicated information easy to understand. It’s what I do. It’ my jam! In 2016, I decided to leave the corporate world (where I had served for 25+ years as an IT Business Analyst, Project Manager, and Instructional Designer) to form my own business and today I enjoy helping small business and individual professionals reach their goals with WordPress and Project Management.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/ibliving1
Twitter: @BethLivingstoNC
Benjamin Kucmierz
I was raised in a family that treated curiosity as a passion. My father raised me to explore and attempt to understand the world around me, which inevitably led to me gutting his computer. Afterwards, he still told me to explore, just with supervision. Nowadays I still satisfy my curiosity by looking at how things work, how systems interact, and how people see those systems. My passion for being able to help people and optimize their lives combined with my love of technology and now I do my best to educate clients & users while also sweeping up after them.
Twitter: @theedesign
Tiffany Kuchta
Tiffany is the co-founder and lead developer at Quandarymat. She doesn’t like the term full stack developer, preferring just “developer” instead. She also feels awfully pretentious writing in the third person, so let’s just stop that right now. (Hi!) I’ve been building web things since 1999 and WordPress since 2.0.1. I like solving problems with code, building things out of other things, empathy, inclusion and irreverent t-shirts. A recent transplant to North Carolina from Pittsburgh, PA, I live alongside the ocean with my husband and 3 children.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/tiffanyqm
Twitter: @tiffanyakuchta
Judi Knight
I’m a PhD psychologist with found WordPress in 2005. The founder and chief at New Tricks Web Design where we use psychology, technology and design to create effective websites for a range of interesting clients.
I was an organizer of the Atlanta WordPress Users Group and WordCamp Atlanta. With a passion for speaking and teaching, I developed an online course with coaching, teaching aspiring web designers to become pros and have successful careers.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/judiknight
Twitter: @judiknight
Joe Howard
Joe is the Head Buff at WP Buffs, a WordPress technical partner for serious website owners and white-label agency partners. This is his first time in Asheville and he’s thrilled to be here to see some old WordPress friends and meet new ones 🙂
https://profiles.wordpress.org/joewpbuffs
Twitter: @josephhhoward
John Hornsby
Over the course of 20 years, John has traveled the journey from being an introverted creative, terrified of speaking and sales, to becoming a top producing salesperson of signs and graphics. Rather than stay in his safe comfort zone of expertise, he traded that all in this year to launch his own creative services company.
Alisa Herr
Alisa is a multidisciplinarian who loves flexing her skills in strategy, data analysis, writing, empathy, design, and web development. She found her calling to lift up those who use their talents as a force for good and established Unity in 2016 to connect mission-driven technologists, designers, and strategists to the organizations who need them the most. She is a mom, wife, public speaker, open source evangelist, and serves on the community board of AIGA Raleigh as the chair of the Women Lead Initiative.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/isabisa
Twitter: @isabisa
Russell Fair
I am a full stack developer and have worked with WordPress for the past 12+ years. I enjoy sharing what I know with others in pursuit of making a better mousetrap.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/rfair404
Twitter: @rfair
Cody Edgar
I’m a Project Manager at a web development and digital marketing company in Greenville, SC. My background is in IT and Communications, which is why I think it’s so important to speak to the customer service side of what we do. It’s easy to get caught up in the technical and design aspects of our work, losing sight of what’s most important — delivering a product and service that delights the client. And by recognizing the importance of this, we empower ourselves to do our best work and attract more clientele.
Twitter: @codyleeedgar
John Dorner
John is the lead organizer of the Asheville WordPress Meetup and has been building WP themes and plugins for four years. He started teaching about web design and development 20 years ago and has been building PHP/MySQL database driven websites for almost that long.
https://dependabledeveloping.com
https://profiles.wordpress.org/jdorner
Twitter: @jdorner
Tricia Clements
Tricia has been involved in the WordPress community since attending her first WordCamp Atlanta in 2012. After a few years of tinkering around with it on personal websites, she launched her business site, MuttButs.com, in 2015.
Tricia is not a developer, she loves finding out all that WordPress has to offer to help her business and make things easier. Through live stream, she knew that video was going to be her focus.
She specializes in pet businesses because of her love for her two rescue dogs, Riedi and Margi. They are often seen (and heard!) on her video’s and live streams.
Emily Breedlove
Emily is a Branding Specialist and Growth Strategist who specializes in building the framework, platforms, and partnerships needed to be impactful in today’s challenging economy.
Having spent the past 15+ years working in small business support and community development, Emily has been fortunate enough to have experienced this space from both the entrepreneurial approach and the resource provider perspective.
Complete bio at: http://emilybreedlove.com/meet-emily
Twitter: @emilyhbreedlove
Sarah Bonner
Sarah Bonner is an artist with a background in photography and multimedia design. She has a huge passion for web design. She is the Art Director at Big Boom Design and loves opportunities to talk about design.
Sarah Benoit
Sarah Benoit has worked in the web design, SEO, and social media fields since 2003 and has been teaching classes on related subjects since 2006. As President of Creative Original, she has built a wide variety of small business websites over the years. As Co-founder and Lead Instructor for the JB Media Institute, Sarah Benoit leverages her years of experience as a digital marketing strategist to create timely, relevant, and engaging training content. Sarah speaks, trains, and presents on digital marketing topics at conferences and events throughout the year in the Southeast and beyond.
Sarah Benoit has presented at WordCamp Asheville, WordCamp San Diego 2016, and WordCamp US 2017. She recently received the 2017 Woman Executive of the Year award from WomanUp at the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce. She was inducted into Asheville’s 40 Under Forty in 2013 and is a graduate of Leadership Asheville. She is also a 2017 graduate of the Hive Global Leaders program.
http://www.jbmediainstitute.com
https://profiles.wordpress.org/sarahbenoit
Twitter: @sarahdbenoit
Steven Ayers
Steven specializes in WordPress security and hosting. He is the author of Security Safe, a WordPress security plugin. He enjoys teaching about information security and traveling the world.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/sovstack
Twitter: @sovstack
Erick Arbe
Erick Arbé is a web developer who’s built four businesses (and sold two of them). He brings his entrepreneurial skills to client projects, helping businesses improve processes and performance via the web. Since 2009, he’s been developing websites built on WordPress that generate results for his clients. As a former PGA professional who’s coached dozens of players, Erick is also a fitness and performance enthusiast. When he’s not helping clients achieve their goals, you’re likely to find him in the midst of a CrossFit workout or recording his podcast, The Strong Web.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/openchamp
Twitter: @erickarbe
Aisha Adams
Aisha Adams is the blogger behind www.AishaAdams.com. Her written work has appeared in publications like The Asheville Citizen Times, The Asheville Grit, and The Final Call. Aisha has a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She also holds a Masters in Post-Secondary and Adult Education. Aisha is also a 2016 My Home, My Voice Fellow. Aisha is the author of Vegan Curious and the mastermind behind Aisha Adams Media.
http://www.AishaAdamsMedia.com
https://profiles.wordpress.org/nappynaturalgirl
Twitter: @AishaAdamsBlog
Rich Owings
An Internet marketer since 2005, Rich Owings sold his tech blog in 2014 and now spends his time helping businesses improve their online presence. Rich is a co-organizer of WordCamp Asheville and the WordPress Asheville MeetUp group. In his spare time he likes to mountain bike, hike, garden and listen to music.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/gpsmapper
Twitter: @richowings
Cindy Cullen
Cindy Cullen runs a 6-figure WordPress Customization business with a team of 20 contractors from her RV. She graduated from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN with a degree in Computer Science in 1989. She worked for the American Chemical Society, General Electric Information Services and an advertising agency before quitting her J.O.B. to stay home with her 3 children and start her freelance business.
https://profiles.wordpress.org/cgcullen
Twitter: @cgcullen