We are super thrilled with our amazing lineup of speakers and are excited to see them all present at WordCamp DC. This post rounds out our speaker roster. If you missed it, check out the speakers we’ve already introduced in parts one, two, three, and four!
Andrew Nacin
Andrew Nacin is a Lead Developer of WordPress. He’s led major releases, mentored contributors, and spearheaded new development. He has strong feelings about the core philosophies of WordPress, among them “decisions, not options” — software should be opinionated in lieu of burdening the user with too many options. In January 2014, he joined the U.S. Digital Service at the White House, where he works to improve the usefulness and reliability of the country’s most important digital services.
Ellen Amaral
Ellen Amaral is an Art Director at Made by We, where she leads branding and web design projects for non-profit and social enterprise organizations. She is excited by the collision of design with content strategy, user experience and development. Ellen leverages a BA in Communication Design from the University of Pennsylvania and front end development skills from General Assembly to take design out of its silo and into an integrated space.
Tkeyah Lake
Tkeyah Lake is a Senior Account Executive at public affairs firm, Banner Public Affairs. There she develops and executes social media, communications and advertising plans for a variety of industries including defense, technology, and advocacy campaigns. She also serves as a reservist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, providing specialized digital and social media services in emergency situations.
She has a Master’s degree in Public Relations and Corporate Communications from Georgetown University. In addition, she runs a boutique live social and digital media company, Dotted Digital.
Adam Silverstein
Adam wrote games in assembly code, and then applets and of course the obligatory CMS in Java when Netscape Navigator ruled the web – eventually embracing WordPress as his platform of choice. He is a WordPress Core committer and works on the WordPress security team. He is currently helping lead an effort to improve core JavaScript. Adam is a Lead Web Engineer at 10up where he helps make the web better by finely crafting websites & tools for content creators. Adam loves long rafting trips, playing mbira, travel, taking walks and tending his over-sized garden.
Benjamin Bradley
You may know my face, but I’m pretty sure you know my voice. I’m Benjamin Bradley, and for the past 20+ years, I have been training and assisting small business owners to take their skills to the next level. Over the years, I have generated thousands of hours of business and technical training materials. I’m currently building a community for freelancers to learn, grow, and develop their WordPress, web design, development, and business skills at WPStudio.com.
Marissa Goldsmith
The very first website Marissa ever worked on was for a small university department. The only browser she had access to was Lynx. Since then, she has worked in nearly every aspect of web design and development. She has worked with non-profit organizations, the government, and creative agencies. Today, she is an independent consultant, focusing on digital analytics to enhance the user experience and website conversions.
Tori Peterson
Tori Peterson is the web writer-editor of the National Park Service’s new training website, the Common Learning Portal (CLP). She trains, assists and supports the site’s content authors and provides user help to end users. When Tori isn’t online, she’s frolicking in nature.
Sal Ferrarello
Sal started programming on a Commodore 64 when he was eight years old. He went on to become a web developer and educator specializing in WordPress. Sal’s past also includes work as a beach photographer, magician/juggler, and high school calculus teacher. He contributes to WordPress core, the Genesis framework, and various other open source projects.
Sal writes regularly about programming at https://salferrarello.com/.
Savannah Gignac
Savannah is an information management professional living in Washington, DC who works directly with clients to understand their long-term vision for their content and then translates this into content type definitions and migration plans. She melds her passion for words with an analytical eye to bring a big picture point of view to content strategy, data management and archival & library sciences.
Managing information on multiple platforms is Savannah’s forte. She has served as an Archivist and Librarian at federal, public, and non-profit institutions like The Smithsonian, The Harry Ransom Center, and The American Institute of Physics and holds a Masters of Science in Information Studies (MSIS) from the University of Texas – Austin. She is presently a Technical Content Strategist who manages content migration from start to finish for website redesign projects at Agency CHIEF.
Marc Gratch
I am a WordPress Consultant, a life long student, a husband and father. I have been developing themes and plugins for WordPress since 2.8 (give or take a point release,) with a strong focus on simple, specific, niche functionality. Most everything I know about code comes from the WordPress community which is why I try to give back as much as I can. I love the WordPress platform and the community!
Ryan Sholin
Ryan Sholin, Director of Product and Growth at Chalkbeat, has made it his mission to help professional journalists get the tools, skills, and inspiration they need to inform their communities on any platform. A former investigative reporter for the Oakland Tribune, online editor for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, product strategist at GateHouse Media, and director of product management at Gannett, Ryan was also a co-founder of Wired Journalists and a Knight News Challenge winner for ReportingOn.
We have one more speaker announcement left, so stay tuned! If you haven’t yet, get a ticket to WordCamp DC!