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 WordPress practitioners and small businesses improve productivity with WordPress and Project Management. I am currently creating online courseware (or roadmaps) for how to effectively plan and manage WordPress projects, focusing on getting them done on time and within budget.
Mary Ann LeRay
Mary Ann graduated from North Carolina State University in 1991 with a Business Management and Marketing degree.
She worked for Bank of America for 6 years in mortgage banking. Opened a mortgage branch in Boulder, CO.
Mary Ann started her own business with Mary Kay, Inc. in 1998. She is a Senior Sales Director with Mary Kay and has owned her business for 20 years. Her business has become a family affair with her mother, sister and mother-in-law joining her team.
Fun fact: her MK team has earned 10 cars, 2 of which were Pink Cadillacs and will earn another PINK trophy on wheels in September which represents the team’s achievements.
Her mission is to create an environment to empower and equip women to be their best.
She has been married to Jeremy LeRay for 25 years. They have a
18 year old son, Joshua. Mary Ann and her family live on the family farm in Pollocksville.
William Jackson
William graduated from South Carolina State University earning a Bachelor’s in Education degree, he furthered his education earning a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Webster University with a focus on Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM.
Seeing the rapid changes in technology in the early 90’s William wanted to make sure he was prepared to integrate tech into his teaching and future business dreams.
William’s career involves past teaching with NASA as an Internet and Technology instructor, technology consultant with the Florida Department of Education and Professor with Edward Waters College teaching a curriculum he designed Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM.
William has been involved in the field of education over 25 years in elementary and higher education. Preparing students for the diversity of education and businesses that use tech in their instructional and content creation models.
William is also a Social Media Consultant, presenter nationally on Bullying and Cyberbullying, Internet Safety, Accountability and Responsibility.
His passion in Blogging and Writing that allows him to embrace being a thought leader and Social Media Visionary to help youth, teens and young
adults manage their content.
A national and international blogger that is published in the United States,
Canada and on the continent of Africa.
Carrie Cousins
Carrie Cousins is a content marketer and web master for an economic development organization by day (managing a half dozen WordPress sites) and freelance writer and designer and website builder by night/weekend. Specializing in websites and content for small businesses, Cousins also recently finished her MBA from Virginia Tech. You may have seen some of her published work about website design and development on popular blogs such as Fast Company Design, Webdesigner Depot or Design Shack. She’s also a runner and participates in dog sports with three Australian Shepherds.
Tkeyah Lake
Tkeyah Lake is an integrated digital communications professional with expertise gained from developing and executing digital media strategies for think tanks, trade associations and political campaigns. Her skills include planning and strategy, data analysis and storytelling, and use of a wide array of social and digital tools for creating and maintaining a highly-reputable digital media presence.
Currently, Tkeyah is a director of digital and social strategy at Banner Public Affairs and previously spearheaded the digital strategy for a Congressional candidate in Virginia. In addition to her expertise in digital strategy and data analytics, Tkeyah is experienced in organizational branding and traditional public relations. She’s also a digital communications reservist with FEMA, where she was deployed in 2017 to help with disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico.
Jeff Matson
Jeff Matson is a developer, WordPress contributor, and the community evangelist for Gravity Forms, where he sparks new growth for one of the most established brands in the WordPress product space.
In his spare time, he’s usually restoring classic arcade and pinball machines or developing new open source solutions for the world to use.
Frank Jones
:Frank is the host of the WordPress Help Desk in RTP, organizer of the Raleigh SEO Meetup, founding member of the Triangle Wikipedians user group, and Marketing Director at OptSus Marketing. He has been building websites since 1995 and started using WordPress in 2008. The Learn-Do-Teach ethos and open knowledge are central to his work.
Aida Correa
Aida Correa is a self-described Renaissance woman. She’s an artist, writer, poet, designer, teacher and very recently, a regular WordCamp attendee, volunteer and speaker. A former New Yorker, she moved to Jacksonville to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. She’s the owner of LoveBuilt Life LLC, an Arts and Creative Lifestyle company, where she teaches arts, crafts and the art of creative living. As her “side hustle” she creates WordPress websites for start-ups on a budget. WordCamp Miami 2018, was her first foray into the world of WordCamp and she went in head first – she volunteered, was a room MC and was a co-speaker. At WordCamp Jacksonville, she volunteered in the KidsCamp and her company was a sponsor. At WordCamp Atlanta she decided to try just being an “attendee”, but quickly learned she likes to be involved. She was chosen to speak to WordCamp Birmingham and plans to continue being an active participant in WordCamps in the future. She enjoys spending time with her kids, grandkids and her loving boyfriend who introduced her to the world of WordCamp in the first place. She also has a thing for Wapuu.
Jeremy LeRay
A native of Wilmington, NC Jeremy has lived and worked in the Raleigh, RTP area as well as Colorado. He now calls Pollocksville, NC home and enjoys gardening, sailing, and spending time on their farm with his wife, son, and Boykin spaniel.
Mickey Trivett
Mickey owns and operates WebCoUSA Enterprises which is an Award Winning Marketing, Consulting, and Web Design Agency located in Johnson City, Tennessee. He started his company almost 14 years ago in the oldest town in Tennessee which is Jonesborough. It is a very small town and known for the world famous Story Telling Festival. People come all over the world to listen to stories, some true and some just plain ole’ entertaining.
Believe it or not, he is self-taught and the very first website he sold was at a local Flea Market of all places. He has now grown from that one website to having hundreds of clients in over 41 States. He often says that he loves waking up in the morning knowing that he has a career that he chose and at the same time he gets to help people with their businesses.
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.
Kyle Laverty
Kyle is a freelance digital creative in Apex, NC. Originally from Pittsburgh, he served 4 years in the Air Force working on fighter jets before transitioning out and eventually finding an interest in web design and development.
A self-taught developer, Kyle currently does freelance work for several different companies as part of his freelance business, Laverty Creative. In addition to this, he manages personal projects that include a veteran-focused website, Creative Vets, and a T-Shirt design business, Peak of Things.
Outside of that he enjoys spending time with his wife, 5 kids, and 2 dogs.
Ashley Cribb
As a father of three, Ashley has created WordPress sites for small businesses for a few years. Also, he has a few side projects that are utilizing WordPress.
Ray Mitchell
Ray is the owner of SixFour Web Design & Marketing, which focuses on meeting the unique marketing needs of small businesses and non-profit organizations. He also serves as a Mentor at the Small Business Center at Forsyth Technical Community College.
Jennifer McFarland
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!).
Oleksii Chekulaiev
Oleksii is a Team Lead Web Developer with 10+ years of experience.
Tiffany Kuchta
Tiffany is the co-founder and lead developer at Quandarymat. 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 at the beach with my husband and 3 children.
Vasyl Martyniuk
Vasyl is Zend PHP7 certified engineer and the founder of the Advanced Access Manager plugin that is one the most popular access management plugins available for WordPress CMS. He’s also a huge advocate for the passive income and already making baby steps to build his entire life around it.
Ian Oeschger
Ian is a WordCamp Wilmington 2017 speaker, IBMer, writer, and bookish, and a outdoors-y technologist.
Micah Wood
Micah Wood is a WordPress Developer at Bluehost. A professional WordPress developer for over a decade, Micah has worked on sites for Fortune 100 companies, has released over a dozen WordPress plugins, is a frequent speaker at WordCamps, co-organizes the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, is a co-host on the WP Square One podcast and shares his knowledge by blogging on WordPress development topics.
Lauren Etheridge
Lauren Etheridge is a Web Developer and Designer with OIT Design and Web Services at NC State. She has a globe trotting background in social work and web development. Ask her about independent film, David Lynch, comedy shows, music & the Fibonacci Sequence in nature. If you’re lucky you might hear her play theremin.
Miles Elliott
Miles Elliott is a Web Developer and Designer with OIT Design and Web Services at NC State. He has a background in graphic design and web development. He enjoys woodworking, electronics, and long walks by western avenue. If you’re lucky you might hear him struggle to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on the Laser Harp.
Alex Wharff
Alex Wharff has over 25 years’ experience in internet site and application design and development, ranging from static HTML sites to fully dynamic, data-driven interactive applications, with a few forays into Flash back in the day. In the intervening years, he’s worked with many, many php and JavaScript frameworks and styles. Over the last four years as Senior Internet Developer for a local advertising and design firm, he’s worked with WordPress almost exclusively to create everything from simple landing pages to sprawling sites with included mini-sites, to strict B2B and B2C Internet applications.
During his career, Alex has had the opportunity to work in a wide variety of environments including Windows, Mac, and several flavors of Unix in everything from DreamWeaver to VIM, using svn to git with GitHub and BitBucket, many JavaScript frameworks, many homegrown and distributed php frameworks, and – of course – WordPress.
An avid fan of separation of concerns, DRY, and a Twig evangelist – not to mention a devotee of working smarter not harder – Alex is always reading (and, to the dismay of some of his friends, talking) about new technologies, design and development patterns, and methods to make his process more efficient and fun.
He also enjoys helping others and passing along the knowledge he’s gained over the past 25 years – just this year he was invited to become a Guru on the php freaks forum (https://forums.phpfreaks.com), where he spends a good amount of time. Learn more about Alex at https://maxxwv.com.
Matthew Woodard
William Earnhardt
William works as a WordPress core contributor at Bluehost. Before joining Bluehost earlier this year, he spent 6 years building and running WordPress multisite and multi-network environments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
When not fiddling with WordPress things, he loves tinkering with old Jeeps, kayak fishing and cheering on the Tar Heels.
Steve Schwartz
Steve Schwartz, owner of AVT Marketing in Charlotte, NC has been a photographer since 1982. Yeah – he’s that old! Millions of shutter clicks later, he’s spent the last 12 years as a professional real estate and architecture photographer. He’s traveled all over the Carolinas teaching adults (and kids alike) how to not fear the advanced functionalities of their cameras and learn how to embrace them to shoot high quality images. Steve has amassed almost 15,000 work related photos on Flickr since 2009 with close to half a million views. His website is www.avtmarketing.com
Chuck Lovelace
Chuck is the Founder and President of Eagle Business Group, LLC.
Chuck’s career spans 40 years in business and business development. He has held executive leadership roles in the corporate arena as well as the non-profit sector that involved sales, marketing, and operations. Before starting his own company, he spent 15 years in the income tax industry and was most recently the Vice-President of Strategic Initiatives for a publicly traded income tax franchisor. One of his many responsibilities was to acquire and manage CPA firms across the country. He is the co-founder of Run For Food International, a charity that works to eradicate hunger in Nicaragua. Chuck lives in Virginia Beach, VA with his wife of 44 years, Debbie. He has two happily married children and four grandchildren.
Derek Schmidt
In 2011 Derek started DesignLoud, a digital marketing & web design agency in Wilmington, NC. Over the past 6 years Derek has positioned DesignLoud as an agency that specializes in WordPress custom development. Derek’s WordPress roots date back to before there was the easy install on WordPress and you had to do everything manually through your FTP and database. In his free time you will find him hosting the monthly WordPress Meetup and volunteering for organizing the WordCamp events here in Wilmington. Ever since attending his first WordCamp in Asheville in 2014, Derek knew he wanted to bring one to Wilmington and part of the requirements for doing so was to have a local meetup group established. This allowed him to network with other professionals and WordPress users who shared his love for WordPress. In addition to this, Derek has presented regionally at WordCamps across the easy coast. Now, Derek has been working on developing SWELLEnterprise, an all-in-one business suite that will integrate directly with WordPress, allowing business owners to have a 360 integration with their business from their website, to their marketing and now an affordable, all-in-one CRM.
Peter Baylies
Peter has been a programmer for as long as he can remember. He started coding on a Commodore 64, and after attending the NC School of Science and Math, he went on to graduate from NCSU with a degree in Computer Science. He started working with WordPress professionally when he joined Semper Fi Web Design in 2011, and spent time developing on and maintaining plugins such as All in One SEO Pack, and spoke at area WordCamps. Now at Purcado, he is their in-house WordPress expert.
Laura Rabell
Laura is a performing musician and songwriter. You can follow along on her musical journey by subscribing to her monthly email newsletter at www.laurarabell.com.
After graduating with honors from the University of West Florida in Pensacola, FL, where she grew up, Laura lived in Charlotte, NC with her husband E.J. for 10 years before they moved to Nashville, TN, to pursue music. With a marketing and client services background in fields such as healthcare consulting and financial services, Laura found a niche in helping small business owners with business development through web design and digital marketing.
Rabell Creative, founded by E.J. and Laura in 2012, offers WordPress website design and digital marketing services to help organizations make the most of their online presence. Rabell Creative is a Google Partner agency with a specialization in Google Adwords. Visit www.rabellcreative.com to see our portfolio of recent client projects.