Pam Aungst
Pam owns an agency in NJ that specializes in SEO & PPC. They have a very strong reputation for being experts in results-driven white hat SEO and highly effective PPC campaigns. Pam recommends WordPress to almost all of their clients and provides coaching to site owners on how to maximize their SEO and PPC results.
Tevye Brown
Tevye started programming commercial desktop software on a first-generation IBM PC over 30 years ago. They have built systems for corporations like Pitney-Bowes, Neilson Marketing and Colgate as well as numerous smaller businesses.
About 8 years ago customers started asking if he could create a website for them. His background in using software frameworks made WordPress a perfect fit. Tevye got comfortable building multiple sites for clients using multisite early on.
Until Tevye found Beaver Builder, website development was more a hobby than a business. He currently runs a WaaS tailored for small business websites. He has multiple multisite installs that host over a hundred sites including demos, templates and customer sites.
Steve Bruner
Steve Bruner is the CEO of SlipFire, a New York City based WordPress development studio established in 2007, and a partner in Piklist LLC. where he is creating the most powerful framework available for WordPress.
Naomi C Bush
Naomi’s been working with WordPress as a professional developer since 2005, and you can currently find her over at https://gravityplus.pro where she specializes in using WordPress form builders to quickly deliver custom business functionality at a fraction of the cost.
She contributes back to the WordPress project through the core code, documentation, free plugins, organizing the WordPress Gwinnett meetup, organizing WordCamp Atlanta, and speaking at WordCamps.
Laura Byrne Cristiano
Laura started her first WordPress site in March 2006 when she started a website with a blog and forum for fans to discuss a then little-known book called Twilight. What started as a small site with maybe 30 visitors a week, rapidly grew into the most popular Twilight website on the Internet with millions of visitors each day from around the globe.
This lead to Laura transitioning from a career in teaching to one in marketing as she hit the ground running with a whole new skill set including podcasting, video editing, SEO, social media management and content marketing and more.
Since then, she’s created/written for 20+ WordPress sites mostly in the areas of education and entertainment.
Laura currently resides in Philadelphia, but she lived in Essex County for 20 years, and is the webmaster for Studio Players in Montclair
Joe Casabona
Joe Casabona is an accredited college course developer and professor.
He also has his Master’s Degree in Software Engineering, is a Front End Developer, and hosts multiple podcasts.
Joe started freelancing in 2002, and has been a teacher at the college level for over 10 years. His passion in both areas has driven him to build Creator Courses, a school for those who want to create online businesses.
As a big proponent of learning by doing, he loves creating focused, task-driven courses to help students build something. When he’s not teaching, he’s interviewing people for his podcast, How I Built It.
Andres Escobar
Andres Escobar is a Sr. Software Engineer at PMC. He is a self-taught digital architect who believes in the WordPress mission to democratize publishing.
In his spare time, Andres volunteers teaching kids how to code in his home town of Hoboken, NJ.
Jennifer Glass
Jennifer Glass is CEO at Business Growth Strategies International, LLC (formerly Credit Cards, NJ). BGSI, through its various divisions – bgsipayments, bgsicoaching, bgsiacademy.com, bgsimarketing & ccnjhost.com – provide a robust and best-in-class solution for business owners looking to grow their business and revenues.
Ms. Glass has been a fundraiser for several non-profit organizations/causes and continues to work with many non-profit organizations serving on their board, including as Vice President of the Teaneck (NJ) Chamber of Commerce among other groups, and as a volunteer for the causes she believes in.
Ms. Glass is frequently asked to speak on numerous stages, including being a two-time top college speaker, the Small Business Development Center – an organization that works with thousands of small businesses each year and presents on topics such as “QUICKLY Get More SALES & REVENUES the EASY Way,” “The 3 Secrets to Getting More Customers,” “Does Success Equate to Happiness?” and “The 9-Point Sales Process to Getting More Revenue.”
Ms. Glass recently co-authored “Reach Your Greatness” with ABC’s Secret Millionaire, James Malinchak and has her book, “It’s All in the Bottom Line” scheduled to come out shortly.
Because of the work Ms. Glass has done over the last 15+ years, she has been featured in numerous media outlets, recognized as a leader in business by more than 1,000 organizations, the Small Business Development Center, SCORE, several top global accounting firms, commercial and investment banks and was even named as a top woman in business leader by Acquisition International Magazine among other publications.
Aaron Jorbin
Aaron is a polyhistoric man of the web who knows rabble-rousers get shit done. Currently, Aaron is the Director of Editorial Technology for Penske Media Corporation, where he supports the editorial and business teams on over 20 brands including Rolling Stone, Variety, and Footwear News. He is also a WordPress Core Committer that focuses on improving developer happiness and making the internet usable and enjoyable by everyone. He tweets at @aaronjorbin and writes regularly at daily.jorb.in.
Bud Kraus
Most WordPress site developers are not instructors and not really interested in teaching WordPress to clients that want to learn it.
That’s what makes Bud Kraus very different. As he likes to say, “I don’t just make web sites. I teach too.”
Bud brings over 20 years of experience teaching best practices with WordPress (in New York City and beyond) to every project he gets involved with. From startup sites to site re-designs, it is his experience and professionalism that clients have come to depend on.
No matter the project, Bud is willing to work with clients the way they want to work and not the other way around. He finds the best ways to collaborate with others to accomplish their goals. He always encourages every student to learn whatever they want with WordPress. His students have become web site customers, and some web site owners have become his students.
Bud is very active and well known in the WordPress community in and around the New York City area.
His Joy of WP site http://joyofwp.com includes 2 free courses with over 60 WordPress videos.
Stephen Kriso
Stephen Kriso is a WordPress and business strategy consultant and is a graduate of WP Elevation. His passion is helping people build businesses around WordPress. In his spare time, he enjoys photography and playing and writing music.
Alexis Kulash
Alexis wrangles all things enterprise WordPress while working on the WordPress.com VIP team at Automattic. She lives in New York, NY, and can be found quarterly at BigWP NYC. This serial retweeter can also be seen on Twitter @alexiskulash and digitally at kulash.blog.
Becky Livingston
Becky Livingston is the President and CEO of Penheel Marketing, an NJ-based firm specializing in social media and digital marketing for CPAs and small business owners. With over 25 years of marketing and tech experience, she is also the author of “SEO for CPAs – The Accountant’s SEO Handbook: Get Found Online Organically,” “The Accountant’s Social Media Handbook,” and “SEO Secrets, Myths, and Truths to Being Found Online.” In addition to being a practitioner, Becky is also an adjunct professor and speaker. Connect with Becky or her firm on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and YouTube.
Michael Loewenberg
Michael Loewenberg is the President of MESH Business Solutions, Inc., a technology consulting firm founded in 1996. MESH builds beautiful, custom WordPress sites, specializing in eCommerce Solutions. Mike is very involved with the WordPress community and is active in several closed Facebook groups and the Westchester (NY) WordPress Meetup. An accomplished public speaker, he’s particularly adept at making complex, technical challenges easy to understand.
Derick Michael
After graduating with a Masters in Music, Derick first began a career as a music arranger and sound designer. Creating sound design for major brands cultivated an interest in other channels of creative media, leading him into various video production and editing roles.
He eventually worked his way up from a commercial editor to the head of marketing for a private umbrella cooperation, overseeing seven companies marketing efforts. With a focus on managing the online presence of his company and its subsidiaries, he facilitated many different marketing initiatives to ensure the company ranked high in the SERPs.
Derick now works as a marketing manager with a SaaS company and regularly takes on freelance SEO and Marketing clients. Always hungry to learn more to better inform his content and marketing strategies, he spends much of his time studying and implementing SEO techniques on this favorite website platform, WordPress.
Victor Ramirez
Victor Ramirez began his foray into the interwebs building websites and email newsletters for various high school art projects. He is currently a lead software engineer at Dow Jones and owns AbstractWP – a WordPress focused marketing agency. In his free time, he teaches high school students to code & coaches professionals in New York City.
Lara Schenck
Lara Schenck is a Design Operations Engineer at Penske Media Corporation, where she leads the design systems effort for big media publications powered by WordPress. She is fascinated by the overlap between programming fundamentals and CSS and spreads her enthusiasm for this topic through speaking and community involvement.
Lara writes about her work and life on her blog, illustrates friendly monsters in her spare time, and, someday, hopes to write a memoir.
Howard Spaeth
Small business is the heart and soul of the tri-state area. When you need personal and attentive website, IT, and graphics solutions that large, corporate conglomerates cannot provide, who better to know how exactly how to deliver your vision than Howard Spaeth, CEO and owner of H Grant Designs. Why? Because Howard IS a small business owner who prides himself on providing personal care and collaboration with his clients. Howard is a passionate worker with a deep understanding of how technology can transform any business. From website design/development & maintenance to computer repair; from social media marketing to graphic design, H Grant Designs takes your vision and makes it a reality.
Since 2014, H Grant Designs has been putting clients first and making sure work such as website design, network & infrastructure configuration, and storage allocation fit what his clients desire. The number of client referrals is testimony to Howard’s ability to identify the technological needs of business owners and produce results-driven support. Self taught, Howard always goes above and beyond to ensure clients will recommend his services. When you contact H Grant Designs, you get Howard, and you have him throughout the duration of your project to make sure your technological solutions work not only in theory, but in practice. They say it takes one to know one, and small business owner Howard knows small business owners.
David A. Wank
Dr. David A. Wank is a practicing general dentist and an authority on dental website development, search engine optimization, and social media. He received his dental degree from Harvard in 2003, is an active speaker, and is the president of Short Hills Design, LLC, a WordPress-based web development and Internet marketing firm for dentists and physicians that provides solutions across North America.
Dr. Wank is the the author of the The Web Design Workbook for Dentists, an 100+ page non-technical, online guide for dentists and dental team members that explains the website development process, search engine optimization, and social media in detail. He is the founder of the “Internet Marketing for Dentists” group on Facebook, and maintains an active Internet Marketing blog for dentists at his website: www.shorthillsdesign.com.
David Wolfpaw
David is a professional web developer focused on WordPress theme and plugin development. He emphasizes helping small businesses, providing ongoing support, and educating users through his service FixUpFox. He helps organize both WordPress Orlando and WordCamp Orlando.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
Scott is the Chief Community Officer at Imagely, a father, blogger, photographer, and educator. Scott is born and raised in New Jersey, enjoys the comfort of hiking clothing (even while not hiking), is the author of multiple photography books, and often educates photographers about WordPress throughout his blog and the Imagely blog.
Scott believes in sharing his knowledge any way possible and educating without fluff, in a straight to the point easy to understand style. He believes the possibilities are endless in WordPress and that with a community the possibilities can continue to grow faster and bigger than ever imagined.
You can find Scott at scottwyden.com, imagely.com, and across social media.