Jenna Curry
Jenna Curry is the Owner and Lead Digital Strategist at Remedy Digital Agency in Wilmington, NC. Winner of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce 2017 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Jenna is well known for her ability to create online sales funnels that CONVERT. Using the power of targeted content, landing pages, Facebook’s advertising platform, email sequences, and a suite of digital tools, Jenna focuses on driving ROI for businesses.
A sought after professional educator, Jenna has presented on digital marketing strategies to the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Quality Enhancement of Non Profit Organizations, The Digital Media and Technology Group, Cape Fear Women in Tech, Commercial Real Estate Women, and WordCamp Wilmington in addition to hosting her own training events.
In 2009, Jenna co-founded the Port City Young Professionals, a networking group serving young professionals in Wilmington through monthly networking socials, professional development, and community service. What started as a passion project turned into over 2,700 members and a business made possible through Jenna’s addition of a mobile app, advertising channels, sponsors, and community partnerships.
Jenna’s board experience includes a 2017 Board Member of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, Marketing Committee Member for United Way of the Cape Fear, and former Board Member of the UNCW Alumni Association.
Holly Cruz
Holly Cruz is the Project Manager for Pro Impressions Marketing Group. Holly joined the company after leaving a decade long career in Emergency Services, working closely with Police, Fire and EMS. Holly spent years training new communication specialists as a full time instructor at the county’s new hire academy. She was able to fuel passion in her trainees, as well as create a fun and creative learning environment. Holly came into the internet marketing and website world with very little knowledge of what that entailed. She naively thought that websites just magically appeared on the internet through some magic wand in the “cloud”, always wondering which cloud in the blue sky it was exactly. Holly excelled and has increased her knowledge of all things “techy” but is still not an expert in this field. What Holly does bring to the table is outside, user-like perspective! Her attention to detail and organizational skills have made her a valuable member of the team. She also understands and thrives in the area of customer relations and service. Holly is also the mother of two amazing children (17 and 12) and is a Colorado native! She can’t wait to share her experiences and expertise with others and hopes to bring a perspective that seasoned professionals in the area of internet marketing and website design may have forgotten.
Sean Ahlum
Sean Ahlum
Director of Business, CastleBranch
Director, tekMountain
Sean Ahlum joined tekMountain in 2014 as Director of Business Development. Prior to joining the team, Sean served as the director of technology and communications for the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Office of Housing and Residence Life and brings over 17 years of in-depth experience in university information systems, data standards, system coordination, business process flow, and corporate entrepreneurial development. He has served as chair elect of the Residential Management Systems user advisory board, Chair of the Board of Directors of Surfrider Foundation’s International Board of Directors, and has founded and led numerous local non-profit agencies, leveraging technology to scale community engagement and business success. The intersections of technology, community, and business development are the basis of his passion, which fits perfectly with the tekMountain vision. Sean received multiple degrees from UNCW including a BA in English, an MFA in Professional Creative Writing, and an MBA from the Cameron School of Business. He spends his free time fishing, surfing and enjoying leisurely walks with his wife and dog.
Peter La Fond
Peter La Fond is the Founder and CEO of My Internet Scout, LLC, a digital marketing firm serving businesses of all sizes in locations across the country.
Peter graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 1994. Peter’s high technology career has spanned across two decades in Silicon Valley. He’s worked for various sized high technology firms, ranging from start-up to Fortune 500. Peter has employed the WordPress engine as the exclusive platform for the websites his firm develops. In addition, Peter is the Founder of the San Jose WordPress Meetup.
In 2015, Peter moved to Wilmington from Silicon Valley. Although his Silicon Valley roots run deep, he loves Wilmington. Peter, his wife, and his two dogs are happy to call Wilmington home.
Jeremy LeRay
I am a native of Wilmington and now live near New Bern, NC. I’ve owned New Bern Web Design for over six years. I enjoy getting to know each of my new clients, what excites them about their businesses, and working with them to share that excitement in the web design process.
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.
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.
Dante Crescenzi
Entrepreneur who founded ImpactWorks, an Interactive Digital Creative Agency. Co-founder of International Technology Group, LLC, a Technology Outsourcing & Professional Services Company and Co-Founder of iDentaKey, a Portable Safety Software Development Company. Innovator who built the iDentaKey brand and company that developed the iDentakey portable safety software device from initial concept to a successful product that sold in many online and brick and mortar stores in several countries. Contributing leader with extensive executive management, marketing, product marketing, marketing communications, and product management experience. Seasoned product manager of a publicly-traded Internet Service Provider (Digex) responsible for identifying new markets for generation of additional revenue to the Website Management Group. Defined and implemented new product offerings based upon market research. Assessed competition for similar offerings; determined best DIGEX positioning. Key, active participant in activities leading up to a successful public offering. Broad-based Internet marketing and technology expert whose experience includes brand development, product marketing, product management, manufacturing and operations, consulting, and development. Product and services expertise includes Internet and Online services, Internet/Intranet application development and deployment, end-user applications, systems analysis & design, client/server and object-oriented development and deployment. Specialties: Business Process Design & Operations, Internet Development, Technology & Professional Services, Product Management, Interactive Consulting.
Helen Rittersporn
Helen Rittersporn, PMP, Project Manager on assignment at a Fortune 500 company. She holds PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) ® certification credential through the Project Management Institute (PMI). She blogs daily at her website, AnchoredScraps.com, encouraging old-style correspondence letter writing. Helen uses her project management skills to juggle blogging daily while working full-time. Join Helen as we have a look back at the Top 9 Lessons from daily blogging for over 900 days & still counting. This is a continuation from last year’s WordCamp Wilmington 2016 where Helen presented “Lessons from daily blogging for over 600 days & still counting”. Whether you are new or a returning WordCamp Wilmington alumni this presentation will help inspire you to increase your blogging frequency and with confidence! Helen’s Milestone 1000th daily blog post will be on November 21, 2017, since launching AnchoredScraps on February 26, 2015!
Jonathan Fashbaugh
Jonathan Fashbaugh has a degree in digital media from Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida and has been working in the digital marketing space since 2000. He has spent the past 13 years working with doctors and lawyers on their internet marketing campaigns, doing everything from designing and coding their websites to optimizing them for search. In 2010, he left his full time job as a senior internet marketing consultant to start his own company, essentially freelancing, again targeting doctors and lawyers. His first client was a dentist, which lead to more dentists and in 2012, he rebranded his company to officially operate exclusively in the dental industry as Pro Impressions Marketing Group. Since then it has continued to grow and thrive. He loves to write and enjoys strategizing with his clients to help them meet their goals. He feels that his greatest strength is in communication: understanding the clients needs as well, if not better than their own sometimes and then helping to guide their campaigns with their best interests in mind. His experience in the different facets of marketing online enable him to help his clients make informed decisions. Jonathan has been married for 16 years to his wife Amanda, and has four boys ranging in age from 4 to 11. They live in Loveland, Colorado.
Evan Mullins
Evan Mullins uses WordPress daily at the office as well as for his own projects. He is currently Lead Web Developer at Brown Bag Marketing, an integrated marketing agency in Atlanta. He blogs at circlecube.com and has even been known to dream in WordPress. With a background in digital media art, he now embraces the dark side and has found a strong creative outlet programming websites. Evan loves the problem solving aspect of web development and shines at harnessing WordPress as a true CMS & making interactive designs interactive. He strives to make the web a prettier, more pleasant and all-around better place for you & your grandma. Outside of work, Evan is a dedicated husband, father of four and soccer coach who loves rock music, audiobooks, chocolate and good pizza.
Laura Hartwig
I’ve been a WordPress Developer since 2010 and have spoken at two WordCamps and organized WordCamp CT in 2014. I’ve also run 2 different WP meetups and offer online and in-person WordPress training. I learned a lot from the WordPress community and am always trying to pay it forward.
Tiffany Kuchta
Tiffany is the co-founder and lead developer at Quandarymat. She does some work in each part of the stack, but doesn’t like the term full stack developer, preferring just “developer” instead. (Ask her why; she loves talking about this.) She has been building web things since 1999 and WordPress since 2.0.1. Tiffany is passionate about erasing the gap between design and development, inclusion in tech, solving problems with code, building things out of other things, empathy always, and sassy t-shirts usually.
Matthew Woodard
I am a freelance web designer and developer for over 10 years. I design, code and market websites for small businesses, helping them generate revenue online. I leverage UI/UX principles to increase conversions.
Kevin Dees
Hi, I’m Kevin Dees. For over a decade I have helped businesses win online and helped thousands of professionals master the web industry. I have done this through podcasting for SitePoint, speaking for WordCamp, creating the WordPress framework TypeRocket, and executing digital strategies as CEO of Robojuice. I have worked on sites for brands from the Fortune 500 to start-ups to non-profits. Brands like Michelin® Tires, Verizon Wireless, Denny’s, White Horse Inn, MoonClerk, and RIDGID.
Nathan Ingram
Nathan is the Host at iThemes Training where he teaches WordPress and freelance business development topics via live webinar.
He is also the creator of >ADVANCE Coaching. He works with WordPress web developers individually and in groups to help them become more successful in their freelance businesses.
Nathan has been a freelance web developer since 1995, and is based in Birmingham, Alabama where he is the lead organizer of WordCamp Birmingham and co-organizer of the Birmingham WordPress Meetup.
You can learn more about Nathan at https://nathaningram.com
Seth Shoultes
I’ve been using WordPress for over ten years and running a business around it for eight years. Before that, I worked various construction jobs, then ran a small website development business and dabbled in all kinds of CMS’s, then moved on to work as a front-end developer in a marketing position at an international medical coding and billing education company. While I worked there, I developed their WordPress websites and built various in-house plugins, at the same time I stayed up every night after work developing the early versions of Event Espresso for my wife’s scrapbooking business. Due to the material costs and flaky customers, she wasn’t willing to shell out fees to Eventbrite. Since there weren’t any good plugins (IMO) at the time, I found an abandoned plugin that handled registrations, then added PayPal. Since I never heard back from the original developer, I ended up releasing and marketing my plugin under a different name. After a while, it got to where I was supporting it so much that I had to quit my full-time job to work on developing the plugin, supporting customers, and growing the business around the plugin. Somewhere along the way, I picked up my co-founder, Garth Koyle, we entered the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge in 2011 and won the grand prize of $40,000 for our business idea. At the time, we had just released the first version of our mobile apps, which allowed onsite ticket scanning and attendance tracking. Then in 2015, we launched our software as a service company, called Event Smart, which is powered by WordPress and Event Espresso.
Sara Whitford
Sara Whitford has over 20 years of experience in website development. She cut her teeth developing sites in raw HTML during her days as a student at North Carolina State University in the mid-’90s. Since that time, she has worked with just about every site-building technology available. Through her company, Lookout Publishing (lookoutpublishing.com), Sara has been developing WordPress sites since 2010 for clients ranging from authors to churches to non-profits to small businesses to substantial corporations. She gets particular satisfaction from helping her clients create and refine custom strategies for harnessing the power of their websites and the endless WordPress tools that can be deployed to branch out and grow their businesses. In addition to her web work, Sara is an Amazon best-selling author in the YA Historical Fiction genre. She has established a specialty niche in helping fellow authors and documentary film makers in platform building using WordPress.
Jared McMullin
I am a host and comedian out of Myrtle Beach South Carolina. When I am not hosting my Late Night Webshow, I am building websites for various clients around the world. My primary platform is WordPress and I have over 20 sites built in my portfolio.
Corey Freeman
Corey Freeman has been building websites and teaching WordPress since 2004. She has an obsession with breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-understand concepts that start at “the absolute beginning.” Corey is also a stand-up comedian, writer, musician, and owner of the world’s most adorable and ridiculous dog. She is 25, finally.
Adam Sewell
Adam Sewell is a father, husband, and entrepreneur. Most of his time is spent with his IT support company, MyGeek Technologies. Though he is also known to develop WordPress sites and plugins as well as providing high performance hosting specific to WordPress. The most recent WordPress plugin is Simple Desk, a ticketing system aimed at service based businesses. You can find it on GitHub.
Carrie Cousins
By day, I am the director of communications for the Roanoke Regional Partnership where I do design work, writing and am the webmaster for three websites. I am also a freelance writer, designer and create and manage WordPress websites for a number of clients. I am a regular contributor on Webdesigner Depot, Design Shack, Weebly and other design and development blogs.
Andrew Gray
A skilled programmer, technologist, and serial entrepreneur, Andrew Gray has been building web applications and dynamic websites for two decades. He started his career in the late 90s, where he created and sold a national online network of rental real estate listing websites that served over 100 rental markets across the US.
Since then, Andrew has become an expert at managing technical teams and overseeing continuous software development. He has worked on a wide range of web based projects (as both project manager and programer) for major national clients, such as Duke Energy Retail, First Bank SBA, and Kampgrounds of America (KOA). Currently, Andrew is working on a payment processor for paying for art, Pay For Art.com
Andrew is passionate about data-driven marketing, which led him to co-found Tayloe/Gray in 2009 with long-term business associate and friend, Nathan Tayloe. Together, the two have built Wilmington’s #1 Advertising and PR Firm according to the Wilmington Business Journal’s 2016 Book on Business and employ a talented staff of web developers, designers, programmers, strategists, and tech experts. As Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Partner at Tayloe/Gray, Andrew ensures that the technology utilized on every project is modern and scalable.
Today, Andrew’s focuses his creative energy and innovative ideas on content management systems, email deliverability, and software development. He enjoys staying current on emerging technology and trends and has contributed to the Greater Wilmington Business Journal for over eight years.
Beyond the business, Andrew is an active board member of WHQR public radio station and a passionate educator, regularly hosting seminars and teaching classes on smart social media, blogging, and eCommerce strategies at Cape Fear Community College.
Andrew lives in Wilmington, NC with his wife, Stewart Poisson, an attorney and Board Certified Expert in Workers Compensation law, and his son, Alexander and daughter, Cutlar.
William Jackson
William Jackson 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. William’s career involves past teaching with NASA as an Internet and Technology instructor, technology consultant with the Florida Department of Education and current Professor with Edward Waters College teaching Educational Technology, Social Media and STEM. He has been involved in the field of education over 25 years in elementary and higher education. William has been involved in blogging as a national and international writer. Writing in media in the United States, Europe and on the African continent. Using the #myquesttoteach as a foundation to share content that is diverse in the way information can be applied and integrated in many areas.
Ian Oeschger
I am the lead for the IBM developerWorks devcenters, which are microsites our team builds for IBM development teams: ibm.com/developerworks/connect. We’ve done a lot of integration, devops, plugins, web development to make WP work in our enterprise–as a developer engagement platform.
Ashley Cribb
I have done a few WordPress sites for Entrepreneurs and one myself. I go from concept to having a finished project and help along the journey.
Mickey Trivett
About Mickey
Mickey is the owner of WebCoUSA.com which is an Award Winning Marketing and Web Design Agency located in Johnson City, TN. He started his company almost 13 years ago and sold his very first website at a local Flea Market. He has grown his business to serve more than 200 clients in 41 states.
In the time since, he has owned and co-founded many different businesses from an Advertising Agency, Mobile App Company and even an Ice Cream Truck. He considers himself a Serial Entrepreneur and loves all things business related and is always looking for the next adventure.
He enjoys speaking and helping others with their businesses. He lives in the oldest town in Tennessee, which is Jonesborough with his wife of whom he met on America Online in the Dial Up days and has two teenage sons and six rescued cats!
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 a veteran-focused website, Creative Vets, and also designs T-Shirts (Peak of Things). Outside of that he enjoys spending time with his fiancé, 5 kids and 2 dogs.
Vasyl Martyniuk
I’m passionate software architect and entrepreneur. I love to spend time to work on disruptive ideas which lead me to found creative technology company VasylTech with the main focus on custom on the enterprise level solutions. I’m also sole-inventor, developer and co-founder of the CodePinch – internationally patent-pending technology that automates website error fixing process.
Lauren Jeffcoat
Lauren has been building WordPress websites for almost a decade and is currently part of the OnTheGoSystems WPML Customer Support team. She enjoys creating WordPress websites and has worn many hats in the world of web development including Project Manager, Customer Service Representative, Account Strategist, and Web Designer. Originally from New England, she now lives in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. Lauren enjoys sharing her knowledge along with tips and tricks that she has learned either through furthering her education or personal experience. Lauren is the organizer of WordPress Meetup Myrtle Beach, a co-organizer of WordCamp Wilmington, a WordCamp Speaker and a lover of all things WordPress.
Ben Meredith
Ben is the developer of the most popular WordPress plugin for Click To Tweet boxes, the Senior Support Technician at GiveWP, a husband, a dad, and a blues music connoisseur and mild practitioner.
When not coding or solving code puzzles to support users, you’ll find him with a guitar in hand or perhaps playing a round of disc golf. He’d lobby for it being called just “golf” and making that other game “ball golf” or perhaps “expensive ball golf.”