About us

We make a better web with finely crafted websites and tools for content creators

We make the internet better with consultative creative and engineering services, innovative tools, and dependable products that take the pain out of content creation and management, in service of digital experiences that advance business and marketing objectives. We’re a group of people built to solve problems, made to create, wired to delight.

A customer-centric service model that covers every base, unrivaled leadership and investment in open platforms and tools for digital makers and content creators, and a forward-looking remote work culture make for a refreshing agency experience.

With ~200 experts in digital strategy and management, software engineering, user experience and interactive design, cloud infrastructure, and audience and revenue optimization, we’re big enough to conquer any challenge, and small enough to care. Cross-discipline teams of 6-8 specialists organize around qualified project and product managers, putting customer delivery front and center. Whether your ads are down, your visitor bounce rate is up, or your database server is sideways, we’re a partner who never says, “We don’t know how to help,” and can always say, “The President would be happy to speak with you.”

Hire us

Strategy Services

Strategy

Should I build an app or a responsive website? Am I maximizing my ad revenue? Why don’t my visitors click “sign up”? How many 10uppers does it take to screw in a website? We don’t just build: we figure out the plan.

Design Services

Design

Inspiring design brings the functional and the beautiful; a delightful blend of art and engineering. We focus on the audience whimsy and relationship between brand and consumer, delivering design that works.

Engineering Services

Engineering

Please. Look under the hood. Our team of sought after international speakers provides expert code review for enterprise platforms like WordPress.com VIP. Because the best website you have is the one that’s up.

Building Without Boundaries

Bulding without boundaries

Fig 1. 10up is everywhere, seriously.

The best talent isn’t found in a single zip code, and an international clientele requires a global perspective. From New York City, to the wilds of Idaho, to a dozen countries across Europe, our model empowers us to bring in the best strategists, designers, and engineers, wherever they may live. Veterans of commercial agencies, universities, start ups, nonprofits, and international technology brands, our team has an uncommon breadth.

Influencing communities around the world, our team leads meetups, speaks at local events, and visits clients wherever they may be.

Independence from traditional “brick and mortar” offices, freedom from commutes, and flexible schedules across nearly a dozen time zones means our team works when and where they’re most inspired, available when our clients need them.

Our Team

  • × Jake Goldman

    Jake Goldman

    President & Founder

    Jake has been building websites since the 1990s, and has built award winning web-based solutions for Fortune 100 companies, the U.S. Navy, major universities, and high profile non-profits. His analyses have been quoted on high profile websites like c|net and the Winsupersite.

    Jake started working with WordPress in 2006 while managing the interactive division of a 100-man contractor. In 2009, while employed as Technology Director at a Providence-based agency, he refocused his professional attention on the platform, releasing free plug-ins, diverting new projects to the platform, and engaging the community. Jake’s leadership helped transform that agency from a 3-man team serving a niche CMS to an open source software agency with 10 employees.

    In February 2011, Jake founded 10up with a vision of a distributed, elite team that could build beautiful, easy to manage websites on the web’s best platform – WordPress. He bootstrapped the company into the team you see today.

    Between leading the charge at 10up, Jake has been a writer and expert reviewer for Smashing Magazine and taught WordPress development at Boston University. Jake has spoken at conferences and events around the country, including CMS Expo, Prestige, Pressnomics, and WordCamps in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Phoenix, Philadelphia. He helped organize the first WordCamp Boston in 2010, founded the WordPress Providence Meetup in Rhode Island, and restarted the WordPress Meetup in Sacramento.

    Jake is a core contributor to WordPress and maintains some of the highest rated plug-ins on the official repository. Cumulatively, they have been downloaded over 1,250,000 times.

  • × John Eckman

    John Eckman

    Chief Executive Officer

    John‘s been working in professional services agencies for over 20 years. Before becoming the CEO of 10up in 2014, he was Managing Director at ISITE Design. Prior to that he was a Senior Director at Optaros, Director of Application Development at PixelMEDIA, and a Director / Principal Consultant at Molecular.

    He has served clients from early-stage startups to the Fortune 50, as well as higher education and the non-profit sector. He’s been focused on open source since 2006, is one of the founding organizers of WordCamp Boston, and has given talks at many WordCamps and DrupalCamps, as well as numerous content management and digital strategy conferences.

    He received a BA from Boston University, an MA & PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, and an MIS from Northeastern University.

  • × Ajaka Roth

    Ajaka Roth

    Vice President of People and Culture

    Ajaka joins 10up with two decades of experience in the education sector, Ajaka brings a unique perspective and diverse set of experiences to her work as a People and Culture leader. Ajaka is a former educator, leadership coach, and skilled learning and development specialist. Most recently, her work focused on coaching senior education sector executives across the United States in people development, change management, and building inclusive talent pipelines.

    Prior to assuming her coaching role, she helped found 3 start-up charter schools and served as a consultant for the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. She is also an experienced facilitator having led professional development on topics as diverse as leading teams, the power of our words, and the intersectionality of motherhood and career.

    She holds a bachelors in Communication from the University of Maryland, a Masters in Special Education from Long Island University, and a SHRM-SCP certification. She is also credentialed in Instructional Design through the Association for Talent Development.

    Ajaka lives in New Jersey with her husband, daughter, and elderly rescue pup. Outside of work you can find her traveling, trying new restaurants, working on her debut children’s book (an exploration of the concept of identity), and finding time for herself on her yoga mat and bike.

  • × Brad Miller

    Brad Miller

    Vice President, New Client Strategy

    Brad Miller comes to 10up as Co Founder & Executive Director of Lift UX, with over 10 years of experience in strategy, user experience design, business development, project management, creative direction, quality assurance and business management.

    Before starting Lift UX, Brad worked at a digital web agency in St. Louis, MO which was known to be one of the leading Sitecore partners in North America. Having a strong passion for open source software and WordPress, Brad had a desire to start an agency that focused primarily on WordPress. He saw how heavy and expensive Sitecore and other content management platforms were and felt that WordPress was a great alternative for enterprise clients. In 2009 Brad did just that.

    Leaving his previous agency in 2010, Brad spent the last 7 years leading a team of designers and developers that have created Emmy nominated and award winning projects. He has built relationships and provided his expertise to some wonderful clients over the years including AMC Networks, 120 Sports, Frito-Lay, Microsoft, Sara Lee, Allergan, HID Global, Chewy.com, GoDaddy, Tenaris, Disney and many others.

    Being from the Midwest he’s a fan of St. Louis Blues hockey and Cardinals baseball. Besides being a St. Louis sports fan Brad is also a musician. Before getting heavily into the user experience and web design industry, he was a singer songwriter and recorded two albums in St. Louis, MO and Franklin, TN. During his time in the studio he had grown to love design and web development. He decided to focus his time learning about designing and building websites as a career, the rest was history.

    Brad lives in Tampa, FL with his Wife, three boys and his two dogs. Brad is a Christian, loves to cook, loves new technology and home automation.

  • × Chuck Bartlett

    Chuck Bartlett

    Chief Financial Officer

    Chuck joins 10up as Chief Financial Officer with thirty years of experience running the finance and accounting operations for professional services companies. His background is in joining growth-oriented companies to develop their financial operations as a strategic partner and resource for the organization to achieve their goals. He particularly enjoys working with entrepreneurial, innovative, and creative organizations. Most recently, he was CFO for HW Staffing Solutions, where his accomplishments included raising the company’s first private equity investment and leading multiple acquisitions. Chuck has also served as CFO for Fuld and Company, a competitive intelligence consulting firm, and Stax Inc, a management consulting firm, and as Controller for FutureBrand, a global branding agency.

    Prior to his career in professional services, Chuck founded and ran an independent record label focused on developing local bands in the Boston area. He started his career at the Bank of Boston, where he worked on acquisition financing for radio and television stations. He received his MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and his BA from Amherst College.

    Chuck lives in Medford MA, with his wife Kristen and their bagle hound Memphis. He enjoys finding the best sandwich in town, singing with his acapella group The Sly Voxes, following Arsenal soccer and Duke basketball, and listening to his vinyl record collection.

  • × Gabe Karp

    Gabe Karp

    Director, Head of Europe

    Gabe joins the 10up team from London where he brings more than 10 years of experience working with NGOs, major political campaigns and large corporate clients to design and develop digital platforms. He works closely with his clients to craft strategies and solutions, helping organizations achieve their goals by leveraging thoughtful, impactful design and the right technology solutions.


    Prior to joining 10up, Gabe was a partner at Siberia, an experience design studio. He was responsible for launching their European presence, opening offices and building teams in both London and Berlin. Gabe worked with major corporate clients at Siberia, helping to re-invent their digital products and platforms. Before joining Siberia, he worked at Blue State Digital for six years where he started as a front-end developer. He later ran the global project management team and was responsible for the delivery of websites and custom development projects across BSD’s five offices.

    
He’s worked with the likes of AOL, American Express, the Human Rights Campaign and Malaria No More. Additionally while at BSD he worked on high-pressure political campaigns in Mexico, Brazil and India.


    In his free time, Gabe loves to spend time with his family, cooking big meals for friends, going on long runs and is constantly in pursuit of the perfect cup of coffee. He has a BA in Political Science from University of Rochester, and a year of film studies at the Chapman Film School.

  • × Lily Bonney

    Lily Bonney

    Vice President of Client Delivery, EMEA

    Lily is an Oxbridge graduate and qualified teacher who, after traveling 3,000 miles from the UK to Canada for a new adventure, got her first job in interactive production after impressing a director with her spelling and grammar (true story).

    She’s since worked as a digital project manager for over five years, at some of Toronto’s best advertising, marketing, and publishing companies. Her clients have all been top-tier – Audi, Honda, KFC, Pizza Hut, Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, Tim Hortons – and her projects hugely varied: from custom website and app builds, to editorially-driven native content, to getting the price of that chicken burger changed as quickly as possible.

    Having battled with a lot of clunky, proprietary CMS software, Lily is a full-blown member of the WordPress choir; the creative possibilities afforded to clients through its open-source structure are virtually limitless, and in the age of virtual storytelling, it’s the ideal platform to help brands make sure they remain at the forefront of the narrative.

    Lily relocated back to the UK a few years ago, and when she’s not working, you’ll probably find her doing really badly at her local pub quiz, bowling a lot of gutter balls, or naming everything her small person points to on their country walks.

  • × Martha Schmidt

    Martha Schmidt

    Vice President, Account Strategy

    Coming from a background in digital marketing in both agency and corporate settings, Martha brought to 10up experience working directly in production roles, leading interactive B2B and B2C projects (working with CMS platforms, including WordPress) from a project and account management standpoint. From small mom-and-pop shops to Fortune 5 companies, she successfully managed projects from conceptualization to execution to sustainability alongside a full stack team.

    After joining the team in 2015, Martha rose from her role as a Web Strategist to earn multiple promotions into her current role as the Vice President of Account Strategy. Outside of leading the evolution of the discipline at an executive level, Martha manages a team of Directors and day-to-day Strategists — driving a consultative, solution-based culture, grounded in well understood short- and long-term business goals of 10up’s client partners.

    Martha is a proud working mom, and enjoys spending time with her two young boys and husband at their home in Appleton, WI. For fun, and to decompress from the day-to-day grind, Martha likes to cook, watch baseball, visit different MLB ballparks (thanks to her dad for instilling this love in her – she has been to 28 stadiums currently in use, and five that have been knocked down), and catch up with family and friends over a glass of Pinot Noir.

  • × Mike Jordan

    Mike Jordan

    Vice President, Engineering

    Mike is an international traveller who fell in love with WordPress in 2010. Hailing originally from South Carolina, USA- Mike has lived on three continents ( North America, Asia & Europe ) and visited many exotic locations.

    Along the way he nabbed a BS in Computer Information Systems, led student-organized Tsunami relief efforts in 2005, served as applications & databases manager at an international security company, started a travel agency, and happened to bump into Paul Clark in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This chance encounter introduced Mike to the wonderful world of WordPress and provided the awesome opportunity to co-build the WordPress tools that are still being used to save lives in Burma today.

    Since 2010, Mike worked alongside Paul Clark & Taylor Aldridge at their company, Brainstorm Media, which firmly believed that democratized, open publishing platforms like WordPress can make the web, and the world, a better place. During this time, Mike built and maintained powerful systems with clean interfaces for a number of clients, representing a wide range of industries and non-profit organizations.

    In January 2014, Brainstorm Media joined forces with 10up and Mike was able to add his skills and experience to the incredible pool of talent that resulted from this acquisition. Mike has a passion for travel, community and helping those in need, and has found that WordPress serves as an excellent platform for bringing all of these passions together.

  • × Phil Crumm

    Phil Crumm

    Senior Vice President, Marketing & Growth

    Phil began his dive into web technology at a tender, young age through his contributions to phpBB, the popular forum package. He soon began to utilize his skills to help others through consulting, and quickly stumbled upon an exciting piece of software called “WordPress”. It was love at first sight for Phil, and things haven’t been the same since.

    After several years of WordPress consulting, Phil joined Automattic as a VIP Engineer, where he helped make sure that WordPress-powered sites ran quickly and securely. He then moved on to a Los Angeles-based startup, Pogoseat, where he helped architect a future-oriented platform to allow the company to grow. Thirsting to delve back into the WordPress world, Phil and 10up linked up–and the rest is history.

    Phil uses his unique blend of software engineering skills and his love of helping people to wrangle projects as a Senior Web Strategist. In his free time, he’s an avid private pilot and scratch golfer.

  • × Sarah Williams

    Sarah Williams

    Senior Vice President, Client Delivery

    Sarah joined 10up in 2013 as the company’s first full time Project Manager. In the years since she has held nearly every role within the client delivery discipline, focusing on building high performing cross discipline teams that ultimately deliver outstanding client experiences.

    Prior to joining 10up, Sarah worked in strategic communications in government, non-profit, and corporate settings, focused on solving organizational challenges through creating a shared understanding of business goals and objectives, and establishing a fun and engaging company culture.

    Sarah earned a undergraduate degree in Communication Technology from Cornell University and holds a Masters in Communication from North Carolina State University.

    Sarah currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her husband, two children, and their Saint Bernard Elwood. In her free time she coaches high school and youth basketball, enjoys live music (Memphis has a great music scene), and hot yoga (as much as anyone can truly “enjoy” exercising in a room that’s 95+ degrees).

  • × Taylor Lovett

    Taylor Lovett

    Senior Vice President, Engineering

    Taylor first started playing around with HTML at age 10; his curiosity for websites and web applications grew from there. He has a passion for turning a blank canvas into something incredible. Solving the constantly changing puzzle of meeting client needs propels Taylor to learn about different and more effective web technologies and strategies.

    Taylor believes learning is an extremely important part of what keeps web development fresh and fun. When WordPress came onto the scene, he jumped in head first developing plugins and themes for personal and client websites. Taylor’s most popular plugin is Custom Contact Forms; a plugin for creating contact forms that is jam packed with features. It has been downloaded over 1M times.

    Taylor was one of 10up’s first employees, joining during its first year, and would go onto become one of 10up’s first Senior Engineers and Technical Leads. In summer 2014, following continued outstanding team leadership and production outcomes supporting clients like the New York Observer and Variety, Taylor was promoted from within to Director of Engineering.

    Other than developing web applications, Taylor is a lover of music. He enjoys listening to blues and jazz music as well as playing acoustic fingerstyle guitar.

  • × Thorsten Ott

    Thorsten Ott

    Vice President of Platforms & Systems

    Thorsten is 10up’s first European employee, living near Cologne, Germany with his wife, son and a crazy Beagle. Thorsten worked in software development for over a decade before joining 10up; he led the web development department for a large dedicated hosting company and Germany, and even ran his own web agency in Bulgaria.

    From 2008 to 2012, Thorsten was one of the original engineers supporting the Automattic WordPress.com VIP team. He wrote and contributed to essential WordPress developer tools and plugins including Exploit Scanner, Debug Bar Extender, WordPress-CLI-Exporter, and WordPress-CLI-Importer. He is also a core contributor.

    From 2012 to 2013, Thorsten did a quick detour into the Cloud Computing, OpenStack and the Python world, working at a start-up called PistonCloud, though he never managed to keep his hands off of WordPress.

    When he’s not engineering websites or spending quality time with his family, he’s usually cooking, tinkering with electronics, and developing Arduino style projects.

  • × Adam Edgerton

    Adam Edgerton

    Program Director & Security Officer

    Adam grew up with a multitude of tech hobbies, from tinkering with basic HTML sites in the 1990s to custom-building computers for friends in the early 2000s. After graduating from the University of Oregon, he put his business degree and passion for the web to work, and has built much of his career thus far with digital agencies. He’s been able to wear the majority of the “hats” within an agency environment in the past 8 years and has led countless projects using primarily open-source technology platforms for Fortune 500 clients, major entertainment brands, and large online retailers.

    Adam’s natural strengths lend themselves to project management and communication facilitation, and as his career has progressed, he’s found continued fulfillment in mentoring and leading client delivery teams. Beyond his day-to-day work, he founded and leads PDX Digital PM as another outlet for mentoring and building community around digital project management. He also enjoys blogging when time allows and has presented on project management topics at several national technology-focused conferences.

    An Oregonian by day but an Alaskan at heart, Adam enjoys the outdoors as much as possible with his wife Heather. He tends to not sit still much, and puts his perpetual motion to good use cycling, running, climbing, hiking, skiing, and mountaineering, all in the name of a good adventure.

  • × Al Waranius

    Al Waranius

    Staffing Director, Americas

    Alex holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance and Marketing from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. His experience includes customer service, sales management, and office administration. Born and raised in Wisconsin, he attributes his interest in computers and technology to his father who works as an electrical engineer.

    Alex began his career by applying his skills in the wireless industry. He led multiple sales teams to success with his keen focus on metrics and modeling. Alex most recently melded his interest in fiscal management and technology by designing and implementing a purchasing and inventory system that dramatically reduced costs and improved tracking. Alex is now using his experience to find operational efficiencies and work with a diverse team as the Resource Coordinator for 10up!

    When he is not working, you’ll most likely find Alex riding his bike, playing disc golf with friends, sampling the best cheese, brats, and brews that old Milwaukee has to offer, and cheering on the world famous Green Bay Packers.

  • × Ashley Block

    Ashley Block

    Director of Account Strategy

    Ashley joins us bringing with her over 12 years of account management experience both on the agency and production side of the business. Based out of the New York City area, Ashley has a proven track record of delivering solutions and forging meaningful relationships with her clients and colleagues.

    Ashley began her career at a non-traditional marketing company where she was responsible for managing and producing nationwide promotions and events. It was in this role where she learned how to manage numerous projects and clients simultaneously while meeting tight deadlines in a fast-paced work environment.

    After 3 years, Ashley wanted to add agency experience to her area of expertise and landed a job at a B2B public relations and advertising agency. Ashley was an Account Supervisor responsible for managing over a dozen clients’ print and online advertising needs, most notably Panasonic Security.

    Prior to joining 10up, Ashley worked for a global marketing agency where she spent the previous 6 years. Initially hired as the Director of Operations, Ashley transitioned back on to the client side of the business as Director of Account Management. Ashley managed a wide variety of accounts including Shell Oil Company, AT&T, Reckitt Benckiser and Hertz to deliver award-winning consumer promotions. Clients feel at ease working with Ashley because of her ability to understand their business needs and deliver results.

    Ashley was drawn to 10up because of its unique distributed working model that allows her to skip the long and unreliable commute to Manhattan and spend more time with her children while working with clients to achieve their business goals.

    Outside of work, Ashley loves spending time with her family and friends. Previously a Division I college athlete, Ashley enjoys staying fit whether it be running or group fitness classes. She lives with her husband and two children in Northern New Jersey.

  • × Brent van Rensburg

    Brent van Rensburg

    Vice President of Engineering, EMEA

    Brent has been building top notch web solutions for over seven years. After graduating from college, he cut his teeth as a PHP developer for a bespoke university e-learning framework; an experience that opened his mind to the endless possibilities that diligence and a simple computer can achieve. His next move would be to Habari Media, one of South Africa’s leading digital media houses, where in just one year he worked his way up to lead developer and team manager.

    In 2010, feeling the need to expand his skill set and dive into more self-satisfying projects, Brent founded his own company, Kaira. It was around this time that he also discovered WordPress; since then, he has not looked back. Leveraging WordPress as a CMS, he developed successful websites and campaigns for top advertising agencies across Africa, worked on amazing projects like a web application and CRM for a major charity supplying gifts to over 100,000 underprivileged children. Brent has engineered custom integrations with social media platforms, built intranet networks, and developed successful WooCommerce extensions.

    When Brent isn’t writing badass code, you can find him hiking up Cape Town’s beautiful Table Mountain, playing guitar, or cooking a delicious vegan meal.

  • × Brian Bourn

    Brian Bourn

    Director of New Client Strategy

    After eight years as an engineer, a strategist, and an agency owner, Brian joined 10up as Associate Director, New Client Strategy to put his diverse background and technical expertise to work by cultivating relationships with new clients and partners, and facilitating client strategy.

    As a 10up web strategist, Brian brings his ability to quickly understand complex concepts, identify and solve problems, and turn raw ideas into logical strategies. He offers strong strategic planning and project management competencies with a focus on achieving deadlines and maintaining the highest quality output for clients.

    Since early 2013 Brian has co-organized the monthly Sacramento WordPress Meetup and beginning in 2015, has also co-organized WordCamp Sacramento, an annual three-day WordPress event with nearly 500 attendees.

    When not working, Brian spends his time playing guitar, collecting vintage music equipment, and going on outdoor adventures and road trips with his family, who are currently on a quest to see all 61 US National Parks.

  • × Christian Chung

    Christian Chung

    Director of Engineering

    Christian has been active in the web industry for over 10 years, filling diverse roles encompassing everything from project management to backend programming. He got his start at an agency building small marketing websites for small to medium sized businesses using WordPress. He quickly set himself apart and was given the opportunity to come on as an engineering consultant for several large companies in the healthcare and travel industries using WordPress.

    After a few years of consulting, Christian joined a prestigious WordPress centric agency, Lift UX, as a backend developer. Here he was able to concentrate fully on providing robust engineering solutions to major enterprise media companies. As the backend engineer of this user experience design company, Christian embraced newer Javascript technologies like React and Angular to push WordPress into new and uncharted territory. After 2 years with Lift UX, he joined the 10up team through an acquisition.

    When Christian isn’t writing code, he is out hiking, kayaking, fishing, and enjoying the beach lifestyle in sunny Clearwater, Florida with his fiancée and their dog.

  • × Dana Richmond

    Dana Richmond

    Director of Managed Services Operations

    Dana began managing web projects in 2005. She’s collaborated with teams using a variety of open and proprietary platforms to build elegant site implementations for major brands like Ticketmaster, Nestle, and Dell.

    While not a developer, Dana’s comprehension of advanced engineering concepts is impressive. She artfully bridges the gap between client and engineer when defining project scope, approach, and timeline. Well versed in several traditional project management philosophies, Dana embraces the foundations of the Scrum methodology and is a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner.

    When away from the keyboard, Dana enjoys as much time as she can with her daughter (when she’s home from FSU), shopping, and relaxing at the beach.

  • × David Green

    David Green

    Director of Publisher Revenue

    David’s interest in building code developed the moment he discovered the viewable source code of web pages back in 1998. However, after starting college, he soon realized that what he wanted to learn, wasn’t being taught in the classroom. So David left school behind, and joined a moving company where he traveled the U.S., gained life experience and continued his self-study of web development. Eventually he settled down and started a computer repair company, while also serving as a youth pastor along with his wife.

    David spent more than a decade building websites, online games, and robots, when eventually the plummeting costs of PCs led him to cease repairing computers and start offering freelance services online. He started out creating solutions for clients, but soon began focusing exclusively on WordPress as his affinity for the platform grew.

    After years of working solo, David eventually decided to join an agency so that he could work with a team and further refine his skills. It didn’t take long for him to decide on 10up.

    David’s biggest personal endeavor with WordPress has been creating a plugin to build role-playing games. Now he has his eye on contributing to WordPress core.

    When David isn’t at the computer, he’s usually either reading about theology, watching cartoons with his two daughters, or pestering his wife with the latest random fact he learned — probably about the late Fred Rogers.

  • × Dustin Rue

    Dustin Rue

    Director of Systems Engineering

    Dustin’s passion for all things computing began before the advent of the Internet—back when the purpose of a computer was to print Print Shop banners on a dot matrix printer or play Wolfenstein and Oregon Trail. His first experience with the Internet was CompuServe and America Online.

    It wasn’t until he graduated from high school that he received a computer to call his own. In 1998, while studying at the birthplace of Slackware Linux, Dustin installed Linux for the first time. After getting a job at the Fargo-Moorhead Family YMCA, Dustin was able to use Linux for web, email, and VPN services. Later, he used the highly reliable web platform to serve millions of pages per month at Forum Communications Company. Dustin is excited to bring his Linux knowledge to the table at 10up.

    When Dustin is away from the computer, he can be found with his family, tinkering with his Raspberry Pi and Arduino, or playing video games.

  • × Fabian Kaegy

    Fabian Kaegy

    Director of Editorial Engineering

    Fabian is a life long learner, who started his technical journey in school. He was in charge of the marketing, lights and sound for all events happening at his school. While developing sites for events he found his passion for web development, which he later turned into his own agency.

    Being passionate about all things creative he combined the two interests design and development, and began workin on custom WordPress themes and plugins. After graduating (and studying abroad in the United States), he jumped all in at his company. He spent five years developing custom WordPress sites for clients and helping them through all forms of media to share their message with the world. Being in charge of a small team and working closely with clients, he refined his skillset and grew as a developer.

    When the WordPress team started development on Gutenberg, the new editor for WordPress, Fabian became more active in the WordPress community and began contributing to Gutenberg, TwentyNineteen, TwentyTwenty and other projects.

    Away from the computer he spends most of his time outdoor walking with his dog Finn, taking pictures of nature or making movies. Since 2019 he’s also an elected member of his local town council.

  • × Ivan Lopez

    Ivan Lopez

    Director of Engineering

    Ivan started building websites as a freelancer in 2006 while attending college, immediately after taking a course on HTML and CSS. After graduating, he worked with several web agencies in Central Florida. At the time, Flash was booming and he had the opportunity to build rich video experiences and several games. Since that time, Ivan has had the opportunity to work with several languages (in addition to PHP), including ASP, ActionScript 3, JavaScript and some C#.

    After working with numerous Content Management Systems – including one that he built – Ivan discovered WordPress and was instantly hooked. WordPress quickly became his CMS of choice; he even found himself building on it in his free time. Ivan thinks of WordPress as a “canvas,” a “foundation of great masterpieces”.

    Over the last seven years, Ivan had the opportunity to lead and work with small to medium sized teams to deliver time sensitive projects to high profile clients like Walmart, and Hilton Grand Vacations. His last role involved leading a team of 6 developers in support of a major retail client.

    When he’s not working on code, you can usually find Ivan cooking, traveling and spending time with his wife and daughter in sunny Orlando.

  • × Jason Clarke

    Jason Clarke

    Director, New Client Strategy

    Jason is an experienced leader and digital strategist who has enjoyed nearly two decades planning, building, and growing websites and online tools both on his own and alongside some great teams.

    Jason cut his teeth on ColdFusion, building and selling his own CMS in the early 2000’s. He also consulted and supported individuals and later brands in the heyday of blogging and online publishing, including managing a popular blog which led to a best-selling book.

    After discovering WordPress in 2006, Jason moved on from his own custom-built tools and hasn’t looked back. From there, Jason joined the agency world, working in a variety of roles from developer to project manager to operations manager before joining 10up in 2013.

    Jason lives in beautiful Orono, Maine, with his wife and two children. Together, they enjoy reading, exploring Maine’s many unique spaces and landmarks, watching movies, and traveling across the US and beyond.

  • × Jeff Paul

    Jeff Paul

    Director of Open Source Initiatives

    Jeff is a Pisces, uses two spaces after a period, pronounces GIF with a hard g, and always waves goodbye on video chats. More relevant to his professional life he has a fancy piece of paper that says he knows Computer Science, has worked in-office and from-home for companies large (General Electric, NBC) and small (XWP), was educated in the waterfall software development life cycle method only to become an agile convert when he moved to Los Angeles in 2008, and first published with WordPress in March 2007. Most importantly, he’s a dog person and would live on the equator if he could.

    Prior to joining 10up, he helped build products and lead digital media teams on behalf of BigCommerce, News Corp, Beachbody, Discover Financial Services, NBC, Universal Pictures, Universal Studios Hollywood, USA Network, and GE Capital.

    Jeff’s biggest WordPress-related accomplishment is his first non-About Page, code-based commit in core. After that, he’s most proud of synchronizing his WordPress Slack and .ORG profiles to @jeffpaul and migrating away from his off-brand, historical @jbpaul17 profile in May 2018. He was also the WordPress 4.7 release deputy (with the ever-amazing Helen Hou-Sandí as release lead), the 4.8 release co-lead, the 4.9 release deputy, continues to provide product management for WordPress core while leading the weekly devchats, and is the Tide product maintainer (alongside Derek Herman).

    Outside of 10up, Jeff is a husband to one amazing woman (hi Crystal, love you!), father to three five kids (twins born October 2018) and one Golden Retriever dog / officemate, enjoys time outside in warm weather near water, and relaxes with homebrew / craft beer or bourbon. He’s an active member of his kids’ school PTA, coaches his kids soccer / baseball / lacrosse teams, used to find time to run triathlons as well as play 8-bit games and anything on a Nintendo system, is a long-suffering fan of the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens, and is a strident believer in the Oxford comma.

  • × Joe Snell

    Joe Snell

    Director of Front End Engineering.

    Joe has many years of experience planning, crafting, testing, and maintaining websites – primarily utilizing WordPress as a CMS. Joe began working in the digital space in the early 90’s while at the University of Washington. After college, his passion for web technologies was fueled behind the scenes during careers that were not necessarily technical. Even then, Joe was consistently working in IT and digital marketing – building websites during the table-layout days and using social media before it was a term.

    In 2010, Joe followed his passion for web development and ‘sharpened his blade’ by taking courses in Digital Marketing Strategies, Internet Design, and Interactive Producer at Portland State University. As a Senior Front End Developer at the agency level, Joe led an internal charge to evolve processes, systems, tools, and web performance. He successfully implemented new concepts including responsive, mobile-first, and content-first design; Grunt; BEM; atomic design principles; iterative processes; style tiles; and web-based style guides and pattern libraries.

    When Joe isn’t deep in code crafting websites or learning new web technologies, his primary life passion is his family. He enjoys outings with his wife Michelle, including wine tasting in Oregon’s Dundee Hills. His biggest joy is often found through the pride he has in watching his daughters, Shaena and Emma, tackle the journey of life. He is a rabid fan and season ticket holder of the Portland Timbers and follows many other favorite sports teams. Joe also enjoys camping, hiking, skiing, video games, and spending time with the family dog, Ruby.

  • × Lea Alcantara

    Lea Alcantara

    Director of Visual Design

    Lea is a design leader with a solid track record of directing successful outcomes on a broad range of business-driving digital experiences. Her vision has garnered a few awards, including the Webby’s for 10up’s redesign of the California DMV and launching the California Grants Portal. She was also nominated for co-hosting the acclaimed web show CTRL+CLICK CAST on the .net Awards. Her passion to educate the industry includes writing for Adobe XD and Smashing Mag, outlining 10up Design’s in-depth workshops, among other design topics and publications. She continues to elevate the design discourse by stepping on conference stages like SXSW, HOW Design Live, and more recently, WP Campus. Beyond her love for design, Lea is a CMS aficionado and an advocate for DEI. In her spare time, find her binge-watching documentaries about food, planning trips around said food, and taking photos (of food).

  • × Marci Miranda

    Marci Miranda

    Director of Client Delivery

    Marci’s experience runs the gamut from email and social campaigns, landing pages, microsites and mobile apps to custom applications and enterprise level CMS multi-sites. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and believes strongly in keeping her teams and clients happy and engaged while delivering projects that meet real business objectives and delight users.

    Marci brings over a decade of experience across marketing, design, strategy, and web development to 10up. Her wide-ranging skill set gives her a unique understanding of the roles, processes, and fast-paced production within an agency and client-side.

    Before becoming a project manager, Marci was a designer at a boutique agency serving luxury real estate developers. She then applied her knowledge of design and strategy as a marketing manager for the Cold Stone Creamery ice cream brand. She created exciting and impactful campaigns across all channels that earned mention in Social Media Examiner, Adweek, and Forbes. It was here that her sweet spot for digital grew and she has since led numerous engagements for top brands at award-winning agencies.

    In her spare time, Marci enjoys enjoys good food, books, podcasts, and sharing stories on her WordPress blog about her husband and two precocious children that they named after superheroes (middle names, because Marci is fun, but also very sensible.)

  • × Meghan Gencev

    Meghan Gencev

    Director of Account Strategy

    With over 10+ years of digital marketing and web strategy experience, Meghan’s love for the Internet started even earlier. Way back in the 90s, she taught herself HTML to create a Hanson fan page. While the site no longer exists, this first foray into website development left an impression.

    Given her experience in both account and project management roles in both an agency and corporate setting, Meghan has a strong grasp of how best to leverage relationships to drive ideas forward. No matter how large or small an organization is, her favorite part of any project is digging in to understand the client’s business and identifying solutions that will meet business and end-user needs.

    Since joining 10up in 2018 as a Senior Strategist and now in her current role as Director of Account Strategy, Meghan has supported clients through website redesigns, ongoing product optimization, SEO, and analytics initiatives.

    In her free time, you’ll find Meghan blogging, crafting, and planning her next party, while managing the chaos of three young boys. Meghan loves entertaining family and friends in her home just outside of Minneapolis but also appreciates the solace of family movie nights with a glass of red wine.

  • × Mollie Pugh

    Mollie Pugh

    Director of New Client Strategy

    Mollie Started her career in B2B publishing over 20 years ago, back then she managed the content for a single site by the time she left in 2015 she had a portfolio of over 100 many of which she designed and built herself the first of which was in WordPress in 2004.

    Forever a geek, her true passion was in people and relationship management so the move to the agency world happened almost naturally. She has spent the past 3 years leading the Client Services team for a well known UK WordPress agency, managing accounts for some global brands including Bacardi and Skyscanner. She was also key member of the commercial team winning significant strategic new business as well as managing key partnerships , including our friends at WPEngine.

    The move to 10up was a proactive choice and she cannot wait to start to developing opportunities and help influence the future success and growth of the business. How WordPress can deliver at scale now for enterprise businesses continues to impress her and she is looking forward to learning more about the engineering solutions 10up have developed.

    When she is not working (and she’s a self defined work-a-holic) you might catch her running to clear her head or simply running after her 2 children. Her daughter (15) is at stage school with her sights firmly set on Broadway and her son (10) is training for his black belt in Karate.

  • × Nicholas Andre

    Nicholas Andre

    Director of JavaScript Engineering

    Nícholas is a tech lover who realized his passion for computer programming at a very young age, and went on to write his first program in C++ during his teenage years. At just 14, he joined a technical college, and later attended a local university, where he took computer science courses to further hone his skill and develop a solid understanding of the discipline.

    Having been delighted by the Web since 2009, Nícholas has since worked as a web developer and discovered his love of WordPress in 2010. In 2012, he worked for Ufersa, a Brazilian Federal University for three years before joining 10up.

    Nícholas has a strong knowledge in C++, HTML, CSS, PHP, and WordPress, and he’s dedicated to the continuous study of JavaScript and its frameworks. As a WordPress core contributor, Nícholas has helped develop several plugins, which can be found on the official WordPress repository. And since 2014, he’s been speaking at WordCamps throughout Brazil.

    Nícholas is a Christian who loves studying the Bible and church history. When he’s not working, he’s likely at the gym, watching movies or TV series, and spending time with his wife.

  • × Oona Vaisanen

    Oona Vaisanen

    Director of Client Delivery

    Oona Väisänen has progressed through a variety of agency roles, from media planner, to account manager, to strategist. She comes armed with an impressive portfolio of experience ranging from work with major nonprofits to large global brands – including the likes of LEGO, Save the Children and Amnesty International, to name just a few.

    Oona’s roles have always had a strong digital focus, and she thrives when working closely with clients to find original and innovative ways to solve their problems. She’s a strong advocate of user-centric digital solutions, and before joining 10up, she was strategic lead on projects in a creative agency, ensuring audience research and insight drove ideas that met (and exceeded) client goals.

    Oona is an avid reader, so outside of work, you can probably find her reading in a local cafe with a good cup of filter coffee. She also loves to learn new things and is always in the middle of a personal project or two – be it an online course, learning to knit, or taking on a new fitness challenge.

  • × Paige Maguire

    Paige Maguire

    Director of UX & Research

    Paige joins 10up with nearly 20 years of experience in strategic product design and experience at Fortune 50 companies, start-ups, and global agencies. She studied philosophy at St. John’s College and made her way through law school building WordPress sites for friends. Her passion for digital communication and user experience eventually led to her leaving academia for design full-time.

    Her career includes experiences at NPR, Dell, Razorfish, and Accenture, where she collaborated with cross-disciplinary sales teams as a thought leader, speaker, and writer. She’s given talks in Chile, Berlin, Vancouver B.C., and Amsterdam as well as in the U.S.

    When she’s not thinking about research methodologies and UX, she’s enjoying beautiful upstate New York’s hiking trails, swimming holes, and après-ski delights (just the après part) with her husband, three kids, four cats, three dogs, and parakeet.

  • × Patrick Ahl

    Patrick Ahl

    Director of Audience Strategy

    Patrick began his journey into digital marketing as a content writer for JustBats.com and JustBallGloves.com, the largest online retailer of baseball equipment. A desire to understand how his writing impacted the performance of the websites led Patrick to his discovery and eventual love of SEO.

    After sporting goods, Patrick moved to the automotive industry to do SEO for car dealership websites at industry-leading Cox Automotive. He ascended quickly from specialist, to supervisor, to helping develop and eventually leading the company’s first managed services team that encompassed website management, SEO, social media and reputation management. Patrick then moved to the OEM side of the business, where he helped launch a new website program and traveled to dealerships and regional offices to consult on digital best practices.

    Patrick earned his bachelor’s degree in Administrative Management at Missouri State University, and currently resides in his hometown of Kansas City. He’s an avid Chiefs, Royals and Jayhawks basketball fan, and enjoys traveling and seeing concerts whenever he can.

  • × Robert Pearce

    Robert Pearce

    Director of Account Strategy

    Since joining 10up in 2016, Rob’s enjoyed helping clients with his diverse, fast-paced career helping companies leverage technology for more than 20 years. Finding success in a wide range of businesses, Rob’s lead a number of successful companies in such diverse markets as: event management, publishing, business consulting, accounting as well as ownership in an award winning design studio. These executive positions provide Rob with broad strategic value for clients with hands on broad strategic rolls with mergers and acquisitions, sales and marketing, team and project management, budgeting, software and systems engineering. Whether he’s taking on the Chairman position with local business clubs or taking a seat on the Florida Bar Grievance Committee, Rob is constantly looking for ways to expand his knowledge and help his clients.

    When he’s not helping his wife Regi homeschool their three children Luke, Madison and Hailey, Rob can be found diving into philosophy, religion, engineering, physics, and football.

  • × Ryan Abeling

    Ryan Abeling

    Director of Client Delivery

    After graduating from Ithaca College in 2004, Ryan became Managing Editor for multiple technology magazines at a publishing house in New York City. However, what stood out to him was the work he did building out each publication’s website. Cutting his teeth on SEO, project management for web development, and social media marketing, Ryan found that his skills were better suited for the web than the dying print industry.

    After relocating to Portland, OR, Ryan flexed his entrepreneurial muscle and started a successful online publication. Ryan managed over 30 contributors as Editor-In-Chief, covering all types of regional events and highlighting local musicians and businesses.

    Prior to 10up, Ryan worked at a Portland-based web development agency, managing digital projects for high profile clients on platforms like WordPress. In his tenure, he expertly managed and motivated multiple project teams, both domestic and offshore, while using his branding and content marketing experience to guide clients through the redesign process.

    When not at his computer reorganizing his inbox, Ryan is spending time with his amazing daughter and lovely wife. He can also be found snowboarding on Mt. Hood, exploring the great Northwest wilderness, or playing guitar around the city in two local bands.

  • × Sam Sidler

    Sam Sidler

    Director of Account Strategy

    Sam started contributing to the open web in 2004, helping build and launch a new website for Camino, a web browser built on Mozilla technology. At Mozilla, he led security and maintenance releases for Firefox, while building a cross-functional team to improve its stability.

    In 2013, Sam joined the WordPress community, working for Audrey Capital as a Ninja Wrangler, where he helped organize the WordPress community and build WordPress itself. He continued this work at Automattic, leading a team of contributors to WordPress. Next, Sam joined Human Made, where he led sales and account management in North America, working with a diverse set of clients, from small design agencies to Fortune 500 enterprises.

    Outside of his time as an Associate Director of New Client Strategy at 10up, Sam enjoys chasing his toddler around the house.

  • × Shannon Swenson

    Shannon Swenson

    Director of Client Strategy

    Shannon co-founded one of the first web agencies in Austin, Texas. He’s led IT, marketing, sales, product and strategy teams for global brands and startups. He holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Texas, and a CMBA from the McCombs School of Business at UT.

    Having developed formal training in US Army and Air Force ROTC, Shannon advises leaders in technology, aviation, automotive, publishing, financial services, medical, retail, and CPG. Embedded within the IBM Design flagship studio, he oversaw two commerce offering teams. At Charles Schwab, he led divisional rebrand ideation from Talk to Chuck to Own Your Tomorrow.

    At GSD&M Omnicom, Sanders\Wingo, WordPress VIP and his own agency, he’s worked for Technicolor, Disney, Warner Bros, Dreamworks, Universal Studios, Dell, Southwest Airlines, BMW, IDG, AT&T, REI, Chevrolet, John Deere, Peterbilt, State Farm, American Eagle, Eventbrite and Boeing. He advised M&A activity at Automattic during their explosive growth following Series C and D rounds. Shannon is an expert on digital transformation, notably enterprise SaaS integration and content management systems.

    In 2012, Cardinal O’Brien knighted Shannon and his wife April into the world’s oldest military order on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. With the formal Vatican honorifics, Sir and Dame, their work involves material and spiritual support for Christians, Jews and Muslims living together in the Holy Land. They focus on building schools, maintaining world heritage sites and encouraging visits to the region.

    Shannon thinks open source delivery by distributed teams is the most powerful business innovation in a generation. He is a strong proponent of WordPress as a developer, strategist and key voice to analysts at Gartner, Forrester and IDC. He believes 10up is well poised to help enterprise teams converge in a post-pandemic era.

    Shannon and April live in Austin with their teenage children, Mary and Simon. They love to travel and are volunteers for the homeless and working poor in their community. Shannon muses on business, technology and culture at ShannonSwenson.com.

  • × Stephanie Stracener

    Stephanie Stracener

    Staffing Director, EMEA

    Stephanie started her career as a radiology technologist where she passionately cared about her patients. After several years of working in the healthcare industry, her heart for adventure led her to move to Australia for life experiences that couldn’t be found in an office.

    After some time, Stephanie settled in the Appalachian mountains of East Tennessee to begin her career in the technology sector, focusing on accounting and data analytics for Saratoga Technologies and eventually Sharp Business Systems. Her talent for working with numbers is equally matched by her dedication to her team’s collective relationship and success. She uses those skills along with her desire to learn something new each day in her role as a resourcing coordinator for 10up.

    When Stephanie isn’t working she finds joy and peace by traveling with her family and friends, acting in her local theater, mentoring young girls in her community, and leading worship in her church band.

  • × Steve Meyers

    Steve Meyers

    Director of Client Growth Strategy

    Steve is an accomplished digital executive, leader and strategist with a love for creating value and driving revenue for businesses. While he will always be an engineer at heart, Steve believes that technology is a means to an end, not the end itself. Transforming and growing businesses by leveraging technology is his passion.

    Steve comes to 10up from an 8-year career in the radio industry. As Executive Vice President of Digital for Beasley Media group for the last 4 years, Steve’s role was to lead the digital transformation of the traditional media company’s digital experiences, sales and advertising strategy and technology partnerships and investments.

    Steve’s prior experiences as both an Engineering Director at Unisys and a founding member of a web design agency called Slamm bring to him a unique blend of skills that allow him to apply enterprise attributes and sensibilities to solve problems for companies of all sizes.
    Steve received his BS of Electrical Engineering from Penn State University.

    When Steve isn’t solving fun technical and business problems, he’s spending as much time as he can with his wife and two children outdoors and traveling.

  • × Teal Hutton

    Teal Hutton

    Director of Client Delivery

    Teal brings with her ten years’ experience in managing web and software development projects at the senior level, with a focus on the use of WordPress and other open source technologies to usher large-scale custom web-based applications to life. She has built her career around an impressive book of business — as comfortable working with the principle of a small startup as she is with a VP of a Fortune 50 company — and has always pushed the envelope to bring the best process and strategy to bear in organizing and motivating her teams.

    In recent years, Teal has led teams of polyglot programmers, UX designers, data engineers and project managers, facilitating quality and efficiency in development and delivery using an agile framework. She also has a background in WordPress theme development, which provides her a uniquely rounded perspective from which to facilitate requirements discovery and translate business needs to technical specification. She is fluent in the languages of both client stakeholders and technologists in a digital agency setting.

    Teal is simultaneously as drawn to the microcosmic detail of sentence structure as she is to the world of collaboration and creative strategy. She is always, in particular, on the lookout for projects to which she can lend her passion for service, health and wellness, sustainability, and community.

    Outside of her professional life, Teal loves feeding people (literally and metaphorically), hiking the Catskills, sleeping outdoors, and taking on far more personal projects than she should.

  • × Thomas King

    Thomas King

    Director of Account Strategy

    Two of Thomas’s natural inclinations — connecting with people and being drawn to interesting problems — collide in his working style with clients. As a strategist, he’s always re-examining the questions at hand to bring fresh perspective, and he’s deeply curious about what makes people tick.

    Prior to joining 10up, Thomas co-founded Switchyard, a creative agency that built brands and products for many of his hometown Portland’s most beloved institutions. That agency was acquired in 2013 and he most recently spent five years as a Director of Strategy at ThinkShout, where he lead projects and accounts for scores of national nonprofit organizations, universities, think tanks, and travel clients.

    In his free time, Thomas is probably up to something with his family: cooking, singing off-key, cracking jokes, camping, and exploring the Pacific Northwest. He’s an accidental gardener, a reformed picky eater who now goes for anything, and a failed nocino artisan.

  • × Tyler Cherpak

    Tyler Cherpak

    Director of Engineering

    Tyler first began programming in high school, and it quickly grew into a great love. He has worked on all types of WordPress sites—from simple marketing sites to large enterprise solutions. He loves to solve complex business problems with simple-to-understand code.

    Tyler graduated from the University of South Florida with a degree in Management Information Systems. While learning Java in college, he taught himself WordPress and PHP, and began working on diverse pro bono projects. Before joining 10up, Tyler worked for various WordPress agencies as well as a medical device manufacturer where he built WordPress sites and led Salesforce development. He is passionate about security, usability, and performance in everything he creates and is excited to bring that passion to 10up.

    When not coding, Tyler enjoys spending time with his family and teaching others about the power of programming.

  • × Will Davis

    Will Davis

    Director, New Client Strategy

    Will has worked as a strategist, product manager, account manager, and marketer in a variety of agency roles since 2007. The tie that binds together his many professional passions: curiosity. He is eager to dive into complex problems and come up with thoughtful solutions. His projects with clients in education, hospitality, theater, e-commerce, government, and finance have led to award-winning websites and many multi-year client relationships built on trust and innovative thinking.

    At Blenderbox, a Brooklyn-based interactive agency, he led accounts with the Brooklyn Brewery, Goldman Sachs, and the NYC Department of Education with his unique style of combining creative marketing ideas and a practical knowledge of how to utilize open platforms to meet business objectives.

    After being promoted to the Director of Strategy at Blenderbox in 2013, he led the company to its highest grossing quarters, and forged partnerships to enhance and expand the agency’s capabilities. More recently, Will gained experience on the client side as a Deputy Director at the Council on Foreign Relations, with a focus on product marketing and audience research.

    Will joins 10up to continue to exercise his passion for delivering outstanding client service. When he’s not advancing account growth and acquisition for 10up, you can find Will cycling the backroads of northern New Jersey, rooting for the Mets, fishing the fabled streams of the Catskills, and chasing around his delightful and energetic toddler.

  • × Amy Grace Wells

    Amy Grace Wells

    Associate Director of Content Design

    Amy Grace loves messy, complex problems. She’s been designing interfaces, building taxonomies, and finding content solutions since 2005. She geeks out to finding solutions that meet both user and business goals, doing user research, and creating structured content.

    She has worked with a variety of clients including nonprofits, higher education, B2B, publishing, and government. She’s designed e-commerce solutions for Bird Watcher’s Digest, served as an expert on content strategy and information architecture for multiple state agencies at Texas A&M, and built the first comprehensive content strategy plan at University of South Carolina. Most recently, she worked on Department of Defense projects that serve military families.

    Amy Grace is a perennial student with master’s degrees in user experience design and higher education. She is a regular conference speaker and was a keynote speaker at Confab and received the best in conference and two best in track awards at HighEdWeb.

    When she is not working, Amy Grace is planning her next travel adventure. She’s driven an ATV through the jungles of Costa Rica and foraged in the Arctic forests of Finland. Amy Grace and her husband can often be found exploring National Parks on long weekends. She shares her house with a toddler, a codependent dog, three cats, and a rotating cast of foster kittens. Bragging rights include holding a sensei rank in karate and singing happy birthday to Muhammad Ali.

  • × Brandi Morgan

    Brandi Morgan

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Brandi began working in the digital marketing world in 2005. After completing her Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing at Southern Connecticut State University—graduating with honors—she was promptly promoted from an intern to a product marketing coordinator. Brandi participated in several usability improvement projects and quickly developed a passion for user-centric web design and development. In 2010, Brandi found her calling at a web development and digital marketing agency in Connecticut. It was there that she pursued her passion as a project manager.

    Since then, Brandi has managed over 75 custom web design and development projects from ideation to completion utilizing several proprietary and open source platforms, including WordPress. Brandi has received awards and recognition from the Connecticut Art Directors Club, Graphic Design USA, and the Public Relations Society of America for her projects.

    When Brandi isn’t geeking out over project requirements and timelines, she can be found dogsitting or managing social media presence for local bands. She also enjoys disc golfing, hiking, and backpacking in sunny northern Arizona.

  • × Chase Livingston

    Chase Livingston

    Associate Director, Systems Engineering Client Delivery

    Chase brings nearly a decade of customer support experience to the role. Most recently, Chase spent the last 7+ years of his career supporting customers, all the while gaining valuable experience managing customer-focused projects along the way. He assisted with the major endeavor of moving from a legacy support tool over to Zendesk and also with several ancillary projects related to that upgrade. He also spent time as a team lead for a team of 10 other customer support representatives managing day-to-day priorities, schedules, performance reviews, etc… Chase has also been a host on the Support Ops podcast, discussing current trends and news as well as tips and suggestions for customer support professionals.

    Chase is focused on managing projects related to Sitewatch, ElasticPress.io, and other systems engineering projects. His skills and knowledge from his past customer support experience will be a great asset to 10up and its endeavor to serve its clients and customers with top-notch services and products.

    Chase has spoken at WordCamps in the past on customer support and other WordPress plugins. He’s also contributed to open-source plugins in his spare time.

    Outside of work, Chase and his wife have two awesome children and reside in Greenville, SC. He spends his free time with his family playing frisbee, kicking the soccer ball, cooking a meal together. His hobbies include playing golf and reading as many books as he can. Chase and his family are also very involved in their local church, particularly with the student and college ministries.

  • × Christina Gazzia

    Christina Gazzia

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    With a degree in Broadcast Journalism from Florida Atlantic University, Christina got her start by becoming a video editor. Once she realized that line of work was not for her, she used her visual and storytelling skills, along with her knack for planning, to become a Project Manager.

    Her PM career began at a technology company working with the biggest college sports entities in re-branding and revitalizing their web properties and mobile applications. Christina then grew from being a PM to a certified Scrum Master while using Scrum Methodology to launch the PAC-12 Conference website.

    Most recently, Christina served as the Director of Operations and Project Management at Crossfield Digital, a boutique agency. There she led all web and mobile app development along with the operations of the company at large.

    Christina is passionate about providing her team with a fun, rewarding, and open working environment.

    When Christina is not sitting in front of the computer, you can find her running on the local trail training for her next Disney race. If not running, she spends her free time with her daughters Gabriella and Sophia at the pool, park, or anywhere that has donuts—her favorite food.

  • × Cole Geissinger

    Cole Geissinger

    Staff Engineer

    Cole began his career in web development in 2000 when his first band needed a website. He picked up a book and has continued to do so still to this day. By 2007 he discovered WordPress and started building handcrafted themes and quickly thereafter, plugins. His experience with WordPress over the last 10+ years has been broad, ranging from basic blog structures to full-on web applications for enterprise-level clients. His experience in the industry found him a seat on the board of advisors for the Santa Rosa Junior College for the last several years where he has helped professors fine-tune their curriculum to position students for job-ready skills after graduation.

    One of his first enterprise-level projects was with Maker Media where he worked on their online magazine, MAKE:, and on Maker Faire where he looked after the API system for their live event mobile app and website. All of which were hosted on WordPress.com VIP. He also loves community, which is partially what has kept him in the WordPress community, he helped start a thriving community for web professionals in his city of Santa Rosa, CA. Cole and others were tired of making the 1-hour drive to San Francisco to meet like-minded programmers and designers so they created their own. By the time he stepped out of leading the community in 2015, there were over 1000 people in the Facebook Group and the monthly meetups would see on average 20+ people which was astonishing for a city that isn’t known for its tech. Later, more focused meetup groups were formed as spin-offs from ours.

    He has a passion for learning and adapts quickly to new concepts. His career has taken him through several different programming languages and tools to keep in his programmer’s utility belt such as Node.js/Express.js, MongoDB, C#, JavaScript, and of course PHP, just to name a few.

    Outside of his career, he is a father to a 2-year-old “heart warrior”, a husband, a multi-instrumental musician, frequents concerts, having monthly board game nights at his house, and traveling whenever possible.

  • × Daine Mawer

    Daine Mawer

    Associate Director of Front End Engineering, EMEA

    Daine has been a committed (no Git pun intended) and passionate open source follower for over 6 years now. Completely self-taught from the ground up, Daine has managed to grab the attention of many award-winning agencies and media houses in South Africa, not to mention international brands such as Women’s Health, Men’s Health and award-winning author, Ken Follet.

    Daine began his career in education. He trained some of South Africa’s biggest corporations in digital technologies, contributing to the business sector and educating those he worked alongside. Daine has planned, developed, lectured and implemented web courses for students, professionals and newcomers; covering everything from UX, HTML5, CSS3, Javascript and WordPress Development. He is also an Envato Tuts+ Author and contributes regularly to the site.

    Daine gravitated to WordPress early on in his career, learning the ins and outs of theme and plugin development. He regularly contributes to the WordPress.org support forums, speaks at WordPress South Africa Meetups and WordCamp Cape Town

    When the laptop closes, Daine fills his time traveling, running and spending most of his disposable income on coffee in and around Cape Town’s hip food and restaurant culture.

  • × Darin Kotter

    Darin Kotter

    Associate Director, Open Source Engineering

    Darin has a passion for good code and building sites that are easy to use. He discovered his affinity for WordPress, a platform that lets him do just that, while employed as the lead web developer at a marketing agency in Idaho. Today, Darin is excited to be focusing his career on building top shelf themes and plugins for the platform. A few of his plug-ins can already be found on Github and the plug-in repository, today.

    Darin’s attraction to web development was sparked by the notion that he could take a blank canvas and build a fully functional product on top of it. It’s the perfect outlet for his creative impulses and desire to be challenged.

    When Darin is not up to his elbows breaking order to a digital mess, he loves spending time with his wife and two kids. A sportsman, he can often be found outdoors, usually playing basketball and golf. He lives in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and loves the slow life of a smaller city with all the benefits of the great outdoors.

  • × Darshan Sawardekar

    Darshan Sawardekar

    Staff Engineer

    Darshan began programming with embedded systems in VHDL. Thankfully, that experience didn’t scare him away from all programming, and he soon found a new calling… building games in Flash. After a memorable stint in DevOps and an even larger collection of scars, he made the transition to Full-Stack Developer, and has never looked back.

    Darshan is a minimalist by nature, and an avid Vim user. He enjoys writing clean code and building simple, highly scalable solutions. Darshan is also the one man army behind the WordPress.vim plugin.

    Darshan has worked at a few different agencies in a variety of roles, including Lead Architect. Complimenting his PHP expertise, Darshan has significant experience with Ruby, C, and Python, along with several popular JavaScript frameworks, including Backbone and Ember.

    When he’s not coding or thinking about coding, Darshan enjoys spending time with his family and working on Vim plugins.

  • × Daryll Doyle

    Daryll Doyle

    Staff Engineer

    After realizing that his passion for photography wasn’t going to pay the bills, Daryll started a BSc in Computing. He graduated in 2012 and has been writing PHP ever since.

    Daryll worked for a couple of agencies in his home county of Cornwall, where he progressed from a fresh graduate to lead developer, improving his skills along the way. WordPress became a core component of Daryll’s toolbox which he leveraged to architect solutions whenever possible. Daryll has developed WordPress based solutions for countless businesses from small, local companies to multinational corporations and NGOs.

    Within the WordPress world, Daryll has made several contributions to core, but Daryll’s best achievement has been Safe SVG; an SVG sanitisation plugin with over 300,000 downloads. Furthermore, this allowed him to give a 40-minute talk at WordCamp London on the subject of SVG security.

    A lifelong learner, he hopes to continue honing his skills while learning more about PHP and Javascript development from the team at 10up.

    When not writing code, you can find Daryll spending time with his young family, walking around the beautiful Cornish coastline, cooking, or training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in which he enjoys competing.

  • × Devin Leggett

    Devin Leggett

    Associate Director, Front End Engineering

    Devin started his career in the early 90’s–when HTML still used table and font tags to declare layout and styles. As a Graphic Designer looking for a job, Devin needed a way to showcase his best work. He picked up a book on HTML, and was swept up by its speed and simplicity. No waiting for proofs or validating spot colors, just instant gratification in real time. This small step inspired him to continue his growth as a Developer through self learning.

    While working for Live to Play Sports, Devin took the lead on 5 in house websites, building content management systems and stylistic frontends. During this 5 year post, he also dabbled in Flash Development, popular at that time, and landed an American Design Award for his production of the Mace Gear website, an urban cycle and lifestyle brand. Since then, Devin has worked for Rethink Canada, Engine Digital, and a small blockchain startup. His latest WordPress build allows authors to create immersive custom interactive stories using an array of flexible components that includes quizzes, slideshows, videos and more.

    Devin joins 10up as a Senior Front End Engineer. Here he hopes to continue growing his knowledge of WordPress and Javascript, stretching the possibilities of theme development far beyond a simple blogging platform. He calls himself a “forever student”–one person can’t have all of the answers, so he continues to study and practice his craft. He enjoys pair programming and working with others to solve big challenges.

    When not writing code, Devin can be found playing ball hockey or soccer with his kids, going for a run, or watching the latest Premier League match in support of Liverpool. On occasion, he’ll pickup the acoustic guitar and jam out on a few simple chords.

  • × Dianne Gillespie

    Dianne Gillespie

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Dianne has been managing projects in the political and non-profit sphere, balancing down-ballot campaigns with large-scale nationwide programs, before turning her focus to digital project management.

    Prior to joining 10up, Dianne worked as Senior Digital Project Liaison at Revolution Messaging, delivering award-winning custom websites for clients that include Kamala Harris for Senate, Ocean Conservancy, Giffords: Courage to Fight Gun Violence, and the Movement for Black Lives.

    Dianne graduated from Webster University in St. Louis with degrees in International Relations and Spanish before eventually moving to Washington D.C. In her spare time, she is trying to teach her cats, Tia and Tamera, to fetch (we’re getting there).

  • × Eduard Florea

    Eduard Florea

    Staff Engineer

    Eduard has always been interested in technology and electronics. He learned Basic and built his first game in 4th grade, and, as he always wanted to build robots, in high school he introduced himself to C++ and assembly programming language. He then went to college and studied artificial intelligence, electronic engineering, and computer science.

    In 2003 he had his first encounter with web development, and he fell in love at first with PHP. Since then he embraced a plethora of technologies, and he worked for a few digital agencies developing frameworks, custom APIs, web apps and cross-platform mobile apps. He’s been using and crafting plugins for WordPress since 2010.

    Although originally from Romania, Eduard now enjoys life in sunny California. Outside of programming, Eduard is a fun father of 2 (a boy and a cocker spaniel). He loves to travel to new places, beer tasting and board game nights, listening to music and checking out new movies.

  • × Elena Bargo

    Elena Bargo

    Associate Director of Client Strategy

    With over 8+ years of experience in the advertising industry, Elena is an accomplished and seasoned strategic account manager with global B2B and B2C advertising, CRM, and digital marketing experience. She has a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry with multiple Fortune 500 clients as well as startups.

    She began her career internationally in countries like Brazil, Italy, the Dominican Republic and Haiti working in the healthcare and nonprofit space. And in 2011 continued her career at one of the largest Ad agencies worldwide, Ogilvy, where she supervised and managed the strategic development & execution of member communications for the largest hotel loyalty rewards program worldwide.

    Elena is smart and shows incredible dedication to her work, while building deep trusting relationships with clients. Her positivity and drive to constantly improve the work and process is appreciated by both the internal team and clients alike, making her a great asset to any business she works on.

    Outside of the marketing and advertising world, Elena is also a professional actress. She has grazed the big screen in several feature films and can also be caught in a few commercials! She loves traveling the world eager to learn new languages and explore new cultures and is the proud owner of two rescues pups.

  • × Elliott Stocks

    Elliott Stocks

    Engineering Manager, EMEA

    Elliott’s passion for web development began when he was 15 years old and he’s never looked back since. Elliott is 10up’s first UK-based employee; before joining 10up he led a development team at a local web agency where he was introduced to WordPress.

    Elliott graduated with a BSc honours degree in Computer Science. He loves a good challenge, especially when it involves a deep dive into WordPress’s core. He often contributes to open source projects, develops his own plugins once in a while, and has earned his fair share of badges for his contributions on StackExchange. An aficionado of the popular Easy Digital Downloads WordPress module, he’s both a recognized regular contributor and an extension developer.

    When he’s not working with PHP, he likes to tinker with databases and APIs. Elliott also has hands on experience with JavaScript, in particular jQuery and Backbone. He’s often referred to as being “obsessed with neat code,” and is especially particular when it comes to missing indentation.

    When he’s “off the grid” he can most likely be caught eating a curry or playing his favorite (and only) sport, Badminton.

  • × Emily Clarke

    Emily Clarke

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Emily has a strong background in project management and marketing, as well as a passion for all things digital! Since graduating from the University of Central Lancashire in England in 2006 with a degree in Psychology, her career path took her on a voyage into marketing and digital. Completing her Masters degree in Marketing Management in 2008, Emily went on to work in marketing and business development, where her skills were identified early on to be more suited to a career in Project Management!

    With 5 years working within a digital agency and a further 7 years working client side in a digital capacity, Emily has worked across a multitude of digital projects bringing her marketing and business development background to the fore by getting totally immersed in each and every project she’s involved in. She is highly adept at managing enterprise level projects with the ability to take highly complex client requirements and help shape them into functional realities.

    Involvement in websites covering a range of CMS’s such as Kentico, WordPress, Sitecore, Umbraco and Drupal, allows Emily to bring a range of experience with her to any project from initial Discovery and ideation, through to development, delivery and beyond. Emily has led a wide range of projects from multi-site platforms with 60 websites, to complete technology overhauls of Government Sporting websites. She has been involved in digital projects across a variety of sectors including private organizations, leisure, health and charity.

    When not working Emily loves to spend time with her wife and 2 young children (2.5 yrs and 9 months) generally going on camping trips in our caravan to the beach with all our friends and having any excuse to be a kid again!

  • × Evan Mattson

    Evan Mattson

    Staff Engineer

    Evan has been working full-time with WordPress for clients ranging from small firms to international brands since 2010. Brimming with the experience of several small agencies, he has cultivated a robust skillset over the years, with experience in nearly every role related to web development.

    In addition to creating bespoke client-centric solutions, Evan also has a unique background in product development with experience in developing and maintaining distributed software used by thousands. His passion for products and desire to give back fuel his own open-source projects as well as his contributions to others.

    As an aspiring polyglot and student of software development, he embraces a life of never-ending learning, craftsmanship, and refinement.

  • × Felipe Elia

    Felipe Elia

    Associate Director of Platform Engineering

    Felipe became interested in technology, electronics, and programming languages when his parents bought their first computer, a 486 back in 1996. In 2004, while attending college, he landed several internships learning languages from Classic ASP to Java, passing through HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP.

    Felipe’s history with Content Managements Systems started with an early version of WordPress, going to Drupal 6.0 and then going back to WordPress. With it, he built several corporate sites, portals and complex systems.

    In 2016 he started attending local WordPress meet-ups, and after joining the local community he became a Brazilian Locale Manager, Global Translator Editor, Brazilian Support Forums keymaster, and WordPress pt-BR Official Blog author. Felipe also gives back by being a plugins creator, core and meta collaborator, Docs Team member, WordCamp speaker and co-organizer of the WordPress community in Curitiba.

    Felipe is also passionate about creating and sharing knowledge: he maintains a blog and a YouTube channel about WordPress.

    When he is not working, you can find him hanging with his wife and 6-year-old boy, his companions to video games, movies, and TV shows.

  • × Gary Thayer

    Gary Thayer

    Staff Engineer

    Starting his career as a developer by writing programs for TI-83 calculators when he was in high school, Gary has thrown himself into learning new technologies over the years. Since 2010, Gary has been building WordPress themes and plugins for businesses of all sizes.

    Before working with 10up, Gary built custom WordPress themes and plugins for enterprise e-commerce businesses. Passionate about problem-solving, Gary has helped numerous companies overcome their unique business challenges by using WordPress’s robust technology.

    When not working, Gary enjoys a pastoral life with his wife and children in Buxton, ME, USA.

  • × Glynnis O'Gorman

    Glynnis O’Gorman

    Associate Director of Quality Assurance

    Glynnis has been involved in different aspects of QA on both the brand and agency side for the last 10 years. She has worked on large scale website redesigns and migrations, and her favorite part of the process was always getting to QA so she could find/resolve bugs. She loves the challenge of systematically inspecting a website to ensure that all of the work done by the team is of the highest quality. Glynnis has done QA for brands like Gilt, Wayfair, Amazon, Oxfam and Northeastern. Glynnis has also managed teams of Web Producers and has developed QA strategies from the ground up for companies with limited budget and time for QA.

    Prior to joining 10up, Glynnis had the opportunity to work with some of the 10up team when she was the internal Web Producer for Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies website redesign. She was so impressed by the team and the agency’s accomplishments that when she began looking for her next opportunity, she knew 10up could be the perfect fit. She’s excited to be able to work on a dedicated QA team and continue to learn more about testing strategies and methodologies.

    Glynnis is originally from New York but moved to Boston in 2006 to attend Boston University. She fell in love with the city and has lived there ever since. In her free time she enjoys cooking, traveling, and being outdoors. She also enjoys exploring Boston, trying new restaurants, and live music.

  • × Jacqui Montano

    Jacqui Montano

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Jacqui graduated from Hofstra University in 2005 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Graphic Design. After several years of working on her design and client services skills in different industries (retail, hospitality, and real estate), Jacqui found her way into the agency world as an Account Manager.

    As she gained experience in digital marketing, her strength in project management began to rise to the surface. She was eventually promoted to Production Director at her previous agency, Digital Surgeons, where she built a project management department from the ground up and managed a team of four.

    For the past 7 years, she has managed award-winning custom website builds for clients ranging from small startups and nonprofits such as BossKey Productions and HRC, to large CPG and e-commerce brands such as Freshpet and eos. Her biggest WordPress accomplishment was the launch of the Freshpet website. The site included the use of Advanced Custom Fields, a custom guided selling experience, store locator integrations, blog editor, web forms, language translator, and nutrition calculator.

    Outside of 10up, Jacqui likes to brag about her side hustle as a food stylist and recipe content creator on Instagram. She has also coached a nationally-ranked high school dance team from Branford, CT, for the past 10 years.

  • × Jay Moore

    Jay Moore

    Associate Director Account Operations

    Jay Moore came to 10up in 2014 after careers in graphic design, non-profit communications, and advertising. After rising to the executive level at a national advertising agency, Jay decided to step back and focus on helping partners be successful through communications and marketing strategies tailored to their goals.

    At 10up, Jay has worked with more than 40 partners in industries such as healthcare, publishing, entertainment, finance, and non-profit. These engagements have led to Webby Awards, business model shifts, redesigns, and expanded revenue opportunities, all with the understanding that if our partners are successful, 10up will be successful.

    To further his skill set, Jay received his certification in client success, and is currently studying innovation at Stanford, building on his more than 20 years of client relations experience. In his spare time, Jay can be found at home in Oklahoma with his wife (Kami), son (Ian), and dogs (Blue & Violet). They’ll likely be in the backyard playing, lounging by the pool, or enjoying time with family and friends.

  • × Joe McGill

    Joe McGill

    Engineering Manager

    Joe McGill has over a decade of professional experience as a software developer, building large-scale applications and websites primarily using WordPress. Throughout his career, he has worked on projects for organizations in many sectors, including higher education, non-profit/social service, publishing, news/media, financial institutions, and technology.

    Joe is a WordPress Core Developer, who began contributing to the WordPress software project in 2014, where he has focused primarily on performance improvements for images. He helped lead the effort to include responsive images in WP Core in version 4.4, and improved image compression in WP version 4.5, which resulted in him becoming a core committer in May of 2016. He’s spoken at events like WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US and has had technical articles featured in publications including CSS Tricks.

    Prior to joining 10up, Joe worked as the Director of WordPress Software Development at Alley Interactive, an Engineering Manager and Senior Software Engineer at Human Made, and the Director of Engineering for Public Affairs at Washington University in St. Louis.

    Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters; walking his dog, Malarkey; cycling around St. Louis; and working on his home chef skills. He graduated from Greenville University with a B.S. in digital media. He is based in St. Louis, Missouri.

  • × John Watkins

    John Watkins

    Staff Engineer

    John became interested in programming in the late 2000s while running an oddly successful WordPress-based website on English grammar and usage. After earning an MFA in poetry in 2009, he entered the freelance market, selling himself as a writer, editor, and content strategist who could also build WordPress sites. It wasn’t long before developing themes and plugins became his main vocation, though to this day he can be talked into contributing web copy in a pinch.

    A compulsive learner, John has branched from WordPress into technologies such as React, AMP, and server-side JavaScript and gained extensive experience collaborating on complex, cutting-edge projects, working across the stack. With Colby College, he integrated WordPress with React Native for a suite of internal campus communication tools, and built the website for the college’s $750-million fundraising campaign. With XWP, he worked with clients such as Rolling Stone and Google on projects merging the latest frontend technologies with backend engineering designed for the largest scale.

    Though rooted in Colorado, John now lives in Chicago with his family. Outside work, you’ll usually find him reading, writing, playing games with his kids, or digging into new web technologies in service of labyrinthine side projects that somehow grow less complete with time.

  • × José Esteves

    José Esteves

    Associate Director of Experience Design

    José Esteves is a multidisciplinary designer and creative director based in Lisbon, Portugal, with more than 18 years of experience in fast-paced environments such as agencies and startups. José focuses on building memorable and scalable experiences for brands and digital products, always with an approach that seeks the elaboration of empathy, purpose, and creativity in its projects.

    This approach is the same regardless of the brand and the type of project. From creating websites for supermarkets chains to complex content websites for large media outlets to implementing design systems for multi-brand companies, from designing the user interfaces for television and omnichannel products to defining user experiences for home banking platforms, interactive experiences for physical stores, to extensive video experiences at soccer stadiums.

    Before joining 10up, José was leading design teams at startups, developing design and brand strategies while establishing design operations to build scalable teams.

    Alongside work, José is a proud parent of a baby girl, who loves to cook for friends, is a bodyboarder, skater, cat person, hooper, sneakerhead, and is always searching for new music from punk, electro, psychedelic, trip-hop to Tuareg music.

  • × Kimberly Pedego

    Kimberly Pedego

    Associate Director of Account Strategy

    Kimberly joins us with vast experience in both agency and client-side settings. With strong business acumen along with a knack for understanding technology, she has an ability to connect with clients to understand their needs, identify complex business challenges, and work with her team to design innovative digital solutions that create measurable impact.

    Kimberly started her career as a programmer for Accenture where she grew to lead the delivery of complex projects across the energy sector. She shifted into client services because she wanted a different way to use her technology background to have more strategic conversations with clients.

    Prior to joining 10up, Kimberly worked for a global marketing agency where she spent just over a decade leading the client success and business development teams. She loves to build deep, meaningful relationships and works relentlessly to ensure clients are receiving exceptional service that results in business impact. Kimberly was inspired to join the team at 10up due to its innovation and level of expertise in delivering immersive digital experiences.

    Kimberly currently splits her time between Long Beach, CA (where her twins are in their 2nd year at CSULB) and Nevada, with family. Having been to 22 countries, her biggest passion is travel. And when she’s not abroad, she loves to compete with her partner for the big fish as a fly-fishing enthusiast.

  • × Marta Bukowska

    Marta Bukowska

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Marta is Polish by birth, British by choice and a globetrotter at heart. She graduated from universities in the UK and Singapore, benefiting from international setting and cross-cultural exchange of ideas. Always up for an adventure and collaboration with like-minded people, worked with teams based in Australia, Poland, Scotland and US, often all in one day!

    With 7 years of experience she is deeply passionate about cross-disciplinary project management. Loves a good problem to solve and strongly believes in optimization, efficiency and processes that enable human creativity. Worked with a broad spectrum of brands such as William Hill, Elsevier or The Wildlife Trust, delivering a range of projects from global content translation systems, to complex membership and events management tools, to unified branding and tone of voice piece for 30+ charities.

    Her true passion is bringing the best talent to work together and enable digital wonders to happen. In her career she’s built a Project Management team and restructured the Delivery team with efficiency and job satisfaction of the employees at the heart of the transition. Being an agent for smart change, she is not a ‘yes’ person, but will probe and question to get the best outcomes possible for all involved.

    When the travel restrictions allow, you are likely to find Marta traveling across Europe. In the next couple of months, however, she will be applying her competitive nature to various Bake offs and house decoration competitions. Possibly even finalizing her first sci-fi novel.

  • × Matthew Bullock

    Matthew Bullock

    Associate Director of New Client Strategy

    Matt has more than 13 years of digital marketing and agency experience leading in-house and client strategy. He has worked as a senior account executive, account manager, director of growth, and senior director of marketing and has helped brands grow their digital presence and drive revenue through improved website and app experiences.

    In 2016, Matt stepped into the WordPress world when he joined an agency. There he brought his focus to new client strategy and building out customized solutions for brands large and small – from awareness and donation sites for local nonprofits to collaborating on industry-leading websites and feature enhancement for large eCommerce, education, technology, and CPG brands.

    He is driven by understanding client needs and working with the team to build highly performant experiences and features that help businesses meet their goals. He likes to leverage his experience as a director of growth and director of marketing to understand both the feature requests from clients as well as the measurement strategy and business objectives that will make clients successful and provide a great experience for their customers and users.

    Matt lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter. When he isn’t working he likes to spend his time biking to parks with his family and writing and recording music.

  • × Ricky Lee Whittemore

    Ricky Lee Whittemore

    Staff Engineer

    Ricky Lee has been building sites for over a decade. During college, a passion for print publishing he found while serving as Campus Life and Photo Editor for the yearbook evolved into a love of web publishing. In 2009, he found WordPress while working on a university online training program; he knew he’d found his calling.

    After graduating from Auburn University with a degree in Management Information System, he moved to Atlanta where he would spent five years as lead developer for a local agency with clients primarily in healthcare, manufacturing, and real estate. After creating far too many static brochure sites, he persuaded the team to make WordPress the agency’s CMS of choice. For the next few years, he made countless happy clients as he migrated their websites from clunky, closed-source platforms to WordPress.

    Ricky Lee is a core contributor to WordPress, and is the author of the Piedmont theme in WordPress.org repository.

    When Ricky Lee isn’t making websites, he enjoys exploring Atlanta’€™s restaurants and outdoor activities, and venturing home to Alabama to his family’€™s farm to ride horses and camp beneath the stars. He’s also not-so-secretly obsessed with typography; his family and friends lovingly taunt him when he points out typefaces used in everyday life.

  • × Simon Champion-MacPherson

    Simon Champion-MacPherson

    Associate Director of Client Strategy

    Simon is a client services person through and through, and thrives on speaking to people and being out and about. A nerd and a bookworm, he tries to hide this behind a veneer of good dinners and nice wine.

    Simon has worked in digital for a number of years, most recently at a Brighton based web agency, where he joined the accounts team, rising to Client Services Director and shaping the offering of the agency’s service to fit with the demands of large household brands.

    He has experience in conversion rate optimization and developing detailed testing roadmaps; this allows data driven decisions to be made that ultimately prove out business results, which leads to longer, more valuable relationships that benefit both the client and the agency.

    Simon lives by the seaside in Brighton UK, and is owned by a small fluffy black cat.

  • × Ankit Gupta

    Ankit Gupta

    Lead Quality Assurance Specialist

    Technology has been Ankit’s passion ever since he was a young boy. He likes to understand how things work and tries to fix every problem he discovers. In each situation, Ankit finds a way to improve things by his creative thinking. QA is the field where he can show his passion (that’s why he likes it so much). He tries his best everyday to bring smiles and happiness to customers and clients.

    Ankit has a Master’s Degree in Computer Applications. He started his career as a computer lecturer at a Delhi based college. To pursue his passion (as mentioned above), he switched to Software Quality Engineering in 2013.

    Before joining 10up, Ankit spent 8 years of his professional life with rtCamp and BuddyBoss as a QA Engineer and Team Leader. Both companies also work in the WordPress space.

    His mission is to make sure the WordPress experience for everyone is bug-free and friendly. This mission has gotten him ten consecutive contributions to WordPress as a core contributor for every version from WordPress 4.0 to WordPress 4.9 and WordPress 5.5 as well. Not satisfied with just core contributions, Ankit has also contributed to many releases of BuddyPress, bbPress, Translation, WordPress Docs, and WordPress meta sites. He is also an editor and locale manager of the Hindi WordPress Polyglot team.

    Ankit loves to speak and share his learning and experience with other people. He has had the opportunity to speak many times in WordCamps and meet-ups related to WordPress and QA.

    When not working, Ankit spends his time with his family. Long drives, exploring new places, and photography are some of his favorite hobbies.

  • × Anton Vanyukov

    Anton Vanyukov

    Lead Web Engineer

    Anton’s passion for computers started at a really young age, when he was still in school, after reading an issue of “Hacker” magazine. By the age of 18, he was already familiar with multiple programming languages (PHP, Delphi, Assembler), and was hired by the largest Russian search engine. Throughout the years he worked on a wide range of high-profile projects for large international companies, finally reaching a position of director of IT and security in a local multi-billion dollar company.

    In 2009, fuelled by his passion for web development, he opened his own web agency as a side project. In 2014 he transitioned to WordPress as a free alternative to the pay-to-use local CMS system and in 2015 released his first plugin to integrate WooCommerce websites with a local search engine for online shopping. Finally, in 2017 he made a full transition from IT and landed his first developer position in WPMU DEV, working on Smush and Hummingbird plugins and quickly progressed to a lead developer, and then head of development position.

    In addition to his experience as a developer and mentor, Anton loves to learn new things. He’s a certified PMP and has a strong passion for Agile, project management, security and performance. In his spare time, he contributes to the WordPress core team and is taking an active part in the local meetups.

    When not working, Anton enjoys his time exploring Australia with his wife and daughter.

  • × Antonio Laguna

    Antonio Laguna

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Antonio started toying with websites back when phpBB was something and it wasn’t long before he got hooked into making websites come alive. Community taught, he started to gain experience with Java, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and decided that Front End Engineering was going to be his focus.

    He crafted a real-time tool to manage calls and agents back when there was no Angular or React. After getting some experience, he decided to move to London with his family for some time to expand his career. After a brief gig on a gambling company, he worked at a big agency where he had the chance to work with clients such as Google and Microsoft. Working on the Google promotion with Star Wars or Google Summer of Code revamp (among others), gave him invaluable experience in making websites fast and accessible for everyone. He started to share his knowledge within the company and delivered some talks about Accessibility and how to make it part of your day-to-day toolkit.

    After his second daughter was born he moved back to Seville, Spain, where he continued working remotely for a different agency. Doing work for Lean In, he helped enhance storytelling to teach about how women are treated differently and raise social awareness. Antonio also had the opportunity to work brands like Billboard and Facebook – he was even part of the recent Billboard redesign. He managed the Front End team and set the basis for the team to grow. He’s been always a WordPress lover. At one time, he had a fansite for a famous video game made with WordPress. Lately, as a developer, he has grown to love WordPress more, especially with Gutenberg which gives a lot of power back to the user.

    When he’s not working he likes to read some fantasy, watch any TV Show, play some video games or be with his wife and daughters.

  • × Asvin Balloo

    Asvin Balloo

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Asvin has been crafting websites for over a decade. After graduating from La Confiance College, he joined a local telecommunications company where he started playing with WordPress, and realized its power. Before long, he started deploying WordPress websites for many African countries. With his newfound knowledge of WordPress, he went out on his own as a freelancer for six years.

    In 2009 he started working remotely with the agency Branderati where he was the lead developer. He spent his days hand coding a social media platform which powered hundreds of Facebook pages that had millions of fans. It was a unique opportunity to build applications for well-known American cable and satellite television channels. After his time at Branderati, and prior to joining 10up, Asvin was a technical consultant for Sprinklr where he worked with the biggest brands in the world.

    When he is not in front of his screen, Asvin can be found hanging out with his wife, his little boy and his Coton de Tulear.

  • × Barney Jeffries

    Barney Jeffries

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Barney is a self-taught developer who has over 20 years experience across front-end development, back-end development, mobile apps and a bit of design thrown in for good measure.

    Starting out with an ambition to be a designer, he soon found that code was something he loved and wanted to pursue further. After working for various agencies, Barney set-up as a freelancer in 2008 and worked across a huge range of projects and apps, for clients such as Thames Water, Energy Saving Trust, Virgin

    Barney had been contracting with 10up for 10 months and loved it so much – he decided to transition to full-time! He enjoys being part of a highly skilled team and the drive to do great work.

    He’s moved back to his home county of Cornwall in the South West of England; Barney is finally getting around to learning to surf and enjoys getting out and walking the beautiful coast paths. He also loves music (playing and listening), reading, a good box set and hanging out with his family.

  • × Barry Ceelen

    Barry Ceelen

    Lead Web Engineer

    Tinkering with design, video, interactive animation and the wonders of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, Barry’s career started in 2005 designing and developing sites with WordPress. As an independent consultant for over a decade, his focus moved from development to digital product design and back again. His biggest projects have focused on helping design mobile applications for some of the largest European online retail, food delivery and online publishing companies.

    Today Barry specializes in creating bespoke WordPress themes and plugins with a knack for simplicity, usability and multi-language sites.

    He studied product design and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from the Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts. Coming from the south of the Netherlands, Barry now lives in Berlin, Germany, where in his free time he enjoys spending time with his kid and the hustle and bustle of big city life (and the German autobahn).

  • × Bjorn Holine

    Bjorn Holine

    Lead Web Engineer, Meta Platforms

    Björn has had a strong interest in web development and technology in general since high school and holds a degree in Management Information Systems from Iowa State University. With a desire to pursue a career working with the internet post graduation he began working for a local agency where a passion for WordPress began to grow and evolve.

    Starting as a front-end developer but occasionally working with PHP his experience on both sides of the development spectrum increased and he was able to start focusing on WordPress development full-time at his second position. This focus on WordPress has continued throughout his subsequent roles at both local and international agencies.

    Björn comes to 10up with over ten years of professional agency experience and has been working with WordPress for several years beyond that. He is actively involved in the local WordPress community through his attendance of meetups and WordCamps, he has developed a premium WordPress plugin that he continues to maintain and support in his free time, and he enjoys staying on top of the latest industry news.

    When he’s not programming he enjoys hiking and cycling among various other outdoor activities, playing foosball, traveling, catching local music performances, watching foreign and independent films, following the financial markets and trying out new restaurants. He takes pride in his Swedish heritage and enjoys learning about cultural traditions.

  • × Brooke Wilds

    Brooke Wilds

    Senior Team Lead

    Brooke graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Central Florida and has been managing projects in the digital space for 8 years. She has always been passionate about organization and leadership, but her digital experience journey began in 2011 with a small independent app development company, working remotely with a team to produce freemium games for both iOS and Android.

    Since then, she’s transitioned into the agency world and become passionate about delivering products and digital experiences that meet and exceed clients’ needs. She has worked with some of the world’s largest brands, including Facebook Inc., NBCUniversal, and Siemens.

    Brooke builds trusted partnerships and thrives on collaborative ideation and problem-solving. She has a passion for understanding where efficiencies can be created and has a tenured history of utilizing successes and hurdles alike to create a better future, focusing on candid communication and retrospectives to achieve continued success.

    In her spare time, you can find Brooke in the stands at Orlando City Soccer games, enjoying live music at local venues, creating fun nail designs, seeking out rare gems at thrift and antique stores, or traveling to new and exciting places.

  • × Chandra Patel

    Chandra Patel

    Lead Web Engineer

    The first time Chandra saw a computer was in 8th standard in school. He was about 13 years old. It was love at first sight and he never missed a chance to use the computer. It stoked his curiosity and as years went by, his uncle told him about an Information and Technology course. As he graduated from school, he wasted no time and was enrolled for a Diploma in IT, at B&B Institute of Technology College. His love for technology and computers just grew deeper as he dived into different programming languages, database systems, and more. He loved writing code, and it became a passion for him.

    After his Diploma, he pursued his Bachelor’s Degree in IT from Dharamsinh Desai University. He was introduced to a lot of Java, and it was for a while his favorite. Java, ASP. Net and security were things they focused on in the syllabus. In his final year, he attended a session on PHP and his first project was on Joomla. He got introduced to frameworks like CodeIgniter and CakePHP.

    Soon he created his first blog on WordPress and even created a custom CMS with CodeIgniter framework. By the end of 2013, he was freelancing and mostly looking for work in Joomla CMS and CodeIgniter framework. He did not get much further and so he dipped his hands into learning WordPress.

    In 2015, he joined rtCamp Inc as a WordPress developer and this is where he was introduced to the power of Open Source, and the WordPress Community. Attending WordCamps and meeting other developers, designers and users shaped his thinking and introduced him to new ideas and approaches towards WordPress. His first contribution was a bit of translation of WordPress in Gujarati language. Over time he has contributed to the WordPress Core and Meta.

    At rtCamp, he has worked in multiple positions from WordPress Developer to Director of Engineering. He has led their internal training program and coached WordPress Development to more than 40 developers hired through campus placement.

    Over the years, he has developed a deep love for learning, and hopes to learn WordPress even more “deeply”.

  • × Chelsea Skovgaard

    Chelsea Skovgaard

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Chelsea has always been passionate about creating and trying new mediums whether it was coding, cooking, or crafting. She still remembers the first HTML and CSS website she created for a high school club. Upon starting college she spent time delving into other languages than coding, graduating summa cum laude with a double major in English and Humanities. After spending several years managing nonprofit websites, earning a Masters in Public Administration with a focus on communications, and serving on the Tech for Good Board in Denver, CO, she decided to devote herself to web development full time and create products for larger audiences. She completed a Front End Engineering Certificate at a challenging and industry recognized program.

    After learning the ins and outs of front end web technologies, she took her coding expertise and started working at Revolution Messaging, an agency based out of Washington, DC. For several years, she built impactful websites for social movements, national nonprofit organizations, and political candidates. She led development on websites that went on to win Pollie and Reed Awards including the Me Too Movement website that also won an Awwward for Mobile Excellence.

    Chelsea is always excited to experiment with new web technologies and is especially interested in web accessibility, performance, and animations. She looks forward to using the latest JavaScript frameworks and WordPress Gutenberg updates to continue crafting delightful and useful web experiences. When she’s not at changing the world building websites, she’s traveling to new destinations, winning pub trivia with friends, and camping with her husband and two rescue dogs.

  • × Chris Allen

    Chris Allen

    Team Lead

    Chris has been working in design and digital for over 10 years now. After graduating from University he worked in a wide range of digital disciplines from print design to motion graphics.

    During that time Chris had a instant passion for the web and shifted his career to focus on web design. Chris started to work as an in-house designer in the finance sector where he built up a strong brand and identity for the company. He then moved into working agency side and built up an award winning creative team for the agency. While working agency side, he was serving clients such as Danone, NHS and Virgin Media.

    More recently in his role as senior digital designer, Chris coached another agencies digital team. His time there allowed him to further strengthen both his skills and theirs. He was able to improve procedures across the board which positively increased the level of the work they put out. This shift allowed the agency to attract high profile contracts purely based on the work they’d seen we had done for other clients. Chris also pushed for the analysis of current work so they could understand the user, user needs, and user characteristics better. This analysis gave the team greater justification for making changes to improve conversions and they were able to be very proactive in presenting ideas for improvement to their clients. This role pushed Chris to get really interested in the User Experience (UX), an intuitive customer journey and constant educated improvements for a digital projects.

    Away from analysis and a screen Chris can be found running around the streets as he’s a keen runner. Over the years he has taken part in many long distance runs and half marathons for charity.

  • × Chris Eagle

    Chris Eagle

    Lead Web Engineer

    Chris started playing around with websites way back, when platforms like Geocities and MySpace were the platforms to be on. Learning the basics of HTML, designing with table layouts and overzealousness of the marquee tag, he soon discovered a keen interest in building things in the digital world.

    In 2010, Chris decided to leave his current employment and made the jump to being a self employed web developer, following a dream to be a web developer from those earlier days. He gave himself 3 months to study and get up to speed with the front-end. Amazingly and luckily he landed himself a remote developer role for a web agency in Halifax, Nova Scotia and was then introduced to WordPress.

    Since then Chris hasn’t taken his foot off the gas, and has worked with many clients, small and large, building solutions for WordPress which make it do anything and everything other than being a simple blogging platform.

    In his previous role as Senior WordPress Developer for a leading UK web agency, he oversaw and developed complex integrations involving third party APIs, large data migrations and custom plugin development. His best work saw him combining Vue.js and WooCommerce, bringing together his passion for high performance front-ends with the fantastic extensibility of WordPress as a CMS.

    When he’s not at his desk or reading yet another JavaScript book, Chris is Dad to a little boy and enjoys spending as much time as possible in the outdoors, exploring nature, attempting to be a photographer and generally being a little bit silly.

  • × Craig Jadown

    Craig Jadown

    Lead QA Specialist

    Craig brings over 10 years of QA experience, having worked with a diverse group of clients including BlueCross BlueShield, Four Seasons Hotels, Eaton Corporation, and Food Lion. In his roles as QA Team Manager and Lead, he designed and implemented software testing strategies, while remaining actively involved in the day-to-day test execution. His team approach, client focus, and ability to eliminate the “us vs. them” mentality that can occur between QA and developers, creates the environment necessary for project success and client satisfaction.

    His QA journey began when he was working at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. A friend, who was a recruiter, mentioned an opportunity to test trading applications, like the ones he was using on the exchange floor. It could not have been a better fit and that first position started his career as a Software Quality Assurance Analyst.

    Outside of work, Craig enjoys being outdoors, practicing soccer with his boys, grilling out, and playing guitar. He also studied acupuncture and likes to give treatments to friends and family upon request.

  • × Darren Cronian

    Darren Cronian

    Lead QA Specialist

    In 2015, Darren left his IT job and employer of 24 years to start a new adventure working remotely, while traveling around the world. His journey in QA commenced around this time, working initially on SAAS products built with WordPress. Over the last five years, he has also worked as a QA analyst on an array of high profile WordPress powered websites and plugins.

    Personally, he has used WordPress since 2005, when he created an award-winning travel consumer blog, which resulted in him being on TV, radio and quoted in newspapers across the world.

    When Darren isn’t bug spotting (software bugs), he is eating, exploring, hiking and capturing it on YouTube, so family and friends back home can keep up with his adventures.

  • × David Doan

    David Doan

    Lead Account Strategist

    With nearly two decades of experience developing and managing integrated brand marketing strategy, sponsorships and campaigns, David has positioned himself as someone who leads with purpose, prides himself on the importance of cultivating lasting relationships and understands how to measure and optimize campaigns initiatives to drive results.

    From the early days of media buying at Zenith Media for Lexus and Toyota to his time with Clear Channel as the lone seller in the Southeast focusing on integrated radio sports sponsorships the foundation and understanding of media, measurement and negotiation skills were honed.

    Doan left Clear Channel to begin an 11-year tenure with CSE, a sports and entertainment marketing agency. There he strategically positioned and managed Fortune 500 brands, including Aflac, AT&T and Southern Company across all facets of sponsorship and partnership marketing, revenue development, event planning and activation, digital and social channel creation, including the award winning Color Carl’s Car with Aflac and the Aflac Cancer Center. Additionally, Doan cultivated a deep understanding and expertise of how to deliver value by leading, listening and implementing organizational-wide collaboration, transparency and camaraderie by launching the CSE Community Committee. This committee, which he chaired from 2014 to 2016, created volunteer opportunities around Atlanta for the employees.

    With this purposeful track his focus, Doan left CSE to lead the Sports and Corporate Alliances team at the American Cancer Society where he focused on fundraising initiatives and utilizing the Society’s marketing channels as assets within each campaign with sports leagues, properties and corporate partners. These partners included the NFL, Coaches vs. Cancer, Minor League Baseball (MiLB), USA Track & Field, INFINITI, and NHL.

    An avid live music lover, runner of 5ks (nothing crazy), BBQ connoisseur (Memphis born and raised) and Big Green Egg “master” Doan resides in Atlanta with Carla, his wife of 16-years. He is a #girldad to Santana (13) and Ellie (8), always involved from cooking to coaching them in basketball, while finding time for (and to run) their 3 dogs: Nala, Tucker and Cotton, clean up after their 2 guinea pigs and even a few fish.

  • × Dmitry Mayorov

    Dmitry Mayorov

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Dmitry’s journey with web development started in school where he created a Linkin Park fan website that got him and one of his classmates an A (classmate was watching Dmitry code).

    That first little project kickstarted a very exciting chain of events for Dmitry that include learning how to code, building a first client website, signing up for a scary project and figuring out how to build it later, building public themes and plugins for WordPress, speaking at and organizing conferences, contributing code to WordPress, building websites for Fortune 500 companies and NYT Bestselling authors, and many other things that don’t fit in one sentence.

    Dmitry thrives on a cusp of development, design and project management. He is a strong believer in the Why behind all decisions and actions and likes to build things that make sense.

    Outside of work hours, you can find Dmitry in the gym, running, or driving to the nearest (or distant) park or mountain to hike and try local food.

  • × Douglas Barahona

    Douglas Barahona

    Lead Systems Engineer

    Douglas got involved in technology in 1999 at the age of 14 when his parents bought the first computer for him and his older brother. After 1 year of use he discovered Linux and felled in love with it. Douglas then spent his high-school years installing and trying multiple Linux distributions, installing packages, applications and researching/learning about operating systems in general.

    At the age of 21 he got his first IT related job as a Junior System Administrator in a small tech company where he got the opportunity to use and grow his knowledge about operating systems, hardware, networking and technology in general.

    In 2008 Douglas joined the Systems Administration team at San Services, an affiliate of Sandals and Beaches resorts were he started to take his skills to the next level. Douglas, along with a team of 2 system administrators, built 2 big data centers for web applications from scratch (hardware, hypervisor, operating systems and applications configuration) and 2 small data centers for financial data bases. He also played a key role implementing DevOps practices by automating tasks and processes with bash scripting, Rundeck and Puppet, implementing CI/CD pipelines for applications lifecycle and dockerizing new and legacy applications.

    During his last years at San Services Douglas was the IT – Infrastructure Manager, in charge of data center and cloud operations for the entire organization.

    He got his hands into WordPress for the first time in 2013 when he was building his personal blog douglasbarahona.com (now running in ghost xD but will switch it back to WordPress for sure). From that moment, he was amazed at how simple WordPress is for the average user but also how robust and scalable it is for large and highly available applications.

    Outside of work Douglas spends his time running, playing football (soccer) and spending quality time with his 2 daughters and beautiful wife.

  • × Eugene Manuilov

    Eugene Manuilov

    Lead Web Engineer

    Eugene’s adventures in engineering started in the late 90’s when he learned Pascal. After his time with Pascal, he worked with Delphi, C++, and C#, eventually digging into PHP in 2009. Eugene spent some time with frameworks like Symfony and Zend, before finding the platform he decided he wanted to concentrate on in 2011: WordPress.

    Since 2011, Eugene has been a freelancer (in the top 10% for PHP on StackOverflow), Senior WordPress Developer at an agency, and a Lead Developer at WPMU Dev. He has an affinity for normalized, maintainable, clean code, and clearly loves a challenge.

    In his spare time, he likes a good chess match, skiing in the winter, and “building his own death star to rule the world”.

  • × Felicity Hollis

    Felicity Hollis

    Team Lead

    She brings with her not only knowledge and experience from 10up projects (Google Site Kit, Snow) but also a wealth of knowledge from previous agencies who specialized in strategic user experience design and e commerce web design.

    Felicity’s love of digital started 14 years ago when she was client-side at one of the world’s leading department store’s, Selfridges, in London. She jumped at the chance to be part of the team to create and launch the first ever Selfridges retailing website and hasn’t looked back since.

    After spending 7 years in the digital fashion industry, Felicity had the opportunity to be a part of a large re platforming project at Harrods where she fell in love with project management and took this as an opportunity to move over to an agency to enable her to work with a wider range of clients and industries. Since then, over the last 7 years, she has worked as a Project Manager with big tech companies, fintech, local authorities, and charities and has managed a variety of different projects and products, from CMS migrations, to full web redesigns and web and app builds. She has a passion for working collaboratively with cross-disciplinary teams and clients, understanding business goals and making them a reality.

    Felicity loves traveling and recently got snowed in when visiting Munich! Outside of work, you will find her exploring her new city and state with her partner Matt and her rescue dog Heidi! She also loves live music and festivals and is looking forward to some better weather for them in California!

  • × Gabriel Rose

    Gabriel Rose

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Gabriel is a multidisciplinary problem-solver obsessed with creative solutions and discovering the “why” behind everything. Gabriel began their journey as a drafter and painter, studying visual art and art history before going on to obtain their BFA in Graphic Design in 2014. An obsession with the technical side of design inevitably led them to web development, and a job working as a web designer and developer at Mark&Phil, a nonprofit-focused web agency in Poughkeepsie, New York.

    It was at Mark&Phil that Gabriel became involved in the Hudson Valley tech community, working alongside local leaders to establish the Hudson Valley Tech Meetup, an organization that now has over 3,000 members and hosts bi-monthly talks in the Hudson Valley region of New York.

    Not long after, Gabriel would continue on to work at another agency. They quickly established themselves as a thought leader in front-end development at the company, developing sites for Fortune 500 companies while taking ownership of a codebase powering over 1,000 web properties. A firm believer that the internet can be both beautiful and accessible, Gabriel’s work has earned numerous MarCom Awards while being built for accessibility at all levels.

    Gabriel lives in Troy, New York and spends much of their time outdoors mountain biking, hiking, and swimming. They love 70s–90s cinema, video games, good sci-fi novels, and their spoiled rotten cat, Adelaide. When not at home or outdoors, Gabriel volunteers with the various trail conferences throughout the Hudson Valley—such as the NYNJ Trail Conference—working to build and maintain hiking and biking trails.

  • × Gareth Simms

    Gareth Simms

    Lead New Client Strategist

    Gareth Simms brings 7 years of experience in technology sales across various agencies, service providers, and vendors. He commenced his career as a junior business development manager in cybersecurity and later transitioned into enterprise sales and the CMS world in 2018 upon joining Sitecore. During his tenure at Sitecore, Gareth played a pivotal role in generating some of the largest value opportunities in the EMEA region.

    Subsequently, Gareth moved into a leadership role, spearheading new business efforts at the design and build agency LAB Group. Here, he not only created the company’s most significant new business opportunity with Superdry but also contributed to the co-development of the entire new business strategy.

    After being approached by 10up, Gareth became enthusiastic about the prospect of joining the top enterprise WordPress agency to advance his career and assist 10up in acquiring new brands for digital projects in 2024.

    Beyond his professional pursuits, Gareth has explored his passion for the arts and culture by working as a film critic. He is an avid traveler and a dedicated follower of Chelsea Football Club, although he humorously acknowledges that these days, the less said about the team, the better.

  • × Garth Gutenberg

    Garth Gutenberg

    Lead Web Engineer

    A self-taught technologist, Garth got his start coding at the age of 7 on his Atari 600XL. Throughout his teenage years, he became adept with DOS and the IBM PC. In 1996, he built his first website – a Kraft Dinner fan page.

    Over the years he has straddled the line between managing infrastructure and writing code. His first job fresh out of high school was at a company that wrote networking software (before it was built into the OS). From there he went on to work at IBM and other companies, and by 25 he was an infrastructure architect.

    Garth had always desired freedom from the office, and when he discovered WordPress this dream became a reality. Doing freelance WordPress work allowed him to travel and work at the same time. After a few years living in Asia, Garth moved back to Canada where he was fortunate to work on some high-profile WordPress sites including Canada.com and TheUPSStore.ca. After a couple of years in Canada, Garth again longed to be back on the road (read: away from winter) and became what is now commonly referred to as a Digital Nomad. For nearly a decade, Garth traveled around Latin America, and a few years ago decided to settle in Ecuador. During this time he’s worked for a number of US and Canadian companies doing a combination of development, DevOps, team leadership, and project management. At Weever Apps he led a DevOps team that built a complete operational infrastructure-as-code on AWS including CI pipelines. At Amplify Education he built a WordPress development team from the ground up, led the team from both a technical and business perspective, and optimized developer workflow via code and repeatable processes.

    Garth now lives in rural Ecuador with his Colombian wife Maria and three cats, Paloma, Pepe Le Pew, and Coco Chanel. His goal is to open a community computer/maker lab where locals can learn about technology and discover new opportunities.

  • × Jacob Dubail

    Jacob Dubail

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Jacob Dubail built his first website as a high school sophomore on San Juan Island in 2000. While attending Occidental College, he studied Urban Environmental Policy, completing a variety of independent research projects in Asia and South America. He rediscovered web design in 2008, building and maintaining a variety of websites for nonprofit clients.

    In 2010, Jacob founded a web development consultancy, building a portfolio of clients from industries ranging from media, tech, manufacturing, nonprofit, and e-commerce. With WordPress as his CMS of choice, Jacob engineered custom themes and solutions tailored to each client’s needs.

    From 2018-2021, Jacob expanded his toolkit to include JavaScript frameworks and headless WordPress. He is thrilled to be bringing his skills and experience to the 10up team.

    Jacob resides on Whidbey Island on ten acres of beautiful forested property, on which he designed and built a custom home. While not parenting his two children or coding, you can find him playing ultimate frisbee, woodworking, or homesteading.

  • × James Morrison

    James Morrison

    Lead Web Engineer

    James has been interested in the web since the mid-1990’s when his Dad bought a family computer and he worked out how to plug in a modem. Discovering the “view source” link in a browser opened up a new world and he quickly learned how the structure of a page was made.

    Despite a small setback when he took a computer apart, rebuilt it, and strangely it stopped working, over the next ten years, he taught himself how to program, build websites and discovered WordPress. After helping a few local businesses with their sites, he realized this was the beginning of a career began working full-time as a freelance developer.

    Following this, James was invited to join a Brighton-based agency as a WordPress developer where he worked on (literally) hundreds of projects of all sizes and complexity, providing support, consultancy and engineered innovative solutions to complex challenges. Additionally, he was responsible for defining and introducing processes and mentoring and training colleagues.

    Of many notable accomplishments, two that he is particularly proud of are: helping a global brand to significantly reduce page load times through an analytical investigation of their infrastructure and the implementation of a series of improvements; and building a bespoke Multisite setup to allow sub-sub-sub-sub-directory (you get the picture) mapping through a custom ‘sunrise’ process. The clients’ in-house team had spent months trying to accomplish this, and it was gratifying to see how happy they were once this was complete.

    James never stops learning and loves to explore new technologies and being intellectually challenged. He has given talks at WordCamp Brighton and Manchester and local WordPress meetups and has a keen interest in WordPress Multisite, infrastructure, and process automation.

    In his spare time, James spends time with his two (soon to be three!!) children, swimming, reading and working on side projects. And playing with Lego—who doesn’t love Lego?

  • × Jillian Breton

    Jillian Breton

    Team Lead

    With over 8 years of experience in the web industry, Jillian’s skills include customer service, project management, quality assurance, content deployment and time management.

    Jillian began her career as a Web Developer, earning her Bachelor’s of Science in Interactive Media from Fitchburg State University in 2014. While working full-time as a developer at a US defense contractor, she went back to school and earned her Master’s of Science in Project Management from Northeastern University in 2018, before switching gears to be a full-time Project Manager at a small digital agency.

    As a Project Manager, Jillian was able to utilize her experience as a developer to bridge the gap between technical team members and clients. Her clients included a wide range of industries, including utilities, insurance, banks, services, and state agencies. While managing 20+ projects at a time, she also assisted with quality assurance, content deployment, strategy, and helped to mentor new team members, all while successfully delivering projects on time and on budget.

    Jillian’s eye for detail and dependable nature made her a reliable resource for team members who needed a second set of eyes on deliverables before they were sent to a client. Those same attributes also helped her to build a strong rapport with her clients, who would often reach out for advice, guidance, training and feedback before pushing changes live. Jillian’s willingness to roll up her sleeves and jump in to help both clients and team members is also attributed to her strong knowledge of CMS Platforms such as Sitefinity and Drupal.

    Outside of work, Jillian enjoys spending time with her husband and their 3 fur-babies, Rocky Balboa, Jack Sparrow and Oliver. She also enjoys crafting, lazy Sunday’s watching movies & shows with her husband, and playing video games.

  • × John Matheson

    John Matheson

    Lead Quality Assurance Specialist

    John began his career in QA over 9 years ago when he did a side project testing the interface at the car rental company he was working for and he decided “I enjoy this much more than what I am currently doing”. That enjoyment allowed John to build the foundation for a successful career.

    Most of his time has been spent working with an ad agency where he has done both retail and loyalty landing pages, complex CMS Rewards Sites, or high volume emails. Testing on all sorts of platforms such as desktop, mobile, and applications working with his team to get the project done correctly and on time. He is looking forward to diving into word press and beginning the next step in his career at 10up.

    During his free time you are very likely to find John spending time at his golf course with his wife Matti. Xbox and golf! Cartoons and golf! Working out in his garage gym and then… you guessed it, golfing in his garage! With all of the time John has put in at the golf course he can proudly say he has gone from not very good to totally average. If you find yourself in Minnesota, reach out! He would love to take you out to play 9!

  • × Jon Christensen

    Jon Christensen

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Jon has always had an interest in design and technology, computers in particular. He started learning how to code in high school, and built his first computer shortly thereafter.

    After getting a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Graphic Design, he dove into the digital design world via the mid-west marketing agency scene. Working mainly with small businesses, as well as a few larger clients, he worked on making great solutions for all involved using the design foundations he learned at school as well as with clean code. Because of this bridging of skill sets, Jon has gone from designer, to hybrid front end developer, over to a full front end developer position.

    He is always interested in the new and shiny things in the web world with CSS and JS, including flexbox, grid, front end frameworks, and the constant flow of new and updated APIs. That doesn’t mean he drops everything to go after them though. He believes in getting solutions that work for users first, with emphasis on performance and accessibility. For these reasons and more, Jon was drawn to working with 10up.

    The self-proclaimed “all around nerd” also does plenty of things outside of work, including playing various board, tabletop, and computer games with friends, following local and national hockey, spending time with his family, and of course adding to his growing fantasy weapons collection.

  • × Jonee Austin

    Jonee Austin

    Senior Team Lead

    With a background in project management, account, and strategy, Jonee brings a wealth of experience to every project. Having worked for Fortune 500 companies and marketing agencies in various roles, she can ensure clients and her team know they have someone who has walked in their ‘project’ shoes.

    Jonee began her career at Intel with the Intel Inside Marketing Program in operations working globally to standardize process and develop a workflow intranet application which launched her career in digital project management. Work moves kept her on the go across the country until she landed in Manhattan. Working with agencies in New York, Jonee led digital initiatives in healthcare, beauty, pharma and consumer goods. In her last agency role, Jonee built a PM department while leading the production, copy and QA teams. Upon leaving agency life, she traveled throughout South America before settling in California to develop and launch an organic skin care line.

    Jonee is passionate about working collaboratively to find solutions to what may seem like impossible challenges. With a Masters degree in Conflict Resolution and Negotiation, she believes in the power of open conversation to solve even the most challenging of conflicts. A dedication to efficiency, positive outlook and collaborative approach ensures her team and clients have successful projects!

    A nomad at heart, Jonee is currently settled in Breckenridge, Colorado enjoying the mountain life. Her love of hiking, yoga, painting and cooking keeps her busy! An avid reader, you can probably find a book you have in common. She also plans to explore snowshoeing and maybe even learn how to cross-country ski!

  • × Karine Do

    Karine Do

    Lead Front End Engineer

    It was in middle school that Karine made her first awkward website. Her love affair with WordPress started in 2004 after she made the switch from Movable Type to build personal websites.

    After graduating from business school in France, Karine has worked for two years in South Korea as a project manager in charge of Facebook campaigns for clients like Air France and as a frontend developer, one of the websites she built won “Site of the Day” from Awwwards. Her travel bug made her leave the land of the morning calm for California, and she joined Brainstorm Media in the summer of 2013. Her relationship with WordPress got very serious and led her to 10up.

    Karine has a hard time parting from her computer but when her fingers are not glued to a keyboard, she loves eating, hoarding pictures, and traveling. After spending some time in the U.S. and Canada, she is currently living in Paris, her hometown.

  • × Kate Hutchinson

    Kate Hutchinson

    Senior Team Lead

    Kate comes to 10up with a wide range of Account and Project Management experience. Following her graduation from the University Of Connecticut School Of Business in 2011, she has worked for a handful of top tier Digital Marketing agencies and excels in the management of large-scale website development projects. Alongside her technical background managing websites across a variety of Content Management Systems, Kate has experience leading Omni-channel marketing accounts as well as strategic re-brands, video production, photoshoots, and CRM integrations.

    In her previous roles, Kate advanced from Digital Project Manager to Senior Project Manager and eventually assumed leadership of an entire Project Management Department. In this capacity, she oversaw some of the largest client accounts at the agency and played a key role in hiring, managing, and training the Project Management team.

    With a true Project Management mindset, Kate enjoys the challenge of transforming high-level strategic ideas into reality. Like piecing together a puzzle, she helps break down complex concepts into actionable steps, ensuring that everyone stays on track towards delivering exceptional work.

    When she’s not working, Kate can be found hiking in the woods behind her home in Connecticut, traveling with her family to new and exciting destinations, or down by the shore spending weekends on the water fishing.

  • × Keith Kropski

    Keith Kropski

    Associate Director of Client Delivery

    Keith’s journey to the world of project management began with late nights in the studio at WCVF-FM, the college radio station at SUNY Fredonia, where he worked as program director. During these early days, Keith discovered the importance of good management and the art of storytelling. Nearly a decade later, he continues to be passionate about connecting content creators with the rest of the world. This is why he loves WordPress: it’s a unique communication platform that allows stories to be told and voices to be heard.

    After graduating from SUNY Fredonia, Keith moved to New York City, where he worked for CBS Local, managing 100+ WordPress websites for CBS owned and operated TV/Radio stations around the country. In 2013, he joined Fusion Media Network as a product manager and launched Fusion’s inaugural website. Later, he oversaw the company’s migration from a proprietary CMS to WordPress and was instrumental in developing custom publishing tools for the editorial team during his time there.

    Keith has a passion for hiking, biking, backpacking, and all things outdoors. He enjoys exploring the diverse landscape, food carts, and craft beer of the Pacific Northwest and is a big supporter of the Portland Timbers. Keith grew up in Buffalo, NY and by nature is also a diehard Buffalo Bills fan who emphatically professes “this will be our year!” at the start of every season.

  • × Kristina Corbitt

    Kristina Corbitt

    Team Lead

    Kristina is a natural-born organizer and leader with over 14 years experience in project and program management. She was drawn to 10up by her love for WordPress and best-in-class delivery.

    After graduating from Pacific Lutheran University, with a senior thesis proving the superior real-world applications of a theater degree over a business degree, Kristina advised and trained design-build professionals on effective project management and project communication.

    She then proved her project management prowess through many roles (project manager, training manager, community manager, and eventually Director of Success Management) at LexBlog, the WordPress agency for the legal industry. Her contributions were pivotal in transforming the agency from startup to global SaaS provider – built on WordPress – with a broad subscription base.

    Before joining 10up, Kristina led successful delivery and deployment (<1% error rate) of 800+ email and SMS deployments and 750+ customer lists monthly for T-Mobile through Wunderman Thompson – a renowned global digital agency.

    Offline, Kristina enjoys a range of active hobbies including (but not limited to) backpacking, skiing, cooking, dog training, improv theater, softball, global travel, and building complex spreadsheets to catalog and analyze various aspects of her life.

  • × Krystal Crowe

    Krystal Crowe

    Lead Account Strategist

    Krystal Crowe is a strategic powerhouse in the digital agency realm, bringing over 15 years of experience. With a robust background in marketing and web development project management, her transition into website strategy was propelled by a passion for SEO and data analytics.

    Krystal’s journey to 10up was motivated by her ambition to apply her extensive digital strategy expertise on a larger scale. At 10up she aims to leverage her skills in strategic consulting to drive innovative web development projects, ensuring they meet the highest standards of performance and user engagement.

    Outside of her professional life, Krystal is deeply invested in her community: serving on the boards of Nova Counseling Services and Run for Recovery, and contributing with her skills as a VEX Robotics Club coach. Her commitment to personal growth and community service is further exemplified by her work with the International Society of Ocular Oncology and her leadership in a prominent SEO Mastermind Group.

    In her personal time, Krystal enjoys renovating her historic home, weight training, and supporting her daughter at swim meets, illustrating a well-rounded life dedicated to professional excellence, community involvement, and family.

  • × Laura Lussier

    Laura Lussier

    Lead Project Manager

    Laura first got her start in project management back in college as a producer directing animated shorts at the Art Institute of Los Angeles. Back then she didn’t know what project management was, or that it could be a career. What she did know was that she loved helping highly talented people get together and produce great work.

    After college, she wandered the digital web as a freelance copywriter until 2012 where she landed a job as a project manager with a WordPress development agency. Already familiar with WordPress to launch her freelance business, she excelled in her new role, pivoting to manage WordPress developers instead of digital artists, to create beautiful, efficiently built websites. It was during this time that Laura truly fell in love with the platform, and its ability to make content creation as simple and intuitive as possible for everyday users like herself.

    In 2016, she moved to content26, a digital ad agency whose bread and butter was helping manufacturers compete on shopping giant Amazon. Here she got her real taste for enterprise clients, managing the digital catalogs of big brands like Newell, Abbott, Unilever, Belkin, and Coty.

    Her two crowning moments were first with Newell, leading a giant digital catalog refresh that averaged 1000 new product descriptions per month across 8 different brands. Then most recently with Coty, managing a team of advertising strategists that resulted in her client reporting a net positive return on their ecommerce business within 3 months of engagement.

    It was at content26 that the first thing she ever learned and loved about project management came back full circle: unblocking talented people so they can do their best work. Laura loved being the pillar that her team relied on, first as a Sr. Project Manager, and then as a Manager of the PMO team, helping her project managers, writers, editors, designers, and strategists focus on their best work while she handled all the nitty gritty details. Under her watch, she made sure everyone was marching in the right direction. This drive to help teams run to their best ability is a passion and a calling that she now brings to 10up.

    Outside of work, Laura is an avid reader and loves to both write and draw (she can do math too!). A former animator and digital artist, you can find her sharpening her drawing skills on her tablet, or working on her next urban fantasy novel with her writing partner. Laura lives with her husband and two silly furballs in Washington State, but more often can be found roaming the landscape of Eorzea on Final Fantasy 14.

  • × Lauren Jones

    Lauren Jones

    Team Lead

    LJ graduated from James Madison University’s School of Media Arts and Design with a B.A. in Corporate Communications. While in college, LJ was very involved with the tour guide program, and actually got her first job at a PR agency after impressing the Vice President of the agency on a tour. During her time in public relations, LJ sharpened her client communications skills and developed an enthusiasm for project management.

    In 2018, LJ transitioned to a full-service creative agency as the only project manager on staff. During her tenure, she created the agency’s project management processes, including the hiring, onboarding, and training resulting in the growth of an entire project management team. She has experience leading projects across multiple marketing mediums such as, website development, graphic design, video production, content creation, and brand strategy.

    Today, LJ joins 10up with nearly a decade of client relations and project management experience, having worked with some of the most innovative cybersecurity and technology companies. Over the course of her career, she has led hundreds of WordPress and Hubspot projects ranging from marketing landing pages, microsites, interactive calculators, entire website builds, and more.

    LJ’s passion for project management centers around refining processes and enhancing overall efficiency of her teams. With an eye for detail, keen organization skills, and a sharp intuition, LJ serves as the vital connection between agency and client through the entire project lifecycle. She believes in fostering an empathetic and collaborative work environment, and that injecting humor into the workplace is a must!

    Outside of work, LJ is an avid supporter of the USWNT, and even sat in the front row of the 2019 World Cup championship game when they won! She currently resides in Pittsburgh with her partner, two cats, and a turtle. She enjoys reading, finding new recipes to try, playing endless hours of Stardew Valley, and staying active.

  • × Lukas Pawlik

    Lukas Pawlik

    Lead Web Engineer

    Lukas is a typical IT geek. He has been working in the field of development for over 14 years. Everything started in a small, Polish town, when his parents bought him his first Commodore C64 computer. Without any doubts, Lukas knew that computers would become his biggest passion. At the age of 14 he created his first ‘database’ application that was an easy phone book. Two years later his first PC computer helped him to develop the hobby.

    In 2001, Lukas started his professional career as a network administrator and was quickly hired as a developer in big Polish IT companies. He needed the next five years to work up the nerve to follow his dreams of becoming self-employed. With the Master Degree of Science, a scholarship for education results and strong experience he decided to give it a go and run his own business. Within the next 9 years, Lukas created, developed and serviced plenty of applications (from financial and sales systems to web portals with over 1,000,000 viewers per month) in various technologies like LAMP stack, Java and ASP.net.

    Some time ago Lukas felt tired of being a manager, seller, employee and employer in one and started to work abroad remotely for Timely Network Inc. that provides a famous All In One Event Calendar Plugin with more than 100,000 active installs. By looking for more challenging work 10up seemed perfect place for developing his biggest love.

    Lukas says that he is a creator rather than a craftsman, mostly focused on WordPress. He can barely be seen around any other place than his computers. But when he is off the computer it means he travels the world with his wife, walks with the dog Rosia (that he fell in love in a dog shelter) or is just watching American TV series, Discovery or National Geographic channels.

  • × Martina Haines

    Martina Haines

    Senior Team Lead

    Martina (PMP) holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Victoria (Canada) and a joint Masters of Science in Viticulture and Oenology from Montpellier SupAgro (France) & Hochschule Geisenheim University (Germany).

    Martina started her career at an integrated agency in 2004 and has worked as a digital project manager, in Canada, the UK and continental Europe, since 2007. Over the years, she has been lucky enough to work with incredible clients and project teams to plan and deliver a multitude of
    large, international digital projects, notably for Nissan, Infiniti, Citibank, Gucci and Adidas.

    Outside of project management, Martina loves making barrel-fermented Chardonnay, practicing Ashtanga yoga and discovering France (her home since 2015).

  • × Max Brutus

    Max Brutus

    Team Lead (QA)

    It was by accident that Max got his start in QA over 20 years ago. With hopes of becoming a developer, Max quickly realized he was more excited by breaking things than deep diving into the code to fix the root cause. Transitioning into QA was a natural fit for Max.

    Having served as the Lead QA Engineer on Netflix, Apple, Merck, and others alike, Max is able to comfortably thrive under pressure to exceed clients expectations. Despite having several years of experience, Max is constantly learning and growing on a day-to-day basis in order to take on the next challenge he’s faced with; whether big or small.

    When Max isn’t busy dissecting software and “squashing” bugs, he enjoys beach days here in the Carolinas with his family and playing golf with his son regularly. Max’s true passion is collecting vinyl records and sample based music production.

  • × Michael Phillips

    Michael Phillips

    Lead Web Engineer

    Michael’s digital journey began in 1997 after his parents bought their first computer. Suddenly, he had a lot of “homework” that required Internet access.

    Michael has been solving problems as a web designer and developer professionally since 2005. An appetite for learning has led him to acquire a broad range of skills: he has built full-featured web apps, designed front-end interfaces, released an iOS app, and even dabbled in Ruby on Rails. After trying every publishing platform on the planet, and working on a team that wrote their own CMS, Michael became hooked on WordPress, and has been building on it ever since.

    When Michael unplugs, he enjoys spending time with his wife and dog, roasting coffee, CrossFit, and attempting to play his favorite Beethoven Piano Sonatas.

  • × Nicolas Knight

    Nicolas Knight

    Lead User Experience Designer

    Nicolas is a visual thinker and a proud generalist. He discovered the world of experience design 12 years ago when he co-founded a mental toughness training startup, where he spent his days creating immersive training experiences to help athletes stay composed under pressure.

    Later, he traversed the digital landscape learning everything from coding WordPress shortcodes, building design systems, visual storytelling to optimizing conversion funnels. At his previous digital agency, he launched successful first-to-market SaaS products, helped many eCommerce sites grow their revenue, and built sustainable CMS ecosystems for nonprofit organizations.

    Nicolas is thrilled to join 10up and to continue making the web a high-signal, low-noise, and meaningful place.

    When not working, Nicolas enjoys spending time with his wife and his two toddlers, getting dirty in his no-till garden, practicing natural movement outdoors and enjoying a good paleo meal.

  • × Nikki Jones

    Nikki Jones

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Nikki’s passion for web development lies at the intersection of art and science. She enjoys building equally complex and beautiful digital experiences. Nikki majored in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria, spending the majority of her time in the sculpture studio. She went on to complete the Technical Web Design program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and fell in love with designing in code.

    Nikki delivers a high level of polish and interaction in her work. She loves a good challenge, and enjoys how there’s always something new to learn in web development. She’s interested in the latest web dev trends and is excited to push the boundaries of technology and design in the WordPress community. Nikki specializes in collaborating with visual designers to bring their visions to life through CSS transitions and JavaScript animations.

    Prior to joining 10up, Nikki worked at a Canadian digital agency, leading the development of award winning work from E-commerce to Education. Her work has been featured in CSS Design Awards and recently won Best in Visual Appeal by W3Awards for a Headless B2B e-commerce web application.

    When she’s not fixating on the details of a UI, she can be found purchasing one too many plants or at a local coffee shop. She enjoys interior decorating, making digital art with her stylus, and running along the seawall in beautiful Vancouver, BC.

  • × Peter Sorensen

    Peter Sorensen

    Lead Web Engineer

    Peter has been developing for the web full-time since 2012. Unsure what to do after graduating with a philosophy degree from Indiana University, he started working on an orchard in Pennsylvania. As an excuse to get out off the tractor, he taught himself how to build a farm equipment inventory application with PHP and MySQL. He’s been hooked ever since.

    Over the next four years, Peter worked as an in-house developer at a consultancy firm, converting their large static editorial website to a proper content management system, expanding the site’s e-commerce functionality, and implementing paid membership restriction—all with the power of WordPress.

    Peter prides himself on clean, organized code and is always excited to learn new technologies. Prior to joining 10up, he contributed to various WordPress plugins including Restrict Content Pro and 10up’s own ElasticPress.

    In his spare time, Peter enjoys playing music and exploring the northwest with his partner, Christine, and his dog, CJ.

  • × Peter Wilson

    Peter Wilson

    Lead Engineer

    Peter is a web and CMS developer with more than twenty years of experience working on large scale sites for national media organizations and global brands. Since 2015 he has been a committer to WordPress.

    Peter has been building websites since the days when pages were structured with tables to the ever increasing complexity of large scale web applications. He’s embraced change in the landscape of web development in its many iterations, either in working for himself in his own boutique agency (Soupgiant) building breadth of projects for others (Floate Partners, Human Made), or when the project has been of fascinating scale, confining himself to building and sustaining single products for national media outlets (Nine Media) .

    Peter has joined 10up as Lead Engineer on the open source practices team where he is energized to continue his long standing contribution to the WordPress project as a core committer, contributing to the development WordPress and providing code review to other contributors. He currently maintains the Cron and Roles & Capabilities components.

    As a big fan of musical theatre, Peter takes every opportunity to travel to see the next big show, or revisit old favourites. He will happily encourage his friends, family, and colleagues to join him for a show or two in New York or in the West End whenever the opportunity arises.

  • × Rachael Cortellessa

    Rachael Cortellessa

    Lead UX Designer

    An avid creative, Rachael has always been a believer in the power of storytelling. She loves that UX puts her at the cross-section of user empathy and brand personality, challenging her to constantly ideate on innovative ways to enhance the web experience for all walks of life.

    With both agency and in-house experience, she’s worked with a variety of clients and companies, including nonprofits, travel, education, and SaaS. She has years of experience bringing brands to life through human-centered design and effective storytelling techniques.

    Rachael discovered her passion for combining compelling content and expressive design early on. In addition to receiving a Bachelor of Science in photojournalism from Boston University, she spent a semester polishing her interview techniques on staff at a music magazine in London, England as part of a work-study program. Her varied background in communications has been instrumental in helping her develop collaborative partnerships and bring brands to life over the course of her career.

    When Rachael isn’t strategizing for 10up, she’s tasting her way through Boston’s food scene, traveling the world with her husband, and cuddling with her French bulldog, Macaroon.

  • × Ravi Chandra

    Ravi Chandra

    Staff Engineer

    Ravi started his career at Dell in the Inside Sales department. A major part of his day-to-day included working on reports. Given his curious nature, he started playing with Excel VBA and got sucked into the programming world. This new found interest brought about a career change and he hasn’t looked back since.

    Dell afforded him the opportunity to shift roles to better align with his interests. So after learning and working on multiple languages including PHP, Javascript and C#, he earned the title of Software Analyst. While working for Dell, Ravi helped shape up a new Order Routing and Fulfillment process for the Americas region. Thanks to his efforts, the team was able to migrate all existing applications into one unified model.

    Post-Dell, Ravi took up freelancing and was able to work on on a wide variety of platforms. Through freelancing, Ravi eventually discovered WordPress. Due to the flexibility and ease of use, he fell in love with the CMS. It became his platform of choice and he has been exploring the depths of WordPress ever since, creating themes and plugins, on a regular basis.

    When Ravi is not working, he enjoys playing cricket, playing chess, traveling and watching movies.

  • × Ryan Leeson

    Ryan Leeson

    Lead Web Engineer

    Ryan has a rich background in systems administration and software development, beginning with building computers and networks in high school and college. His career started at a hosting company where he developed internal web management tools for automating deployments. This early experience led him to support his wife’s web comic, combining WordPress and ComicPress for their publishing platform.

    Transitioning to a control systems integration company, Ryan specialized in building human-machine interfaces and data collection dashboards for chemical and pharmaceutical production facilities. His passion for software design and development led him to a digital agency where he spearheaded front-end development for enterprise financial clients and took technical ownership of a custom .NET eCommerce platform rebuilt on Azure. His work included a long-term retainer building and transitioning an enterprise financial clients news and social media channel sites to WordPress VIP and developing editorial and governance plugins using VueJS and the REST API.

    Believing in WordPress as a platform and embracing remote work, Ryan joined a fully remote agency as a WordPress Technical Lead and Staff Engineer. He oversaw large municipal and non-profit builds and migrations, developing open-source libraries to streamline Node package management and support React apps in any application, as well as content migration directly into Gutenberg blocks.

    Outside of work, Ryan enjoys spending time with his wife and two sons, hiking, running, reading, and playing video or board games. A long-time yoga practitioner, he also looks forward to more time playing guitar as his sons grow older.

  • × Sam Brodie

    Sam Brodie

    Lead JavaScript Engineer

    Sam is a developer with a passion for developing innovative solutions to tough problems. He started developing on WordPress 2.7, and has been developing with WordPress ever since.

    In 2013, he founded a productized design agency offering web design and marketing services to the legal industry. He built a proprietary front-end builder for this agency before other WordPress front-end builders existed to give his agency a competitive advantage. He grew that agency for 3 years before selling it in 2016.

    After that, Sam was an early adopter of headless WordPress, using it to power several SaaS applications with React front ends in the cold email space. This gave him the opportunity to design APIs, efficient database structures, UI/UX, and more. While building these, Sam also would speak at WordCamps about productized web design, and growing an agency.

    When not writing code, Sam can be found writing lofi hip hop, playing one of a bunch of different sports, hiking, or trying to build stuff out of wood.

  • × Sergio Santos

    Sergio Santos

    Lead Web Engineer

    Sergio has been around computers since the age of three. His first computer was an Atari 600XL, followed by an Atari 130XE where later, with the help of his father, he started developing a computer game based on the cartoons of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote.

    After graduating from the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Lisbon with a degree in Computer Science, Sergio started working as a Java developer for banks, insurance companies, and telcos. Always passionate about the web, in 2011 he started working full-time as a web developer and discovered WordPress.

    Before joining 10up, Sergio spent four years as a WordPress consultant, working on projects for local broadcasting corporations, retailers, media and newspaper companies.

    Sergio is an open-source advocate. You’ll find some of his contributions on GitHub and in the WordPress repository where he has released and maintains some plugins. He is also involved in the Portuguese WordPress community through his attendance at meetups and WordCamps. He was also one of the co-organizers of WordCamp Lisbon 2017.

    Outside of work, when he is not spending time with his wife and two kids, is always finding ways to expand his knowledge. He also likes to hang out with friends, play board games, travel and watch TV series and movies.

  • × Simon Dowdles

    Simon Dowdles

    Lead Web Engineer

    After graduating with an advanced diploma in Multimedia Design & Production, Simon strayed somewhat from the design aspect of his studies and taught himself how to develop. Simon hit the the web development ground running with PHP development as his sole focus, building sites on Joomla, CakePHP and various other frameworks and platforms. During his experience, Simon has worked, contributed and played key roles in the production of sites relating to key brands such as Cape Town Tourism, Mens Health, Womens Health & Eventful Conferences to name but a few. Simon has also contributed web development work for international brands such as Deloitte.

    Simons true talent lies in his holistic understanding of the many functional and programmatic layers of the web, and how they come together to form beautiful web applications. His depth of knowledge in PHP is only rivaled by his experience and aptitude with the front-end and its related technologies such as Node, Angular, Electron and Ionic, to name a few.

    Simon has had his fair share of lecturing at the Cape Town based Friends of Design – School of Digital Arts, where he co-authored and co-lectured courses for corporates, students and working professionals. It was there that he got his first taste of the WordPress. This led Simon to curate and lecture the WordPress Essentials course, where he taught amateur developers. Since then, Simon has held positions that have always involved WordPress development, and he is also part of the development team for one of the most highly rated podcasting plugins on the WordPress Plugin Directory, “Seriously Simple Podcasting”.

    Simon spends his down time mountain biking, surfing, and practicing his marksmanship at some of the Cape Towns outdoor shooting ranges. He’s an avid biker and car enthusiast.

  • × Stephanie Campbell

    Stephanie Campbell

    Lead Visual Designer, Platforms & Systems

    Stephanie Campbell started her design career in 2011 at a small mobile app agency in Orlando with aspirations to do big things in mobile. As a mobile evangelist, she had a passion for what was then the early stages of a growing industry in mobile applications. She quickly moved into agency life where for the last 9 years she has established a history of regulating design projects from conceptualization and prototyping to development and application. She has an extensive record of expanding usability, rejuvenating inefficient designs and steering large scale web implementations to successful and early completion.

    In her agency career, she has spearheaded large-scale revamps for reputable sports and medical clients including LPGA, ATP, NHRA, Maria Sharapova, Mayo Clinic and Orlando Health. This dedicated professional is adept in all areas of user experience and visual design with an enthusiasm for implementing user-centered design methodologies and lean UX principles at each stage of the design process.

    Outside of work you can find Stephanie on the water, soaking up the Florida sun on a massive wave behind her Air Nautique where she enjoys wake surfing or skating with her family. Prior to her design career, she spent over 5 years as a professional athlete in the Wake-boarding industry in Orlando. She has a passion for extreme sports she hopes or secretly requires be passed down to her children.

  • × Stephanie Walters

    Stephanie Walters

    Lead Web Engineer

    Stephanie has always loved to create. Whether it is writing music, sewing pillows, or a DIY woodworking project, she finds great joy in creating something from seemingly nothing. With that DIY spirit, Stephanie built her first website at the age of 13. In college, she had the opportunity to study web design and development more formally and went on to graduate summa cum laude from Rider University.

    She began her career as a freelancer but soon moved on to a fast-paced, global marketing services firm in 2010 as a frontend developer. Throughout her career, Stephanie has worked for multiple agencies and created custom solutions for a diverse range of clients including Fortune 500 companies and big pharmaceuticals, as well as small law practices and young start-ups. One of her projects even received recognition from the NJ Ad Club taking first place in the category of e-commerce.

    Stephanie was born and raised in New Jersey but currently resides in northern Virginia with her husband Darren and their two dogs, Emma and Bailey. She is an active member of the Potomac Curling Club, a yoga practitioner, and a New Jersey Devils hockey fan.

  • × Sudar Muthu

    Sudar Muthu

    Lead Web Engineer

    Sudar has been programming for more than a decade and is a polyglot. He has written production code in more than half a dozen programming languages – and most of it was using Vim!

    Sudar started his career as a web developer, working with various technologies and framework. He moved on to building distributed applications using MapReduce and other big data frameworks to process and mine huge amounts of data. Prior to joining 10up, Sudar worked at Yahoo Labs as a Research Engineer, where he analyzed user interaction data using machine learning techniques to better understand user behavior and interactions in web applications. His work resulted in increased conversions and improved user engagement.

    Sudar first discovered WordPress in late 2005 while searching for a self hosted blogging platform for his migration away from Blogger. After tinkering with WordPress for his blog, he published his first WordPress plugin in late 2007 and has since continued to release more than 20 plugins with a total of nearly half a million downloads.

    When he is not in front of a screen, Sudar enjoys reading and is a diehard fan of Isaac Asimov and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Other favorite pastimes include traveling, playing table tennis, tinkering with electronics and building small hobby robots.

  • × Tyler Bailey

    Tyler Bailey

    Lead Web Engineer

    Tyler is a self taught web engineer that got started in middle school. His knack for coding came along side his passion for skateboarding and videography. Before YouTube was a hit, Tyler filmed and edited skateboard videos of his friends. Needing a place to share his creations with the world, he built his first website. While a sophomore at Western Michigan University his hobby of coding became an obsession and a love for the open source community quickly grew.

    Before joining 10up, Tyler spent 6 years as Lead Developer at an agency out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In his time there, he led the development on several award-winning, enterprise level WordPress projects and consulted on the development of startup websites and applications around the country.

    Tyler’s passion for programming doesn’t just stop on the web, though. He also enjoys tinkering around with electronics and micro-controllers such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino. From motion activated “smart mirrors” to voice controlled R.C. cars, his house could soon look like something out of an Ironman movie.

    As an extreme sports enthusiast, Tyler can often be found at the local ski resort riding his snowboard or at the nearest paintball field getting some games in. In the summertime he enjoys golf, camping and riding his bike through the local trails.

  • × Ajay Maurya

    Ajay Maurya

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Ajay graduated with a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Mumbai. He has been programming for nearly a decade!

    During his college days, he got introduced to WordPress at a WordCamp and his life forever changed. He almost fell in love with WordPress, and since then, he has been a part of Mumbai’s WordPress Community. He has been volunteering and organizing WordCamp Mumbai since 2015.

    His professional experience includes designing and implementing web apps, product dashboards, and developing WordPress plugins.
    He has also got his hands dirty with Machine Learning and NLP.

    When he is AFK, he spends time with his family, cooking, Netflix, or explores local eateries while playing Pokemon Go (yes, he still plays Pokemon Go). If you can quote Friends, you will probably be best friends, everything else is moo.

  • × Aleksej Vukomanovic

    Aleksej Vukomanovic

    Senior Web Engineer

    Discovering web development as a self-taught enthusiast, Aleksej started his journey in freelancing, creating both free and premium plugins and scripts that found their way to the Envato market. Concurrently, he collaborated with a local company to craft a digital experience in the form of a website for one of Norway’s elementary schools. His commitment to open source bore fruit when one of his plugins touched the lives of over 7,000 users. As Aleksej honed his skills, he was recruited by Qode, the esteemed company behind the Bridge theme, one of the top-selling themes on the Envato market. At Qode, Aleksej played a role in building premium WordPress themes, further bolstering the company’s impressive portfolio.

    The allure of React and Node drew him to a startup dedicated to gamification for the online casino industry. It was here that his skills in React and React Native became pronounced. Outside of work, his inclination towards learning Kubernetes and Node manifested in a successful SaaS venture that was subsequently acquired. Then Transitioning back to a US based digital agency, Digital Silk, Aleksej predominantly focused on WordPress websites again, rapidly advancing to a lead role. He managed multiple teams, participated in sales calls as tech expert, and managed significant projects, including a big EV cars marketplace.

    It was 10up’s unwavering commitment to open-source, WordPress, and collaborative work that resonated deeply with Aleksej, making it an obvious next step in his professional journey.

    Away from the rigors of coding, Aleksej finds solace spending quality time with his wife and their playful chow-chow. Traveling to exotic locations, or spending time in spa offers him a rejuvenating escape, perfectly complementing his digitally-centered world.

  • × Alex Dimitrov

    Alex Dimitrov

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Alex is passionate about creating. Be it art, puzzles, web development, tools, or writing. He began his first steps in web designing at the age of 15, selling products on the most popular premium WordPress marketplace. In his earliest days, he has been through building Analog-looking clock in Pascal, C++, C programs and basic scripting, all leading to his love for all things web — new CSS technologies, React, Houdini APIs, 3D renders and more.

    Alex began his career as a designer, turned into a front-end developer, then into project and team lead. Having been in the WordPress community since 2012, he made his first core contributions a few years later. Alex has been helping and advising businesses to grow their web presence and help their editorial and marketing team meet their goals.

    Alex joins 10up after eight years of previous experience at a European WordPress agency. The drive for further growth and work with top-tier clients led him to join the 10up team, where he puts all the detail into crafting ever-growing and improving products, websites, and tools.

    Alex has built several open-source themes in the WordPress Repository, has several patches to the WordPress Core, and security-related contributions to the WordPress.org website. Had several talks in WordPress Meetups.

    In his spare time, Alex is working on more content for his blog, working on guides and videos, occasionally streaming and practicing his drawing, guitar or chess skills. Previously participated in international cycling races and became a top 5 country-wide track sprinter.

  • × Amanda Langworthy

    Amanda Langworthy

    Senior Content Designer

    Amanda is an advocate for users and stakeholders alike. She has been working in the content realm for many years, including stints in a museum and a software consultancy. but it was during her time at the City of Austin that she developed an advocacy mindset. She is passionate about co-designing solutions for complex content problems and creating infrastructure for sustainable content management. She believes that bringing clients along for the ride and getting them invested in best practices is the surest path to a successful project.

    Content design and strategy is Amanda’s second career. Her undergraduate degree is in film and she worked in production, out of New York City, for nearly a decade. She decided to make a change in 2016, enrolling in a Media Studies and Media Management master’s program at The New School. During the program, she interned on the web team at the Whitney Museum of American Art and took classes on design research. Even then, she had never heard of content strategy or content design, but she was on the path.

    Now, she is a seasoned content consultant, with experience in many sectors and a conference speaking engagement under her belt. Her favorite part about consulting is learning about topics and subject matter that she’d never be exposed to otherwise.

    During her free time, Amanda can be found at the movie theater or walking her dogs Arthur and Moose. She is new to Illinois and is working on spreading the gospel of Ranch Water to the local bartenders.

  • × Ames Plant

    Ames Plant

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Shortly after obtaining their Master’s degree in Computer Technology in Education, Ames joined Wisconsin’s only Macromedia Authorized Training Center, hired as the Lead Trainer for Director, Dreamweaver and Authorware. When they weren’t teaching, they were building Computer Based Training Courseware for Honda of America, Miller Brewing and MLS, all before Content Management Systems, like WordPress, grew in popularity.

    In 2002, Ames began their own Computer Training and Development Center, where they trained clients on how to build their own sites, which quickly lead them to explore using WordPress as an easy and quick way to get their sites launched and keep it updated.

    Looking for adventure and a change in pace, Ames sold their business, their car and their home and moved to Phuket (Poo-Ket), Thailand to teach STEM in a Bi-Lingual International School for several years.

    For the past 5 years, Ames has been involved in developing apps and websites in .Net, Python and React. They have a passion for making sites pixel perfect and responsive, while ensuring the CMS can easily be managed by their clients.

    Outside of coding for work, Ames likes tinkering with IoT using Arduinos and Raspberry Pis, cycling, kayaking, mountain biking, camping and all around enjoying nature.

  • × Andy Killworth

    Andy Killworth

    Senior Audience Growth Strategist

    Andy fell in love with the web in the late 90s and started learning HTML and CSS. He’s run his own affiliate marketing sites and went into SEO professionally in an agency and then in-house.

    Andy has been working in SEO for over 10 years, primarily as Head of SEO & Digital PR for a large affiliate marketing company. He’s an all-round SEO expert but has a particular love of SEO strategy and auditing.

    Whilst he’s worked on various CMSs, by far his favorite is WordPress, for its ease of use, extensibility, and user-friendly features.

    In his last role, he helped build an SEO team from the ground up, increasing the number of products looked after from 10 to 150. He has experience in many markets, including the US, Canada, New Zealand, UK, DACH and others.

    He’s well versed in setting and implementing organic search strategies for small to enterprise size sites and helping shape top quality content that ranks and converts.

    Before joining us he’s been a freelance SEO consultant providing advice and execution in verticals including finance, trading, professional development, legal tech, iGaming and project management.

    Andy is kept busy outside of work with his three children, and a love of long-distance running. He’s completed over 25 ultra marathons including three at the 100 mile distance.

  • × Ankit Gade

    Ankit Gade

    Senior Web Engineer

    Ankit is a self-learner who holds a passion for learning new tech. His first steps as a developer were taken during his college days when he purchased a Pentium-3 computer and started developing a couple of static sites with HTML, CSS and JavaScript. From there he developed an interest in web technologies and started delving into PHP, C#, ASP.NET, etc.

    Ankit began his career in WordPress development back in 2012 and since then he loved how WordPress is helping people create content seamlessly and efficiently. He has been actively involved in WordPress development for more than 10 years and has developed a vast number of plugins, themes, woocommerce extensions, etc. Ankit has worked on several enterprise projects which include some known brands from the publishing and media industry making him an active contributor in the WordPress community.

    During the last 6+ years, Ankit has been primarily working as a back-end engineer, but recently he became fascinated with JS as well and thus started to learn different JS frameworks and libraries including Node.JS.

    When not writing the code, Ankit can be found playing cricket on a turf adjacent to his house, watching movies and spending time with his wife and kids.

  • × Anna MacKenzie

    Anna MacKenzie

    Senior Project Manager

    Anna MacKenzie has experience in a variety of agency roles, starting off in account management before moving across to project management. She comes with a range of experience ranging from promotional marketing and campaign based work through to CRM and E-Commerce. This work includes working with some well known agencies in both Edinburgh and London, as well as a few in house brands such as Pottermore and Disney.

    Whilst the majority of Anna’s roles have included a digital focus, having the customer centre of mind is always at the forefront of Anna’s thinking. Anna really enjoys working and building relationships with both clients and team members alike and thrives in a strong team working environment.

    Outside of work, Anna enjoys learning new skills and has recently taken up surfing and whilst still very much a beginner is hoping to take more classes in the future and hopefully progress a bit more this year. Beach time and walks with her dog, a wee schnoodle Mavis, take up a lot of her spare time, but there is always space to try new restaurants and wine bars at the weekend.

  • × Ben Keith

    Ben Keith

    Senior Web Engineer

    Ben is a web developer and news nerd. His professional WordPress career started with an internship helping a living-history farm move from a Dreamweaver site to WordPress. In college he helped the student paper move from College Publisher 6 to WordPress, broke news, and covered arts. He graduated college with a degree in Agricultural Communications, a minor in plant pathology, and many bylines in the campus paper.

    After an internship at a cattle magazine, Ben joined the Institute for Nonprofit News’ tech and product team to build tools for news. Ben worked with a small, remote team, growing from apprentice to lead developer over six years. At INN, Ben helped create and maintain many plugins, including Pym.js Embeds, Super Cool Ad Inserter Plugin, and Trust Indicators. He maintained the Largo parent theme and built sites for dozens of nonprofit newsrooms. He’s also helped organize the Columbus WordPress Meetup and two years of of the WordCamp for Publishers conference.

    In his free time, Ben reads, bicycles, and prepares for Halloween.

  • × Ben Marshall

    Ben Marshall

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Ben is a seasoned full-stack developer with over a decade of experience in web development. His specialties and true love are WordPress and frontend development, but he has worked with various content management systems, including Drupal, Shopify, and Joomla. Recently, Ben has been exploring headless websites using ReactJS and NextJS, while leveraging WordPress Gutenberg for the content management experience.

    His passion for web development began at a young age when building websites with tables were the standard, and rounded corners required an image hack. In 2007, he secured his first professional web development job as a graphic designer, which eventually led to his role as a junior web developer.

    One of his most significant achievements is developing the widely popular Zero Spam for WordPress plugin, which has garnered over a million downloads since its inception in 2014. The plugin has received glowing recommendations from some of the most popular plugins out there, including Gravity Forms and WPGive.

    In his free time, he enjoys spending quality time with his family, camping, and staying up-to-date on the latest trends and advancements in web development. He is also an aspiring skydiver and takes on the challenge of SEO with zeal. Ben derives satisfaction from competing against enterprise-level sites that spend millions on pay-per-click advertising and achieving organic growth and top search rankings.

  • × Bennet Sundlie

    Bennet Sundlie

    Senior Project Manager

    Bennet is a creative and driven problem solver with strong technical skills and a passion for project management. They are solution-oriented, an outstanding cross-functional collaborator, and always open to exploring the best solutions for the business balanced with the member experience. Bennet has five years of experience leading high visibility projects with a focus on eCommerce, B2B, and subscription, with proven success employing agile methodologies and servant leadership.

    At Maria Tash, Bennet fully built out and scaled the global customer service department. They defined macros, policies, and eCommerce metrics and built plans to ensure scalability for not only the client services team, but also for operations, fulfillment, user experience research, marketing, and wholesale. Bennet is an excellent project manager and liaison with the ability to communicate and connect the necessary teams and leaders to ensure alignment and understanding of initiatives within the organization.

    At BFA, Bennet took ownership of several large, complex, cross-functional, and high-risk projects with a focus on workflow optimization. They worked through ambiguity to resolve issues, create agent training and macros for a 500+ team, provide customer care operations support and drive projects forward ensuring adoption and transfer of ownership once complete. This included retention strategies, implementation of Zendesk, the redesign of BoxyCharm’s OMS system, and onboarding and policy improvement across several programs to reduce redundancy and improve collaboration and communication across teams. For example, after listening to agent feedback, Bennet joined the fraud team to help revamp policies to completely remove the need for a manual agent white list, drastically reducing agent workload.

    Outside of work Bennet enjoys reading, making ceramics, hiking, and playing with their recently adopted senior dog.

  • × Binal Shah

    Binal Shah

    Senior Project Manager

    Binal has extensive experience in project management and loves collaborating with her team and clients to deliver great digital solutions. After graduating from Queen Mary University of London in 2005 with a Masters in Investment and Finance, her career started with a role in eCommerce where she quickly found her niche in Product and Project Management.

    With over 15 years working at digital agencies as well as client side in a digital capacity, Binal has successfully managed the end-to-end delivery of many complex digital solutions across a range of technologies and channels.

    Her love for project management extended into her home life as she has also project managed her home renovation. When not working Binal loves to spend time with her husband and three children, and when she gets the chance – read, bake, go on long walks, watch sunsets and travel

  • × Bryan Belanger

    Bryan Belanger

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Bryan has been working in website design and development since 2007. Even at a young age, he had an interest in technology: first touching HTML in middle school and then C++ in high school. After getting a degree in Graphic Design, Bryan began working with WordPress and CodeIgniter to build rich web experiences.

    He has worked on and led a wide range of web projects, including social network projects, web applications, as well as WordPress themes and plugins. He’s worked in many different verticals, building web properties for travel and tourism, healthcare, and the music industry. With experience in both design and development, Bryan enjoys connecting and building the many different aspects of a website.

    Outside of building websites, Bryan spends time with his wife and English bulldog, Bowser. He can be found camping, biking, traveling, and enjoying the outdoors in general. He also enjoys building computers and being an active member of the Nashville WordPress community.

  • × Cameron Robinson

    Cameron Robinson

    Senior Visual Designer

    Cameron was the kid who took every art class he could since he was a boy. After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology with a BFA in New Media Design, he turned his creative passion into a career in design. Visual Design, Motion, and Videography are the epicenter of Cameron’s universe, fueling his imagination and empowering him to create awe-inspiring experiences that leave a lasting impact. His eclectic skill set makes him a true design virtuoso, capable of crafting well-rounded experiences that resonate with audiences far and wide.

    With ten years of experience in the industry, Cameron has designed and delivered everything from large-scale B2C websites to broadcast commercials to interactive web products working with the likes of brands such as Facebook, Disney, 1Password, and Adult Swim. His work has earned him prestigious accolades, including a Gold Metal from the American Advertising Awards for his exceptional contribution to the Rick & Morty gorickyourself.com Web-Based app/Microsite and his groundbreaking motion design for the PRPLrs reel.

    As an extroverted people person, he believes in the power of teamwork and communication. From the inception of a project, Cameron makes it a point to involve everyone on the team, ensuring that ideas flow freely and creativity knows no bounds. This collaborative approach not only leads to seamless cooperation but also results in products that are thoughtfully designed for users and exceed clients’ wildest expectations.

    When he’s not at work, you might find Cameron embarking on thrilling adventures in his converted school bus, which he calls home. Alongside his loving wife and faithful canine companion, he traverses the country, seeking inspiration from nature’s breathtaking beauty, meeting friends who are scattered across the land, and grooving to the beats of live music that nourishes his soul.

  • × Clayton Collie

    Clayton Collie

    Senior Web Engineer

    Clayton is an PADI open water dive instructor, budding real estate investor, aspiring wine connoisseur, two-time high school hockey state champion coach, husband to an amazing wife, and fur-dad to a precious labrador retriever. He is a proud graduate of Jesuit College Prep and Southern Methodist University; both in his hometown of Dallas, Texas. His degree is a Bachelor of Fine Arts where he concentrated in making wheel-thrown, functional ceramics after the rigors of Computer Science got the best of him.

    Prior to joining 10up, he started building websites in 2008 as a way to work abroad for a Fiji Island Dive Resort, then a non-profit organization in Eastern Africa, and lastly, a local Dallas art collection. It was not until 2015 that he landed his first agency job building websites for small law firms. His mother, father, and brother are all attorneys in the Dallas area so it was an easy entrance into the industry through a local marketing agency. It was at this company that he started to build a suite of themes and plugins tailored specifically for law firms. For the past seven years, Clayton has been building, molding, and honing this codebase–it’s his baby; his pride and joy; and sometimes his tormenter as many creators can attest to.

    Outside of 10up, Clayton loves to invest in rental properties, play and coach ice hockey (go Stars!), go on long walks with his dog, Mochi, eat delicious Chinese food, and drink big bold reds from California. Dislikes include working in an office and driving to said office in rush hour traffic. When not coding, he and his wife, Lizzie, enjoy walking to many of their favorite shops, restaurants, and parks.

    Clayton’s biggest WordPress accomplishment was submitting a single line of code to version 5.5.1. His addition was adding “local” to the list of available environment types. It might not be much, but it’s honest work!

  • × Curtis Loisel

    Curtis Loisel

    Senior Web Engineer

    In 2012, Curtis graduated from Full Sail University with a degree in Web Design & Development. After graduating he did 6 months of freelance work where he quickly adopted WordPress as a preferred platform for clients due to it’s powerful publishing abilities out of the box, it’s easily extensible nature, and the great community supporting it.

    Since then, he has worked full time with WordPress agencies and VIP partners developing enterprise publishing systems for some of the biggests companies in the media industry. He has also contributed to WordPress core, many various plugins, and frequently offers assistance on the public support forums.

    When he’s not building awesome publishing tools, you might have a bit of trouble finding him, he doesn’t seem to stay in one place for very long. On a normal day he might be at home gaming, or rebuilding his PC yet again. If he’s not home you might find him on some remote mountain snowboarding!

  • × Daniel Jackson

    Daniel Jackson

    Senior Front End Engineer

    At the start of his education at Wake Forest University in 2008, Daniel took Intro to Programming on a whim and fell in love with Adobe Flash. He learned quickly and used that knowledge to start his freelance career building an interactive presentation display for the Wake Forest Music Department.

    Upon graduating he started building websites for One Hero Creative and Pinpoint Creative in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Fast forward to 2014, he packed his bags and drove cross country with his chihuahua to continue his freelance career in Seattle, Washington. After making a few notable projects while freelancing in Seattle, like the Essentia Water redesign in 2015, he joined the e-commerce agency coolblueweb in 2016 and became a full stack tech lead. Daniel went on to create configurators for online stores, lead projects, and build new features for shipping and logistics companies.

    In 2019 Daniel pivoted to the gaming industry, where he helped build new features for En Masse Entertainment’s game launcher. In 2020 he contracted with 343 Industries to build and launch the 20th anniversary redesign of Halo Waypoint and accompanying mobile app alongside the launch of Halo Infinite.

    Daniel loves all things animation, SVG, and breaking apart websites to see how they function. He has a keen eye for detail and user experience, and he makes it his mission to ensure what he builds is accessible to all.

    When he is not programming for work, he is programming for fun on personal projects, reading high fantasy and hard science fiction, and cooking.

  • × Danielle Lariviere

    Danielle Lariviere

    Senior Project Manager

    Dani has been finding comfort in the chaos for the past 7 years within the digital marketing space. Graduating from Central Connecticut State University in 2016, she started her career out at a local marketing agency working with home improvement contractors, to most recently working for a Boston-based agency that served up a variety of project and client types. She has become an expert client relationship manager, problem solver and to-do list, do-er.

    She has experience managing WordPress, Shopify and Drupal website projects, within an array of industries, including, but not limited to: Outdoor & Recreation, Telecommunications, Medical, Health & Wellness, Manufacturing, Non-Profit and more.

    A native ‘nutmegger’ who moved South without knowing anybody, Dani thrives in the unknown and looks forward to her next big challenge.

    In her spare time you can find Dani anywhere there is live music, good drinks and even better food (preferably somewhere that has table side hot-sauce). She is also a recently self-proclaimed bookworm and long-term animal lover.

  • × David Chandra

    David Chandra

    Senior Web Engineer

    After completing his education in Economics Study from Diponegoro University, David began working as a salesman for a multinational corporation. In his free time he loves to blog and write about his experiences. And that is how he was introduced to WordPress.

    He started to build plugins and themes for his own website and eventually released his code to help others who were experiencing the same problems he was. Eventually, in 2012 David began freelancing full-time as a WordPress developer. As a freelancer, he helped build custom solutions for businesses and website owners, partnered with web agencies around the globe, and built various products for WordPress shops.

    David is a WordPress Core contributor and has released 15 plugins and 10 themes at the WordPress.org repository with over 150k downloads.

    When away from the keyboard, David likes to spend his time hanging out with friends, working out or meeting up with new people in the local community.

  • × David Godleman

    David Godleman

    Senior Front End Engineer

  • × Dhanendran Rajagopal

    Dhanendran Rajagopal

    Senior Web Engineer

    From the day when Dhanendran wrote his first program in C during his school days (just to display some pattern using asterisks), he has been enjoying the magic of programming. Just to further enjoy the magic, he has picked up many a side project and wrote numerous lines of code for those projects! He has an interest in design patterns, security, standards, OOPS, caching and optimization.

    He joined GlobalEnglish after graduating with a Master of Computer Applications. In his first corporate job, he mainly worked on content curation based products which were developed in Drupal and Angular.

    Following his first job, he joined News Technology Services where he worked for NewsUK’s WordPress application where 250+ editors work 24/7 to publish 500+ articles per day. His major contributions are for TheSun newsroom and it’s child sites TheSun.com, Irish Sun, Scottish Sun, Dream Team and TalkSport.

    With the experiences on these great sites, he learned about WordPress, Drupal, PHP, MySQL, Javascript, NodeJS, React, Micro Services Architecture, TDD, Web Services, different caching techniques, Automation, CI/CD, Agile development and gained knowledge about WordPress VIP Go infrastructure.

    You can often find him volunteering at local meet-ups, speaking in multiple WordCamps across the country and contributing to WordPress core in terms of code, translation, plugins and as a meet-up organizer.

    Outside of work, he really enjoys long drives with his wife and son along with Illayaraja music. He also reads historical or literature books and stays busy trying new recipes.

  • × Dharmesh Patel

    Dharmesh Patel

    Senior Web Engineer

    Dharmesh completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Engineering from Gujarat Technological University. In his college days, he majorly worked on C# and .NET for build projects but, after graduation destiny had some other plan. He started his career with WordPress at Xylus Themes a WordPress-based web agency in 2014 and never looked back. Initially, he started with WordPress by developing custom themes and plugins, and gradually, he moved to complex WordPress projects.

    A major turning point in his career came when he joined Tatvasoft, a well-known IT Service provider company where he got exposure to working on some enterprise-level projects which helped him to grow better and he also got chance to work with some other technologies like NodeJs, TypeScript, Microservices architecture, serverless framework, and CI/CD.

    He has contributed to WordPress Core and some popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, Autoptimize, etc… Also, he has developed a couple of WordPress plugins, which are being used by thousands of websites and have more than half a million downloads.

    He started following 10up and their work after using one of their open-source WordPress plugins for developing client websites. Since then, it was always on his list to work for 10up. Now, Dharmesh is excited to start building enterprise-level projects at 10up and following his passion for open-source.

    When he’s not working, he enjoys spending time with family and hanging out with friends. Also, he likes to watch movies, tv shows, and travel.

  • × Elvis Morales

    Elvis Morales

    Senior Web Engineer

    In 2007, in Havana, Cuba, Elvis’s journey into coding took an unconventional path. Without ever having had Internet access in his life, he stumbled upon programming through a fortuitous discovery. Inside a folder from a PC game he had copied onto a USB key, he found something that didn’t belong there: a random PDF ebook titled “How to Make Websites with PHP and MySQL.” Intrigued, Elvis delved into its content and embarked on a self-taught journey into web development.

    With dedication and passion, Elvis learned how to code “offline” PHP-based websites from scratch. He honed his skills while eagerly awaiting internet access. As soon as he gained online connectivity, Elvis started freelancing and building websites on platforms like Joomla, and crafting CMS’s using early versions of frameworks like Symfony and Laravel. Embracing the online open-source community, Elvis fell in love with the concept of free software and became an advocate for it. This early exposure to open-source principles and his commitment to continuous learning played a significant role in shaping his path as a skilled web developer.

    In 2013, Elvis moved to the United States, where his self-taught career in web development using WordPress flourished. His expertise grew while working with diverse agencies, building feature-rich websites for prestigious organizations such as USAID, Georgetown University, MIT Museum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the Seattle Pacific Science Center.

    Elvis impresses clients with his dedication to clean code, innovative website architecture, and seamless functionality. Additionally, in the past, Elvis has also been a contributor and maintainer of open-source projects, including the WP-CFM WordPress plugin. Through his contributions, Elvis has helped enhance the capabilities and functionalities of popular tools used by WordPress users worldwide.

    Beyond work, Elvis is usually learning a new technology, driving a classic Porsche 996, or hanging out with his daughter in the beautiful peninsula of West Seattle, WA.

  • × Faisal Alvi

    Faisal Alvi

    Senior Web Engineer

    Since his early school days, Faisal found himself interested in “the HTML stuff.” Hence, it was no surprise when he chose the Web Development field for a career. Faisal holds a BA in Computer Engineering from Gujarat Technological University.

    Initially, he worked on the ASP.NET project and then worked on some Joomla projects. But later, he shifted his career to WordPress completely! He found WordPress easy to learn and customize.

    In the last 7+ years, Faisal has worked on dozens of WordPress projects, including small-level and enterprise-level projects. He has experience in almost all kinds of projects. He has also contributed to the WordPress core and WooCommerce. He has been a speaker in WordPress meetups and internal organizational sessions.

    Most recently, Faisal was a Full Stack Developer at Multidots Solutions, a WordPress Silver Partner. In joining 10up, he hopes to continue learning more and growing his skillset.

    When away from his desk, Faisal is interested in spending time with family, hanging out with friends, swimming and trading stocks.

  • × Gabriel Green

    Gabriel Green

    Senior Project Manager

    Gabriel is a driven problem solver with a passion for web development and technology. He graduated from Murray State University in Murray, KY with a B.A. in both Public Relations and Japanese. During school, he spent 2 years studying abroad in Japan where he climbed Mt. Fuji.

    Upon graduating in 2013, Gabriel moved out to Los Angeles to begin his career as a Project Manager Intern in a digital marketing agency. In 2015 he transitioned to a new role where he began working almost exclusively on website maintenance and builds, both bespoke and on various CMS platforms. This sparked his passion for the web development process and WordPress.

    With a decade of digital project management experience, working with some of the biggest names in tech, automotive, and telecommunications Gabriel is ready to thrive at 10up. Throughout his career, he has produced numerous WordPress websites and web app builds and also an award-winning Web AR experience with a reach of over 3 billion impressions. He also produced an AR mobile game and served as a product manager for multiple web-app experiences.

    Outside of work, Gabriel volunteers for his community, has a dedicated spiritual practice, enjoys movies and video games, and likes to take long walks.

    His largest WordPress-related project to date was managing the host migration and consolidation of multiple WordPress membership sites into one massive redesigned WordPress instance.

  • × Gabriel Manussakis

    Gabriel Manussakis

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Gabriel graduated in Graphic Design in 2011 and spent four years immersing himself in the field, creating a diverse range of projects such as brand identities, user interfaces, and editorial illustrations. Although he first encountered programming during college, it took him some time to realize the synergy between creativity and code.

    In 2014, Gabriel’s interest in programming reached such a profound level that he made the decision to leave his position as a graphic designer and dedicate his time, money, and energy to pursuing a career as a front-end developer. All the background he had accumulated over the years of experience in the graphic design field proved to be extremely valuable for him to become a creative developer, capable to bridge all the gaps from the concept of a project until its development and deployment.

    Despite his extensive experience with front-end development, he has never stopped studying the tools he employs on a daily basis. The more he learns, the more he becomes aware of how vast this area can be, which keeps him motivated to continue improving his skills to craft even more accessible and performative projects.

    Before joining 10up, Gabriel had worked with companies across various industries, including SaaS, startups, and digital agencies. However, it was mainly the experience of leading his own digital agency that broadened his skills beyond the front-end area.

    When not coding, you can find him playing handpan, skateboarding, and hanging out with his wife exploring new restaurants.

  • × Giorgos Sarigiannidis

    Giorgos Sarigiannidis

    Senior Web Engineer

    Holding a master’s degree in Cultural Policy, Management, and Communication and a bachelor’s degree in Communication, Media, and Culture, Giorgos (if you find it hard to pronounce, call him George) should have been a journalist or work for some Greek museum. Instead, after a very brief career in journalism, he became a consultant specializing in Information Architecture of websites, portals, and web applications. At the same time, writing code always intrigued him, and what started as a hobby eventually became his full-time job.

    Before joining 10up, he had been a remotely working freelancer for more than a decade, developing custom themes and plugins for WordPress. Over the years, he had the opportunity to familiarize himself with every step of building a website, from requirement analysis and project management to content management and frontend and backend development. A long time ago, there were even a few small projects where he did the design and copywriting.

    That helped him realize how important it is for a programmer to get into the shoes of others, creating experiences that are user-friendly and pleasant not just to the visitors of the web app but also to the people who manage it. A firm supporter of the idea of lifelong learning, he is in a constant learning mode, trying to improve his skills and acquire new, on both the professional and personal level.

    In his free time, Giorgos enjoys consuming stories, whether it is literature, movies, or TV shows. He also likes to watch football (call it soccer, if you live on the other side of the ocean) and basketball, loves writing, and will always make time to work on some side project.

  • × Harshal Kadu

    Harshal Kadu

    Senior Quality Assurance Specialist

    After graduating BE in Computer science and engineering, Harshal went to Pune city – the leading IT sector city in India – and in 2016 he partnered with Optiquall solutions as a Software Test Engineer where he learned about the software industry and how actually software companies are working/operating on software projects, on different phases of the software development life cycle, from requirement gathering, design, coding implementations, testing and deployment, to maintenance.

    This experience allowed Harshal to better comprehend the idea that every individual has their dedicated respective team to work with inparticular projects, and everyone knows their roles and responsabilities in order to accomplish work assignments. His expertise while working at Optiquall was web and mobile applications testing, both small and large-size projects.

    A major turning point in Harshal’s career happened in 2018 when he joined Multidots – a WordPress VIP Agency partner – as QA Analyst and worked on some top-notch projects and WordPress VIP projects as a single QA.

    Later in 2020, Harshal moved on to join Buddyboss LLP as Sr. Quality Assurance engineer. Buddyboss is a product-based company that develops web and mobile applications called Buddyboss platform on WordPress domain, where Harshal was already experienced to performing testing on WordPress websites, Buddyboss Plugins, Themes, mobile applications testing and other 3rd party plugins integration with Buddyboss plugins.

    Harshal’s previous team members refer to him as friendly and very easy to work with, as well as calm and with a very logical approach in critical situations.

    Outside of working hours, he loves spending time with family and friends. Coming from a farmer’s family background, he appreciates doing some manual work at the farm. Other things that Harshal loves are traveling, watching movies and Netflix series like Stranger Things, Breaking bad, and many others!

  • × Hayley Belanger

    Hayley Belanger

    Senior Project Manager

    Hayley has been working in digital project management since 2010. After graduating from Western Kentucky University with a degree in Public Relations and French she moved to Nashville, TN and fell in love with agency life.

    She has spent a major portion of her career managing WordPress projects. After managing projects on several other platforms such as Ruby on Rails, Drupal and AEM, Hayley has found that the versatility of WordPress and its ease of use by clients makes it an ideal platform to work with.

    Hayley has managed hundreds of projects that range from template sites for small businesses to complex builds for major brands like Nissan and INFINITI.

    Outside of work you can find Hayley running, cooking, traveling or playing copious amounts of Zelda. She is in love with her husband and their English bulldog, Bowser.

  • × Helen Feest

    Helen Feest

    Senior Project Manager

    Hailing from a bustling marketing agency in Wisconsin, Helen honed her skills working alongside multidisciplinary teams comprising art directors, writers, developers, and media buyers. she supported digital project management in a dynamic environment of full service advertising, primarily in the web and email domains. On the best days, this meant working with creatives and developers to build some really cool websites.

    Helen wore many hats throughout this role, picking up expertise across advertising operations, website audits, content and technical SEO, insights-first reporting, email development, marketing automation, website QA testing, and maintenance.

    While Helen doesn’t take herself too seriously, she takes the work very seriously. She has found that when working collaboratively with teams, vulnerability leads to smarter work: being willing to be wrong, listening to an alternate opinion, owning a mistake, or asking ‘the question’ is the foundation most projects need to be successful.

    Drawn by the 10up’s reputation for innovation and its commitment to excellence in digital experiences, Helen found a perfect fit for her skills and ambitions.

    Beyond her work at 10up, Helen enjoys hiking and nature activities; she aims to visit at least one new U.S. National Park each year. (Her latest trips include Big Bend, Everglades, Zion, and Badlands if you ever wanna chat parks).

    On nights and weekends, you may see Helen’s jazz sextet (or duo, or trio, depending on the stage) slap down some improvised solos. As the frontwoman of Feestet, she not only showcases her vocals and original music, but also manages the music distribution, booking, and promotion that comes with any musical hobby project.

  • × Hugo Solar

    Hugo Solar

    Senior Web Engineer

    Hugo’s first attempt at programming was an unexpectedly popular mIRC script. After that, the journey continued when he fell in love with HTML/CSS by making his first website at the age of 14.

    After spending 4 years studying for a Computer Science degree, Hugo started an introspective journey that led him to live in the south of Chile surrounded by trees, fresh air, and the smell of smoke from the fireplace.

    Switching gears, Hugo finished his Bachelor’s, with a focus instead on Graphic Design. Soon after he started to work for a company that uses WordPress as its preferred CMS for projects with different companies and universities. There he learned a lot about the value and potential of WordPress, including the user-centered design and UX/UI. When he became father to an amazing, beautiful boy, he felt awkward going to an office and not spending time with his son, so he decided to resign and start a new life as a Freelance developer.

    As a freelancer, Hugo worked on many different projects with companies, universities, non-profit organizations, social movements, and worker unions, many of them using WordPress in different shapes and sizes.

    When he started working at Creative Commons he maintained and led improvements to the WordPress development at the organization, helping to architect the open source Design System at the organization, and contributed to building and engaging a thriving open source community.

    When Hugo isn’t coding, he spends his time by hanging out with his son, drinking a lot of coffee, improving his gardening skills, and practicing Karate or kickboxing to achieve his zen-like state.

  • × Hussain Thajutheen

    Hussain Thajutheen

    Senior JavaScript Engineer

    Hussain is a JavaScript enthusiast and enjoys working with serverless technologies. He is the co-founder of a WordPress agency and has been one of the early adopters of WordPress as a headless CMS, with React and React Native as his preferred front-end choices.

    One of Hussain’s key achievements was the creation of a booking portal for a popular adventure park in the Middle East. The project involved the integration of an offline ticketing kiosk with the WooCommerce-based online booking site. The availability of booking slots was displayed in real-time. His work helped the adventure park earn $100,000 through online sales in the first year.

    Hussain was part of an effort to build annotation tools for a legal research platform. The front end used React, and data was obtained through a WordPress backend. Although the project didn’t launch in the market, it helped make complex problem solving second nature for him.

    At his stint at Capbase, he was the first employee to have worked on major features like company contracts, bank account integrations, cap table, fundraising SAFEs, and priced rounds. His contribution helped the company raise seed funds and boost hiring.

    Hussain hasn’t restricted his skills to the JavaScript ecosystem — He’s also worked with languages like PHP, ASP.NET, Java, and AWS Serverless technologies like Lambda, Amplify, AppSync, DynamoDB and others.

    When not working, Hussain is fond of learning and teaching various programming skills. His sons in primary school are learning from Scratch thanks to his inspiration, pun intended.

    When stepping away from the keyboard, Hussain loves spending time with family and friends, going on long drives, and treating his taste buds with great food.

  • × Ivan Ivanic

    Ivan Ivanic

    Senior Web Engineer

    Ivan is a self-taught programmer. When he was about 12 he got Commodore 64 and started dabbling in the Basic programming language. It clicked and he was writing simple text UI programs, that was a magical experience and since then he was engaged with programming. When the web started to get popular he began learning about creating web pages in public libraries and internet cafes. That is how he got his first website live on Tripod in the late 90s. Creating web pages was something that instantly pulled him in and he could not get enough of it.

    When he got his first PC he started learning Flash, ActionScript, Java and in the end landed on WordPress. Since 2009 he has been working with WordPress on client sites. Since 2013 he has been working exclusively on WordPress plugins at WPMU Dev where he worked as Lead Developer and later as Head of Development overseeing the development of the entire plugin suite. During his career Ivan loved working with client sites over anything else, so 10up was a perfect choice for him. Ivan’s favorite aspect of working with client sites is the diversity of technologies involved and constant learning.

    When he is not working he is either gaming, either working on his mountain house renovation and maintenance. He spends a lot of time with his lovely wife and they have really long coffee sessions. Ivan has three dogs, all adopted from the streets, and they are a huge joy in Ivan’s life. Over the years Ivan and his wife have adopted about 10 dogs and spoiled them to nonsense.

  • × Ivona Crnac

    Ivona Crnac

    Senior Project Manager

    Ivona is an accomplished professional who embarked on her journey in the world of IT during her college years, where she attained a Master’s degree in Information Technologies from one of Croatia’s premier universities. Recognizing her innate talents in orchestrating work and teams, she delved into project management even while pursuing her education.

    With over 6 years of dedicated experience, Ivona has made an indelible mark in the industry, particularly in agencies, where she has spearheaded the design and development of a diverse portfolio comprising 60+ projects. Her focal point has been on crafting innovative websites and e-commerce solutions, often utilizing WordPress as a powerful content management system.

    Throughout her career, Ivona has successfully introduced and implemented novel project management tools, pioneered comprehensive admin development specification processes, and most recently, led a victorious project that clinched the CSSDesignAward’s esteemed “Website of the Day ” recognition.

    Ivona understands development languages and navigates the creative labyrinth of designers’ minds, maintaining a delicate equilibrium between meticulous planning and adaptability – a secret to her sustained success. She boasts an impressive roster of collaborations, including notable names such as Rimac Automotive and Miro.

    Beyond her professional pursuits, Ivona actively participates in community events, generously sharing her wealth of knowledge. She enjoys speaking at conferences and has championed the inception of a casual project management collective in Croatia. Her infectious positivity and people-centric approach define her both as a professional and an individual. Ivona’s core values of transparency and empathy permeate every facet of her life, whether in business or personal interactions.

    A devoted Potterhead, she envisions Hermione as the epitome of an exceptional project manager. Her adoration for horses resonates deeply, prompting her to seek out stables during her travels. An ardent lover of an active lifestyle, Ivona engages in horseback riding, volleyball, and globetrotting, always in the company of her cherished family and friends.

  • × Jacob Peattie

    Jacob Peattie

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Jacob is passionate about WordPress development though he took a unique journey to get there.

    In 2012, after leaving school and dabbling in film and television production, his experience tinkering with WordPress on personal projects as far back as 2005 landed him an entry level position at a boutique web development agency in Sydney.

    One of the highlights of working at the agency was starting with an off-the-shelf theme framework and editing live files over FTP. He used his initiative to lead himself and the company to adopt modern development practices like version control, CSS pre processors, HTML5 markup and BEM methodology, and modern JavaScript; all eventually implemented in their very own starter theme that he created.

    When his contributions to the WordPress Stack Exchange lead to an opportunity at 10up, he jumped at the chance, thrilled at the possibility of learning from the best.

    When not working, he can be found sharpening his skills at the WordPress Stack Exchange, sipping a fine bourbon, watching films, playing video games, or playing with his young nephews.

  • × James Choe

    James Choe

    Senior Project Manager

    After graduating from Stony Brook University in 2016 with a degree in Biology, James joined a startup digital marketing agency. Over the next 2 years his career dove into the full lifecycle of digital marketing from: advertisements, landing page, website development, and customer service. During this time James would build 2 call centers in NYC and Houston, with over 100 agents to support clients. The call centers were acquired in 2018 by Ads With Purpose, a NYC-based digital marketing agency, where James would continue as Senior Project Manager.

    For the next 5 years, he would focus on digital projects for clients ranging from marketing to website and app development. During his tenure, he would lead the build of a proprietary CRM and e-commerce platform (MerchX) designed to compete with print-on-demand services such as Redbubble and Custom Ink. Working with a team of developers and designers, he helped launch extensive features to support a growing user base. The CRM successfully partnered with Custom Gateway and Kornit and supported over 1000 brands by 2021.

    Wanting to learn traditional print and event marketing, James joined That’s Nice in 2022. There he successfully completed 9 AOR accounts focused on WordPress websites for Fortune 500 clients. He was also able to work on event planning, video, and photo production, and helped design trade show booths. This exposure satisfied his desire to grasp the full spectrum of digital and print marketing, providing new lessons and skills.

    James brings over 8 years of project management experience to the 10up team. He has been fortunate to work with amazing teams and companies over the years and wants to continue helping brands create amazing products. Notable clients include Samsung, FTX, Line, Ecolab, Walgreens, CBM, and WuXi.

    Outside of work, James likes to paint, cook, and travel with his wife and their often unfriendly Shiba Inu, Moonie. He loves art and fashion, often exploring new museums and galleries in his spare time.

  • × James Styles

    James Styles

    Senior Front End Engineer

    James happily discovered a passion for web development by chance in 2012 and hasn’t looked back since. This discovery was somewhat of a surprise to all as it came after studying Sports Science at university and a year teaching English in South Korea. James is largely self taught and has taken learning about web development from something interesting to do into a career.

    Initially James cut his teeth interning in London for a small WordPress agency and quickly thereafter moved into freelancing. He feels fortunate to have a job that’s allowed him to follow his other passion – travel. He’s lived and worked as a front end developer in Sydney, Australia and in Vancouver, Canada for a number of years. Now he’s back at ‘home’ in the UK setting down some roots.

    “Making things look nice” is one way to describe what James does, but that’d be severely underplaying it. He’s got a great eye for detail, an interest in accessibility and performant CSS animations. A problem solver who favours where at all possible keeping things elegantly simple.

    Before joining 10up he was leading the UK development team for the Canadian based agency Domain7. One of the reasons James made the move to 10up was to be part of a fully remote company and to focus on WordPress development.

    When not writing code or learning to play the piano James will often be found outside somewhere in the Cotswolds. Whatever the weather he’ll usually be hiking, foraging for food or mountain biking.

  • × Jana Pettersson

    Jana Pettersson

    Senior Project Manager

    Originally hailing from Sweden, Jana spent over two decades residing in London before moving to Prague with her family earlier this year. Whilst in London Jana pursued a degree in media studies and has since worked in the digital space for over 17 years.

    Jana’s extensive experience in project management has encompassed a diverse range of roles, from project manager at prominent traditional agencies executing campaigns for esteemed brands such as Hewlett Packard, Sony, Reebok, Disney, and Coca Cola, to Project Director in a small startup working prominently with fintech companies. In this capacity, she not only built and headed up project management teams in London and New York but also established operational procedures, helped with new biz, whilst simultaneously overseeing the delivery of multiple websites for an array of clients.

    Her most recent role as Associate Director focused on social impact, where she delivered COVID-19 communications for the United Nations and spearheaded campaigns related to child online safety, culminating in a stunt in front of the EU parliament.

    Through it all though, one thing has remained constant: Jana’s love affair with WordPress. Whenever it’s time to dive into the CMS and use the endless flexibility it offers, you can practically hear the virtual fireworks.

    Her personal life is all about her five-year-old daughter, going to different kids’ classes, socializing with other families, and embarking on exciting adventures amid the vibrant backdrop of Prague.

  • × Jason Wong

    Jason Wong

    Senior Project Manager

    Jason has over a decade of project management experience in the industries of web development, IT, and digital marketing. He holds a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from Southern Connecticut State University and spent his early professional career as a software developer which has contributed to his ability to see his projects from both a business strategy and technical vantage point.

    Jason takes pride in having successfully shepherded a wide scope of projects from concept through post-launch, support for builds ranging from small campaign landing pages to large scale, enterprise-level web redesigns and IT software integrations. His keen ability to cultivate relationships with clients, stakeholders, vendors and internal/external teams through clear communication and building trust has led to the successful growth of the projects he leads.

    From a personal perspective, Jason considers himself a student of life and strives to live by way of mind, body, spirit… and love of American football. Lots of football. We’re talking multiple TVs with multiple NFL games at once while playing in multiple fantasy football leagues! His lifelong study in the martial arts, most prominently in Wing Chun Kung Fu, has taught him to apply his training to everyday life beyond the physical, which has come in very handy in preventing temper tantrums when his favorite teams and players are losing.

    In addition to these practices and vices, Jason has also been known to get his peace of mind through his enjoyment of outdoor walks, different styles of biking, Vinyasa yoga, and especially via the intake of all types of food cuisines (hence the need for all of the mentioned physical activities).

  • × Jayna Fey

    Jayna Fey

    Senior Project Manager

    Jayna started building websites in the aughts, launching her own online consignment boutique (before apps like Depop or Threadup) and hand-printed t-shirt brand. With a fine arts background in painting, photography, and illustration, she made the leap from analog to digital and pursued graphic design, photo editing, and coding, to support her online brands.

    As Jayna’s knowledge grew, so did the demand for it. Friends and colleagues sought her expertise, leading to marketing consultant work for growing businesses. She managed her own clients, building WordPress sites, crafting copy, designing promotional materials, and ensuring her clients’ web presence resonated with their target audience and translated to sales.

    While continuing to freelance but craving more social interaction, Jayna worked in fine dining in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. As a restaurant manager, she honed strong leadership skills and laid the foundation for her client management abilities, crafting memorable guest experiences. She earned recognition as one of Zagat’s 30 Under 30 to watch in Philadelphia.

    After earning her BBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management from Temple University, Jayna leveraged her digital savvy, marketing smarts, customer-service experience, and people management abilities to become a full-time Digital PM in 2015, working with startups, digital agencies, higher education, healthcare, nonprofits, e-commerce, and enterprise clients. Having worked since as a strategic consultant and Director of Projects, Jayna brings flexibility and nimble strategy to her engagements to deliver results.

    Jayna lives in South Philadelphia with her partner and two cats (Finn and Bmo), a lot of plants and books, and enjoys riding her bike around the city, checking out new restaurants, and traveling when she can.

  • × Jean Paiva

    Jean Paiva

    Senior JavaScript Engineer

    Jean is a self-taught developer who started his career doing freelance work for friend’s businesses and his gaming communities. Before landing his first position as a web developer he had experience in various other areas such as events, supply chain, and logistics.

    In his earlier roles and freelance endeavors, he spearheaded website and e-commerce projects for SMEs, emphasizing reusable code, and streamlined workflows. His journey reflects a passion for innovation and problem-solving, with a robust background in full-stack development, he contributed significantly to a diverse of projects, spanning web apps, portals, CMS platforms, and integrated systems. He specialized in architecting modular solutions, optimizing performance, and ensuring robust security measures elevating the project efficiency and maintainability.

    When he is not working he enjoys spending a good time with his two daughters, wife, and dog.
    He also likes to train boxe, and occasionally fly his paragliding in the mountains.

  • × Jeffrey Carandang

    Jeffrey Carandang

    Senior Web Engineer

    Jeffrey started freelancing while attending college at Lipa City Colleges, taking gigs where he was building WordPress websites. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2011, he worked at several web agencies where he was able to gain more experience. He learned how to work closely with project managers and other members of development teams while ensuring timely completion of deliverables. During those early agency years, he had many opportunities to work on more complex projects than the initial freelancing work from his college days.

    All the while, Jeffrey was (and still is) an avid fan of WordPress and open-source technologies! He started working on several plugins and that intense focus is what led him to quit his job and pursue a career in WordPress plugin development. He’s mainly known for Widget Options, CoBlocks (both sold in 2019), EditorsKit, and Iceberg Editor. He spent about 4 years focused on creating and selling premium WordPress plugins and eventually, working on several Gutenberg Editor open-source projects led him at 10up.

    When he’s not coding, Jeffrey usually travels with his wife, binge watches tv series, or walks their dogs in the park.

  • × Jenny Arundel

    Jenny Arundel

    Senior Account Strategist

    Jenny is an accomplished strategist and team leader with a background in agency and in-house environments. With seven years of digital marketing and account management experience, Jenny has a proven track record of helping clients identify and reach their goals and guiding internal teams throughout robust projects

    At the start of her career, she focused on helping brands build engaged audiences through social media and content creation. Her interest in digital strategy grew from her experience helping design, develop, and maintain performant WordPress websites for B2B and B2C brands. Jenny was a hands-on contributor and account leader for the nation’s largest mobile repair franchise, the original party bike, a leading SaaS provider for enterprise businesses, among other successful brands. Throughout every project, Jenny supports her clients and teammates with clear communication, a goal-oriented mindset, and a helping hand wherever it’s needed to deliver results.

    Jenny was delighted to join 10up as it shares similar values for a positive work-life balance and a distributed working model. Without a commute, she can dedicate more time than ever working with her fellow 10uppers to make a better web.

    In her free time, you can find Jenny cooking or baking, at one of her favorite breweries with friends, or lounging with her favorite feline, Lola. While she’s a Midwest native at heart (OH – IO!), Jenny is preparing to move to Nashville, TN, where she enjoys the country music scene and lively atmosphere.

  • × Joseph Grainger

    Joseph Grainger

    Senior Web Engineer

    Joe is a self-taught developer, building his first website at the age of 11. Eager to learn more, he continued to teach himself other languages and frameworks, where he eventually found WordPress. With its strong community and resources available, WordPress became his go to when building websites. Over the years, he developed his skills further creating sites for family, friends and his local band.

    As well as code, Joe has a love for gardening, and in 2008 he moved to Falmouth, Cornwall to study a BA in Landscape and Garden Design. After completing the course in 2011, Joe returned to web development as a freelancer creating websites for his peers. Over the years he built up a portfolio which helped him land a job at an agency, where he gained valuable experience over his six years there.

    To this day Joe continues to learn, exploring different web technologies by creating small projects and releasing them on Github. His most notable WordPress project is PostTypes, a library that helps developers create custom post types easily.

    In his free time, you’ll find Joe playing sports, strumming his guitar and exploring the beautiful beaches and landscapes of Cornwall.

  • × Joshua Abenazer

    Joshua Abenazer

    Senior Web Engineer

    After earning a Computer Science degree, Joshua was introduced to WordPress at his first job, where he was supposed to set up WordPress blogs. Curiosity got the better of him: he started reading the core code like a novella, in his words, “engrossed in the deft interactions of code, semantics and user experience.” There was no looking back.

    Before joining 10up, Joshua worked at rtCamp Solutions, where he quickly climbed from Senior Web Developer, to Team Leader, to Product and Project Manager. In his first year, he was awarded “Most Geekish Employee”; the following year he was awarded “most valuable employee.” During his time there he built a responsive theme framework, wrote documentation for their products, developed an internal help desk module leveraging bbPress, and provided mentorship and training for employees.

    Joshua has also been putting his WordPress expertise to good use by helping the wider community. He’s amongst the top 6% for WordPress on StackExchange; he earned bragging rights and some goodies by reaching the top 50 within two months of joining! He’s also a proud contributor to WordPress 3.8 and 3.9, and maintains a couple of plugins and themes on the WordPress repository.

    When he’s not building powerful websites with WordPress, he cycles around town, swims, exercises, and frequently travels to exciting places.

  • × Jozsef Kozo

    Jozsef Kozo

    Senior Systems Engineer

    By the time József was thirteen, his curiosity led him to create his own web page. He knew that this was the beginning of something great. After he finished his studies, József moved to a hosting/IT solutions company. He was introduced to WordPress and his interest in Cybersecurity peaked. After he successfully received his Certified Ethical Hacker certificate, he transitioned to a company where he could combine his system engineering skills with his security-oriented mind. He suddenly became a Security Engineer.

    József has mastered skills like vulnerability scans, server and end-user security, security best practices, and threat modeling. He enjoys hobby projects and learning new methodologies.

    When he is not in front of his computer, József likes to hit the gym or cook. He is a big fan of eating and enjoying local handcrafted beers. He also loves playing video games—specifically Dota 2 and Hearthstone.

  • × Julian Weiland

    Julian Weiland

    Senior JavaScript Engineer

    Julian started his professional career designing websites and developing user experience concepts. Finally, he transitioned into web development, created his first professional website and got to know WordPress. Soon he started developing his own plugins and themes, contributed to WordPress core and held several talks at WordPress Meetups.

    Before joining 10up, Julian spent 8 years working as a lead developer at an agency. During his time there, he led the development of a variety of enterprise WordPress projects and developed other large web applications.

    Besides his job, he likes to travel the world. In winter he enjoys skiing.

  • × Junaid Bhura

    Junaid Bhura

    Senior Web Engineer

    Junaid built his first website when he was 16 after teaching himself HTML, and has been in love with web development since. It’s his job and his hobby, and he can’t seem to get enough of it.

    He built his own CMS on PHP before delving into WordPress in 2009, and has been a strong believer in open source and the WordPress community since. He has built a couple of open source plugins which are collectively installed on a few thousand websites.

    He has been a professional freelancer for over ten years, working with clients from around the world, helping them architect and build scalable websites. Junaid enjoys constantly learning, and was introduced to 10up during his quest for engineering best practices.

    When he’s not working Junaid enjoys spending time with his wife and friends, taking walks, watching movies and YouTube.

  • × Karthik Thayyil

    Karthik Thayyil

    Senior Web Engineer

    Karthik is a problem solver, science enthusiast, and a consistent learner. His family got their first computer while he was in 12th grade, but his love for programming started way later after he was influenced by watching Pranav Mistry’s SixthSense technology TedTalk. In engineering college, he started learning Java & C++ and building tools like a replica of TeamViewer, which help teachers to avoid crowding around them during practicals. His all-time favorite is the terminal-based multi-threaded chat he built for chatting with his friends in stealth mode in the practical lab.

    He participated in several coding contests and learned a lot from all the problems he faced. All these efforts helped him secure his first job at Wisdmlabs. It was at Wisdmlabs that he got introduced to WordPress. He has worked on 100+ WordPress projects in just five years tenure at Wisdmlabs. He has also contributed to WordPress core and has published a few free plugins.

    After Wisdmlabs, he has worked with several large-size product-based companies like Firstblood Technologies Inc, LivQuik Technology (India), and WhiteHatjar / Byju’s future school. He could code for large-scale systems built in NodeJs and even WordPress. Before joining 10up, he led a team of back-end developers in building tools for the teacher recruitment platform at WhiteHatJr/BYJU’S FutureSchool, one of the largest EdTech companies in 1 to 1 teaching space.

    10up was always a dream company for him from the time he was working at Wisdmlabs. By joining 10up, he looks forward to working with many enterprise clients, helping them put their problems at ease, and side by side picking up a few new skills on the way.

    While not working, you can find him reading science blogs, cycling, or spending quality time with his wife. You can even see him spending sleepless nights clicking photos of stars, Milkyway, or even stargazing with StargazingMumbai Team, an amateur astronomy club where he’s an expert handling telescopes.

  • × Kate Rickard

    Kate Rickard

    Senior Content Designer

    Kate has been working in content for more years than she cares to count. She started in communications, working in marketing management roles for eBay, Weight Watchers, and several B2C and B2B publishing and digital companies. Her interest in UX was first sparked when she led a project to enhance the help experience for eBay Australia customers in 2008. After a few years dabbling with Nielsen Norman training courses and collecting design books, she took a bold leap into a full-time masters degree in UX Design.

    Since graduating with flying colours in 2017, Kate has been crafting delightful experiences for clients of all shapes and sizes. She’s led design projects for Virgin Atlantic, HubSpot, Novartis, the London School of Economics, and a number of startups and public sector organisations. She’s been fortunate enough to gather some very kind recommendations from clients and colleagues over the years, which can be found on her LinkedIn profile. She claims she didn’t even had to pay them!

    As mentioned earlier, the small city of Brighton, on the south coast of England, is where Kate calls home. She loves riding her electric bike along the seafront and has become an expert at dodging the enormous seagulls.

    The local design community in Brighton is buzzing and Kate is an active member. She founded the meetup group UXup in 2019, which has grown to over 250 members. As a result, she was invited to join the organising team for UX Camp Brighton, a yearly sell-out conference and the largest ‘barcamp’ style event in the UK.

    Kate is a seasoned traveler and is well on her way to achieving her goal of visiting 100 countries (only 54 to go!) Being a committed sunseeker, she tends to migrate south for the winter months, and is always on the lookout for tips on new places to explore.

  • × Katie Nelson

    Katie Nelson

    Senior Project Manager

    Katie has been working in the software project management field since 2006. After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a BA in Sociology without a clear idea of what to do next, a friend recognized that Katie’s natural ability to organize might translate well to project management and recommended her for her first project management position. Nearly 12 years later, Katie continues to enjoy her craft. Katie would go on to obtain her PMP certification in (project management professional) in 2013.

    Katie has been fortunate enough to manage a variety of projects, everything from custom event registration, to intranet sites, and anything in between. Katie was first introduced to WordPress in 2008 and loves the control and freedom WordPress offers to clients.

    Katie’s favorite things about project management is working with clients as a strategic partner and guiding clients through the exciting world of software development.

    Katie and her family recently relocated from Minnesota to Washington. Katie loves the Pacific Northwest and does not miss the cold winters in Minnesota. Outside of work you’ll find Katie hiking with her husband and daughter or working on never ending home improvement projects as she and her husband restore their 1954 house.

  • × Kirtan Gajjar

    Kirtan Gajjar

    Senior Web Engineer

    Kirtan fell in love with computers at the young age of six, thanks to DOS games like Vcop2, Dave, and Wolfenstein 3D. He knew he had to go into computer programming when at 16 he found out games could be made with C. It looks like destiny had other plans as he now currently works with WordPress.

    Kirtan’s first interaction with WordPress was during his college times when a relative wanted to restore his hacked WordPress site. He eventually restored the site and maintained it for a few years. This first interaction sparked a new career. He then worked at rtCamp where he had the opportunity to work on many enterprise WordPress sites and led a FOSS project – EasyEngine.

    He occasionally contributes to WordPress core, Gutenberg & Polyglots(translation) and is also part of the performance team in WordPress.

    Outside of work, he’s very enthusiastic about yoga and does his practice every day. Sometimes you can also find him in a park near his home falling off his skateboard.

  • × Konstantinos Galanakis

    Konstantinos Galanakis

    Senior Web Engineer

    Konstantinos’ journey with computers started in the distant 1990 when his father bought him his first PC. It was black and green back then, but for him, it was enough. He immediately knew what he wanted to do with his life.

    Many years later, after completing his Bachelor of Engineering in Electronic Computer Engineering and his Master of Science in Informational Systems, he started working as a Research and Development Engineer at a high-profile international Research Institute, on Human-Computer Interaction. It was one of his colleagues that introduced him to the WordPress world, a move that opened up a whole new world of possibilities for him. He created a small agency with his colleague and started building websites mostly for small local businesses. It was his desire to explore the internals of WordPress and give back to the amazing WordPress community that led him to apply for his first remote WordPress development job.

    Konstantinos knew about 10up already from within some of its open-source products, plugins, and libraries but always thought it was a very long shot to apply for such a company (imposter syndrome kicking in). When 10up approached him, it was definitely a no-brainer.

    When Konstantinos is not working, you will find him playing with his daughters, camping at some beach, playing tennis, hitting the gym, or training for some marathon. WordPress is also his hobby, so most nights you will find him on his laptop developing some new plugin (which will most probably never get released).

  • × Lee Brannan

    Lee Brannan

    Sr. Content Operations Specialist

    Lee is an adventurer at heart. Born in Connecticut but has spent time backpacking through Europe, moved across the country to Portland, Oregon, and now resides in Hudson, New York. She’s obsessed with spreadsheets, to-do lists, and efficient workflows. Lee has spent the last 12+ years exploring career paths in a variety of industries and is excited to join 10up as a Project Coordinator.

    Lee’s dedication to project management began within the marketing industry after receiving a degree in Business Management and Marketing. She first discovered her love of content editing and software management as a graphic designer. She has continued this passion through her LGBTQIA+ Greeting Card Company, SinQueerly Yours, which she opened with her wife and best friend in 2018.

    Lee’s love for software management began when she was a quality improvement data analyst, driving organizational change through content management of an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system and policy management software. It was while she was a Marketing Manager in Portland, Oregon when she first worked intimately with WordPress, managing content for websites in the beer industry.

    Lee will be joining 10up as a Project Coordinator which happened by serendipitous chance when she found herself laid off due to COVID shutdowns. Previously, Lee gave up the desk for a baking apron and has been a professional baker for several years. As a baker she specialized in recipe development, production workflow, as well as baking bagels, breads, cakes, viennoiserie, and pastry. Lee’s latest recipe is a chocolate chip cookie with toffee, pretzel, and chocolate chunks that her wife claims is the most delicious cookie ever made.

    When she’s offline Lee loves supporting local coffee shops, shopping at the farmers market, or surfing the internet for nearby real estate dream homes. Lee is the proud dog mom to a rescue pit mix named Tobin (yes, named after the USWNT, women’s soccer player, Tobin Heath). Some of her current hobbies include playing (and watching) soccer, teaching herself guitar and singing karaoke (currently in her living room with her quarantine pod). Her go to song is Spiderwebs by No Doubt.

  • × Lester Barahona

    Lester Barahona

    Senior Systems Engineer

    Lester’s love for programing and technology are dated way back in his early teens years when Foxpro programming was a thing (yes, those black background screens with green text) in the late 90’s.

    In 2008, Lester started as Front-End Developer at San Services, an affiliate of Sandals and Beaches resorts where he worked on coding the interfaces for the company’s flagship products.

    Later in 2010, He transitioned to the Backend Developers team where he was key in developing the next generation standards for the company’s systems that included the adoption of an application framework to setting up standard and best practices for ColdFusion(CFML) and Lucee(Open Source version).

    In 2012, he was one of the first team members of the APM Department (Application Performance Management. With the APM Department, he worked to lead the implementation of Observability, created standards to setup and configure application’s infrastructure, manage monthly and quarterly security scans(PCI), application deployments and upgrades/patches.

    One of Lester’s most exciting challenges of his career started in 2016 when he took the role of Site Reliability Engineering manager with the purpose of implementing the DevOps philosophy in the company.

    Since then, he created a team of engineers distributed across the world and implemented the concept of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery(CI/CD) practices for testing, package and deployment applications by using cutting edge and industry standard tools and services.

    He was also a key member in the implementation of docker and container orchestration for both legacy and new applications in a hybrid infrastructure(On Premise datacenter and AWS), which are still the backbone of the company’s infrastructure up to this date

    Outside of work, Lester has a variety of hobbies. He plays soccer, travels often, enjoys cooking, plays bass guitar and spending quality time with his girlfriend and 2 dogs.

  • × Lina Wiezkowiak

    Lina Wiezkowiak

    Senior Account Strategist

    Lina’s been officially called an Experience Designer since 2015. The previous three years she worked in a sales strategist role for New Zealand’s leading legal publisher Thomson Reuters. It was during that time that Lina decided she wasn’t done learning yet, so she embarked on the journey of completing a Master’s degree in co-design and design research. After passing with first class honors at Auckland’s University of Technology in New Zealand, she was immediately headed for UX. Lina’s passion for social research methods and all things digital were a natural fit for the then still nascent industry of user research.

    Lina loves people, problem solving and design, which is why she calls being an Experience Designer at 10up a vocation rather than a job. With a talent for group facilitation she listens, observes, learns, understands and changes. Those who know her would say that she’s all about creating culture. She uses humour, compassion, and empathy to help those she works with reach their goals in record time. Focusing on solutions she dares to dream big, but is humble enough to understand what’s possible. And then she goes and makes it happen.

    Outside of work Lina is obsessed with rock climbing, and in her free time you will most likely find her exploring new climbing areas. As much as she loves adrenaline and the outdoors, her second passion is a lot more relaxed. Her PlayStation has her spend many an hour lurching happily on the couch, gaming with friends from all over the world. Lina is also slightly obsessed with written words, and enjoys to read and write stuff in either her first or second languages German and English.

  • × Luca Ricci

    Luca Ricci

    Senior Web Engineer

    Luca is a tech enthusiast with a strong passion for WordPress and automation. He built his first website for fun when he was just 8. 15 years and many different jobs later, his interest turned into a passion. He discovered WordPress and it was love at first sight.

    He began his career as a freelancer helping local businesses with their sites and collaborating with some local agencies. A couple of years after, he joined a local agency as a Full-Stack Developer where he mainly worked on WordPress but also some Magento and frameworkless projects. His love for WordPress led him to WordCamp Brighton where he was invited to join one of the biggest WordPress agencies in the UK.

    During his time there, he led many successful projects for enterprise clients and developed into a Senior WordPress Engineer. He also helped the company improve processes and workflows. Luca loves learning and sharing his knowledge. He has been speaking at some WordCamps in Italy and in the UK when he can.

    Luca lives in Mondolfo, a small village in the middle of Italy and when he’s not working he loves traveling, supporting his favorite football team Inter Milan and binge-watching Netflix shows.

  • × Lucy Tomas

    Lucy Tomas

    Senior Web Engineer

    Lucy became interested in computers during her early teenage years: the time where you couldn’t connect to the internet and speak on the phone simultaneously. Although she loved everything about technology, the field of art also piqued her interest, and it wasn’t until her early 20’s when she decided which direction to take.

    After successfully completing her studies in filming and photography, Lucy decided to also study web development. She took her first job as a junior developer at a Belgian agency, where she learned alongside a team of experienced web engineers. She later moved on to work with a Spanish agency as a web developer for 7 years. There she got involved in several high profile projects for well known clients. It was during that time that Lucy also became familiar with WordPress: falling in love with the CMS and the amazing community behind it.

    Today, Lucy is an active member in the WordPress community. She strongly believes that contributing to the platform is the best way to keep the open source project alive, and that consistent involvement is one of the best ways to continue learning and staying apprised of the latest WordPress updates. To date, Lucy has released a few plugins on the WordPress repository, organizes a local meetup in Valencia, Spain, and occasionally helps out in the WordPress forums.

    When she’s not coding, Lucy spends most of her time with her husband and daughter. She also likes cooking, watching Netflix, and loves running to clear her mind.

  • × Luiz Nogueira

    Luiz Nogueira

    Senior Javascript Engineer

    Luiz was born in a small city in the northeast of Brazil and realized his passion for computers when he was very young. When he was only 17, he moved himself to another city, Mossoró, to attend a local university. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. Following his bachelor’s degree, he also went on to receive an MS in Computer Science at UFERSA, a Brazilian Federal University.

    After completing his MS, Luiz started his career as a software engineer at UFERSA, where he built different kinds of features that were used by more than 10,000 students. He also became the Director of Systems Engineering and managed the entire team for about a year. While working at the university, he enrolled in a React course from an American educational company and he fell in love with the JavaScript world! After completing the course he was hired by the same company to work as a freelance project reviewer to provide the students technical reviews about JavaScript, React, and React Native.

    He decided to leave the university and moved on to an American agency where he spent over a year mostly creating the frontend of web apps and mobile apps for different customers of the company with React and React Native. Eventually, Luiz made his way to 10up to be a part of the JavaScript Engineering Team and he plans to use those skills to build delightful experiences for the final users of our customers.

    In his spare time, Luiz loves walking and running in Brasilia’s public parks or watching movies or TV series with his wife, Jamila. He plans to take his little boy “Dudu” to take a bike ride at the city park when he gets a little older (he was born a few weeks ago). He also enjoys meeting his friends, having some good food and wine, and talking about life and happiness. He truly believes that we can make the world a better place through technology use!

  • × Madison Kevorkian

    Madison Kevorkian

    Senior Project Manager

    Madison has been working in the digital marketing and web space for many years. While working to earn her Bachelors in Marketing at Southern New Hampshire University, she took a part time job as an Office Manager for a local creative agency. Madison was intrigued as she observed the delivery team execute custom design and cutting edge development to help their clients. A few months in, a Project Manager role became available and she jumped at the chance to become a permanent part of the team. Her ability to organize and prioritize multiple tasks made her a natural PM while her marketing background helped her bring brands to life as a Brand Strategist.

    Nearly 10 years later, Madison has continued to hone her craft working across hundreds of projects in her tenure dozens of clients ranging from small mom and pop shop to enterprise level. She brings with her a background in digital marketing, traditional marketing, web design and web development across CMS platforms.

    If you were to ask Madison how she handles so many tasks at the same time while keeping a level head she would say two things. One – she has young twins at home and they have taught her that the key to a busy life is a great schedule and routine. Two – she views the job as a game of Tetris. She sees many different “pieces” up in the air at any given time and loves the challenge of bringing them down to the finish line smoothly and effectively.

    In her spare time, Madison spends her days at home with her husband, chasing around their three kids and their dog, Rocko. They love to spend as much time outdoors together as possible. Madison also enjoys working out with her virtual group of friends across the country.

  • × Maggie Serino

    Maggie Serino

    Engineering Manager

    Maggie was passionate about computers and technology even before getting her first internet connection. She learned the basics of web development on her own when she was 13 years old and never stopped geeking out about it.

    She is a curious and eclectic person, with a great range of interests. While keeping tech and computers as side passions, she graduated in Language and Literature at the University of Rome, Italy, where she is originally from.

    After University her path led her back to programming. She moved to London, UK, to join an intensive bootcamp that helped her get the experience she needed to work in the field.

    Maggie started her professional career as a Frontend Engineer in 2015. Since then she has worked on a variety of projects for world-known clients. She has been a key member of all her teams, working and coordinating well with her colleagues in order to always deliver the best possible product.

    She is always keen to learn the newest technology and try out new things; she strongly believes in clean and organized code, and always pushes to use the best practices. She has a particular passion for transforming visuals and designs into beautiful pages, and also enjoys solving problems, debugging and discovering new tools to use. Today, her favorite technologies to build Frontend are TypeScript, React and Next.js.

    Besides web development, Maggie loves spending her time pursuing her multiple passions. She has a keen interest for crafts, like sewing and knitting, gardening (she grows her own vegetables), reading, watching shows, playing with her pets, and so much more.

  • × Marco Vega

    Marco Vega

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Marco is located in a tourism hot-spot in Colombia: Cartagena de Indias. When he’s not at the computer, he’s brewing the perfect cup of coffee, or driving through the twisties on his motorcycle. In Cartagena, he managed a team of designers and engineers in the leading creative agency in the city, where he was the Director of Engineering until he decided to go freelance.

    Marco’s web development experiences come from early 2003 when he first started crafting websites using Microsoft FrontPage with plain HTML and CSS, slowly transitioning to PHP, and later on integrating his work into the WordPress ecosystem. One of his biggest accomplishments was the creation of Cryptocurrency NewsFeed in 2017, the first real-time newsfeed for cryptocurrency investors based in WordPress, where they had thousands of people signed up, and later was acquired by BraveNewCoin. Later, Marco skipped programming for a year to join Toptal as the Community Lead where he managed the online community of Toptal with more than 5000 people around the globe.

    He decided to join 10up in a pursuit of a career using the technologies he loves, while contributing to open-source, after being a freelance engineer for almost a decade.

  • × Mehul Gohil

    Mehul Gohil

    Senior Web Engineer

    Mehul is a tech enthusiast who is passionate about Code and WordPress with a strong curiosity to learn something new. He was introduced to Pascal and Visual Basic during 10th grade and 12th grade respectively. That introduction sparked an interest in code. So, he completed his Bachelor’s of Engineering in Computer Science in 2012.

    He got his first job back in November 2012 and has worked with amazing agencies like Medma Infomatix, Uplers, GiveWP, and well-known platforms like Toptal and Codeable. He was recognized at his first job for various reasons whether it be Rising Star, Employee of the quarter, or runners-up for the Employee of the year due to the consistent performance during the tenure of 3 years. He came to know about WordCamps in 2016 and wanted to organize one. Then, he collaborated with other like-minded people and become an active member of the local community. Also, Mehul has been a WordCamp Organizer at WordCamp Ahmedabad 2019.

    Mehul has always believed in learning and implementing the learnings. The curiosity to learn more and connect with like-minded people has exposed him to being a part of the local community in Ahmedabad.

    Prior to 10up, Mehul was full-time freelancing as a Full-Stack WordPress developer and has been working on challenging projects coming from clients. He specializes in custom plugin development and third-party API integration. He strongly believes in open-source and giving back to the community. So, he has allocated at least 5 hours each week to open-source contributions as a part of the Five for the Future initiative.

    When he’s not working, you will find him contributing to open-source projects, spending time with nature and family, playing strategy games, or connecting with new people.

  • × Michael Sumner

    Michael Sumner

    Senior Web Engineer

    Michael is always interested in learning something new, and you can often find him chatting it up with regular folks to make sure they’re having a good day. For him, one of the greatest joys of travel is the opportunity to learn about and absorb the diversity of human experience.

    During computer class, he discovered his passion for computers and began sneaking off to the corner to play video games off of his USB drive while maintaining an A+ average. He later represented his school at a nationwide competition and took home first place. Because of this, he developed an appetite for learning about the internet and other forms of cutting-edge technology.

    While trying to find a method to provide for his family, he stumbled into WordPress and marketing, made his first sale, and has since begun to hone in on the characteristics that attract buyers and readers. After that, he started working as a freelancer for a while, picking up jobs and assisting others to satisfy his insatiable thirst for WordPress knowledge.

    He stumbled over 10up’s Engineering Best Practices, finding them to be a really helpful tool, and reached out to collaborate on improving the WordPress publishing experience for a wider audience.

    In his spare time, Michael loves to swim in the freezing water of the outdoors!

  • × Miguel Estrada

    Miguel Estrada

    Senior Web Engineer

    In 2004, Miguel discovered the gateway to coding through MySpace while customizing his band’s profile and creating custom web animated flyers through Adobe Flash and ActionScript. When he started building musician and artist websites from scratch, he discovered WordPress and never looked back. He read as much as he could on back-end and front-end languages online through books and began building custom WordPress themes and plugins.

    Previously, Miguel worked within internal marketing teams in diverse organizations over the last eight years. During this time, he discovered that in addition to coding, he also enjoys geeking out on data, and participating in the design and marketing strategy processes. With this background, he developed the knowledge and understanding of the needs and end-goals of products.

    He has worked on large enterprise websites and helped develop the first WordPress plugin with LinkedIn webhooks integration authorized by the networking platform. Miguel is also very keen on website and workflow optimization, micro-interactions, and clean code. He looks forward to working on new technologies and features introduced to the web, including but not limited to new Gutenberg features, Augmented Reality (AR), and Front End Editing.

    In his free time as a lover of tech, he likes to tinker with home automation and add to the ever-growing custom map of restaurants he and his wife mark on their “hit list.” When not on the web, Miguel enjoys waking up before dawn to watch Formula 1 racing and Chelsea F.C. games (along with many football leagues across the globe), playing guitar, listening to his growing vinyl collection, and traveling with his wife.

  • × Morgan Hartnett

    Morgan Hartnett

    Senior Visual Designer

    Morgan is a Visual Designer from New Hampshire (US) who’s had a passion for art since she was 5 years old. She started her career as a UI/UX intern right after graduating from MassArt in Boston. Because she was an illustration major, she had no prior experience in this field but embraced the challenge: she learned quickly on the job and over her career, has won multiple web awards for her work on projects of all sizes in travel and tourism, financial services, technology, government, healthcare, and higher education. On top of her web achievements, Morgan is also a known artist in her area and has paintings hanging in a few local restaurants! Outside work, she enjoys hiking and traveling to places around the US (…to hike, usually) with her husband, Dean. She also loves painting, reading, movies, binge-watching shows, and spending time with her cats.

  • × Mukesh Panchal

    Mukesh Panchal

    Senior Web Engineer

    Mukesh comes from a working-class Gujarati family. Starting at a young age, twelfth-grade science to be exact, he had a strong desire to work in the Information Technology field. Even in those early days, Mukesh began planning for his future. A few years later, he finished his Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology with a distinct qualification grade. He never tired of the subject because it had been a dream of his since his childhood.

    Subsequent to finishing his graduation, he tried to find a job working with PHP. After certain difficulties, he found a new line of work at a private organization that dealt with WordPress. Mukesh worked a long time (from Junior Developer to Team Pioneer) in this association and made some notable WordPress Premium Subjects without any preparation (& from scratch!). He also made an assortment of customization into outer topics and modules. Mukesh stays plugged into the community and was the WordCamp Organizer at the 2019 WordCamp Ahmedabad. A giant achievement for him!

    In 2019, Mukesh turned into a vital and noteworthy contributor and his name got highlighted on the first page of the WordPress 5.1 delivery; it was the best snapshot of his life and he didn’t have any words to communicate his emotions but knew he felt satisfied and energized. That moment gave him lucidity on where he needed to go. After that he contributed constantly for solitary days; thus, he has turned into an essential donor for more than 8 deliveries (5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.7, 5.8, 5.9). These contributions help remind him of the importance of being a patron in the WordPress Community.

    He emphatically puts his belief in open-source and the rewarding community and his peers in general. Thus, he has dispensed something like 10 hours every week to open-source commitments & responsibilities as a piece of the Five for the Future drive.

    At the point when Mukesh isn’t much into coding, you can still find him investing his energy & time in WordPress Core Trac or GitHub. When he finally steps away from the computer he likes to spend time with family, visit the gym, or meet with new individuals & entrepreneurs!

  • × Nahid Mohit

    Nahid Mohit

    Senior JavaScript Engineer

    Nahid is a self-taught developer, JavaScript fanatic and preacher of open-source software. He is also a WordPress core contributor and a member of the WordPress Gutenberg development team.

    At the age of 15, Nahid started working as a freelance web developer. At initiation, he used to build websites for clients and small businesses, using WordPress. Alongside, he started exploring custom WordPress plugin development, making him acquainted with PHP and Javascript gradually. Besides client work, he used to spend his leisure time applying new technologies.

    In 2017, at the age of 18, he joined WPMU DEV as a Tech Support Engineer. Besides his full-time job, he started diving deep into JavaScript and found it very interesting. At that point, he discovered the very early stage of Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor and decided to contribute to it as a measure to strengthen his JavaScript skills.

    In 2020, he joined the development team at WPMU DEV as a Front-End Engineer and got an opportunity to work on their flagship products, e.g. The Hub.

    After two amazing years at the WPMU DEV development team, Nahid decided to get out of his comfort zone and started looking for new challenges, and 10up was a perfect destination.

    In 2022, Nahid joined 10up as a JavaScript Engineer to work on the incredibly exciting Google Site Kit project. Besides his awesome day job, he spends his leisure time in open-source development.

    Besides being a WordPress core contributor, Nahid builds small WordPress plugins that help solve small problems. Moreover, he loves WordCamps. He is an active member of the Dhaka WordPress Community and was in the organizing team for WordCamp Dhaka 2019. So far, he has attended WordCamp Bangkok (2018), WordCamp Manchester (2018), WordCamp Europe (2019), and helped organize WordCamp Dhaka (2019).

    Nahid is a big-time traveler. So far, he has traveled through 25+ cities in 13 countries in Europe and Asia. He intends to be a digital nomad one day, thanks to 10up’s fully remote work environment.

  • × Nathan Conley

    Nathan Conley

    Senior Web Engineer

    Nate was fascinated by computers and the web from a young age, with his earliest memories of a hand-me-down computer with an educational CD-ROM. Nate’s first website was a Microsoft FrontPage website built in high school for a history competition.

    A former music student, Nate really found his passion for building for the modern web while taking courses in computer science as a part of his upper-level music curriculum, taking what he learned from these introductory courses and learning more in his free time. Nate later discovered WordPress through a mentor. Later, he started attending WordCamps and other WordPress-related events, falling in love with WordPress through the community.

    Prior to joining 10up worked at Pixel Jar as a web engineer. Here, he worked on a wide variety of projects with clients ranging from small local businesses to large membership sites. He has experience working with clients to develop solutions logically and creatively.

    Outside of work, Nate likes to snorkel, spend time with his dogs, take care of his tropical garden, cook from his cookbook collection, and travel near and far with his wife. He also enjoys playing music and is originally a drummer and percussionist, although he also enjoys dabbling in guitar, ukulele, and piano.

    Nate has been active in the WordPress community as a speaker at numerous local meetups and WordCamps, including WordCamp Sacramento, WordCamp Inland Empire, and WordCamp Oslo, Norway. Nate has also contributed to plugins in the .org directory and was a WordCamp organizer of the inaugural WordCamp Inland Empire.

  • × Neil Coetzer

    Neil Coetzer

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Neil is a devoted Front End Engineer that has over ten years of experience designing and building meaningful online experiences. After graduating from North-West University (SA) in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design, he developed a clear interest in web development. Today, entirely self-taught, Neil focuses on front end development and has a passion for open-source platforms and new technologies.

    Neil spent his entire career in advertising as both a UI/UX designer and engineer. He cultivated a library of knowledge at many award-winning South African and top international agencies such as TBWA and Ogilvy, earning several national and international awards. His years in the industry have nourished a wealth of experience throughout all stages of the design and development process, empowering him to understand interactive design and bridging the gap between design and development (design for code).

    Early on, Neil further discovered his entrepreneurial drive, starting his first company, Columinate, with two friends in 2008. For the next few years, Columinate continued to grow and quickly became rated as one of Africa’s best marketing research agencies. However, Neil decided to leave the company in 2010 to continue his passion for development and digital marketing. Today, Columinate has left its footprint globally, having been acquired by InSites Consulting in 2018.

    In 2014, Neil founded Gapshift, which offered various digital services on an overflow model to some of SA’s top-rated media houses and brands, exposing him to a diverse clientele network.

    Over the last three years, Neil gravitated towards WordPress, reinforcing his development knowledge – specifically in custom WordPress theme development. He played a leading role in facilitating the rollout of a custom theme for one of Africa’s largest telecommunication companies, MTN. This effort enabled the client to create and distribute unique component-based websites to over 40 branches scattered across Africa.

    Apart from his passion for development, Neil is also well equipped in After Effects, enabling him to stir his creativity and knack for animation and video post-production.

    Outside of work, Neil loves being mesmerized by a campfire and the sounds of nature while treasuring the time he spends with his wife, children, and family. When he is not lazing on the couch with a good book, you’ll find him out on the road training as an avid ultra-distance runner and occasional cyclist. He also thoroughly enjoys the adrenaline rush of watching Formula 1.

    When he’s not running, he is flying! Or at least he shares an enthusiasm for aviation, still holding onto that memory of landing a real plane for the first time.

  • × Olivia De Alba

    Olivia De Alba

    Senior Visual Designer

    Olivia graduated from the University of Central Florida with two degrees: a BFA in Graphic Design and a BA in Emerging Media Management. These dual degrees are the backbone behind her two-fold approach, tackling things as not only a creative problem solver but also a highly organized and driven leader.

    She started her design career interning at Universal Creative on the Beijing Project, and from there moved into the agency world, where she has worked on projects ranging from branding and marketing campaigns to full UI/UX product and web builds. Having worked for Facebook, Inc. as an embedded employee for 2 years, she gained valuable insight into how to create engaging, fresh experiences and designs within a set of strict guidelines, all while pushing the bounds. She has worked with some incredible clients, including Disney, WhatsApp, 1Password, and Visit Orlando.

    Some call her the wearer of many hats, in both a professional and personal sense. Having taught herself how to draw proficiently at a young age, she is passionate about illustration in traditional mediums and in the digital space. When she is not engrossed in a good book, she can be found behind her Sony A7iii camera, writing captivating scenes for her own book, strength training in the gym, listening to heavy metal, or playing with her beloved miniature schnauzer, Burly. If that wasn’t enough to consume her free time, she is also developing an app with a close friend that she is planning to launch this year.

  • × Oscar Sanchez

    Oscar Sanchez

    Senior Web Engineer

    Oscar got involved with technology when he was 12 years old. Spending many moons and sunrises in technology forums during his high-school years, he developed a love for computers and the internet since its puberty. Although he formerly studied sociology as a major, he never left his love for technology. While in college, he worked in IT for the Economics Investigation Center and the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Mexico. Eventually, he joined the Complex Systems group at the Interdisciplinary Investigation Center and learned to code.

    Introduced to WordPress by a good friend, he quickly fell in love with the WordPress community and decided to develop full time.

    Since then, he has released three plugins in the WordPress repository, as well as contributed to WordPress projects like AMP for WordPress, Jetpack, 10ups simple-page-ordering plugin and many more.

    Outside of WordPress, he enjoys going out to meet new people and goofing with his friends. Throwing some back-flips at the local park while enjoying the looks of strangers also fits his interests well.

  • × Pablo Amato

    Pablo Amato

    Senior Web Engineer

    Pablo started his career as a web designer in early 2010. As a web designer, he discovered the rush of good feelings from solving problems when coding. He forced himself to place the bar slightly higher with each new project he worked on and eventually landed in the WordPress world.

    One of the first WordPress projects Pablo had collaborated on involved all kinds of advanced WordPress concepts and techniques (unknown to him at that moment) which forced him to rapidly adapt and learn, since then, he has been in love with WordPress.

    Pablo is proud to say he worked for Publicis-Impetu (Publicis partner in Uruguay) and collaborated on several award winning digital projects during his time there. His career trajectory includes both time with digital agencies and freelance. Regardless of the format, Pablo enjoys working with clients and helping them make the best decisions for project heath and longevity.

    Not too long ago, Pablo decided to apply to 10up after using one of our public repos on GitHub and the rest is history!

    During his free time, when he is not walking Afro and Lerón (his dogs), he likes to spend time doing Woodworking or DIY projects.

  • × Pablo Marti Cordero

    Pablo Marti Cordero

    Senior Systems Engineer

    Pablo unknowingly began his career when he tried to make his laptop into a Hackintosh and had a lot of fun doing it. Later on, when he was trying to decide what to get his degree in, someone suggested, “You like computers, why don’t you do that?” This suggestion unlocked that very memory of trying to set up a Hackintosh and led him down the road to getting his Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from SUNY New Paltz.

    Pablo worked as a DevOps Engineer at a small digital agency in the Hudson Valley where he gained proficiency with Linux and Unix systems. While there, he applied his expertise to migrate a single monolithic server to a distributed docker system. He is also fluent in the Agile methodology, and worked with his team to create biweekly retrospectives for sprints. Pablo loves the process of learning, and is always excited to work with new technologies. Elsewhere, at another digital agency based out of NYC, he gained experience with ASP.NET, Windows, and Azure. While here he was able to create a custom blue-green deployment script that included the possibility of rolling back to an earlier release and pre-warming cache. He also loves to code and is particularly passionate about Ruby and Go, as well as learning more about cybersecurity. He’s excited to continue his career as a Systems Engineer at 10up.

    When Pablo isn’t hacking into the mainframe, he enjoys a variety of hobbies. He plays guitar with his hardcore punk band SALT and has recently started learning jazz and funk on both guitar and saxophone. He also enjoys cooking (and even more so eating the great food that he makes), hiking, movies, anime, video and analog games (some of his favorites include: Twilight Imperium and Quest),

  • × Pete Nelson

    Pete Nelson

    Senior Web Engineer

    With nearly 25 years of experience as a programmer and developer, you could say Pete has had computers in his blood.

    Pete first got interested in software as a child when he learned from his grandfather who ran a company developing maintenance management software that ran on IBM mainframes, and his father is a developer for the IBM AS/400 and iSeries systems. He first started programming in sixth grade using LOGO on an Apple II and the Compaq Portable they had at home. After high school, he got started with BBSes and taught himself to code by writing add-ons for his 4-node Wildcat BBS and working at his first job supporting SQL Server and Foxpro applications at a multiple listing service.

    Pete started professional web development in the mid-1990s, first with ASP, VB Script and SQL Server, and eventually switching to ASP.NET Webforms and ASP.NET MVC. He’s been working with WordPress since 2013, and and his first WordPress core commit was in the 4.2 release.

    Born in Minnesota and raised in California, Pete’s lived in Austin for more than 19 years. Pete enjoys drinking craft beer, performing karaoke, and working on his long-time side projects, baconipsum.com and baconmockup.com.

  • × Preston Davies

    Preston Davies

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Preston’s journey into the web engineering space came during his mid-20’s and he has not looked back since as he continually looks for opportunities to grow his skills. He started his career in the sports industry working as an Account Manager for the Washington Wizards and Capitals. After a few years in the sports business he decided to make a shift to pursue a new challenge of becoming a web engineer via General Assembly’s coding bootcamp.

    Following his time at the bootcamp, Preston began his professional engineering career at a small branding agency in the Washington, DC area building out WordPress sites for numerous clients. Since that time he has worked as a Front End Engineer with a wide variety of clients ranging from agencies within the Federal Government such as the: Department of Veteran Affairs, NIH, CBP, and CIA, to commercial companies such as: American Express, Amazon, and the PGA Tour.

    He has spent the past few years working with React to build out enterprise-level applications and component-based design systems. Preston is an engineer with a strong passion for creating top-quality user interfaces as he continually focuses on his goal of helping to modernize and build out the web one day at a time.

    When he is away from his keyboard, Preston can be found spending time playing with his toddler daughter or walking his dog. Hailing originally from Chicago, he is also an avid fan of the Chicago Bears.

  • × Pushpak Patel

    Pushpak Patel

    Senior Web Engineer

    Pushpak’s fascination with computers and his dream of a career in the field of technology have been lifelong companions. He embarked on his educational journey by earning a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Applications (BCA) from Dharamsinh Desai Institute of Information Technology, India, in 2010. It was during this time that he first encountered the world of website development, setting the stage for his remarkable journey.

    Following his academic pursuits, Pushpak dove headfirst into the world of web development. His first job as a web developer was a pivotal moment as he was introduced to WordPress during the iconic WordPress 3.0 launch. It was love at first sight, and Pushpak’s passion for WordPress was ignited.

    Pushpak’s commitment to continuous learning led him to pursue a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Information Technology (MSCIT) at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, one of India’s most esteemed institutions.

    Driven by his passion for web development and a deep affection for WordPress, Pushpak joined rtCamp in 2013, a renowned WordPress-based web agency in India. Since then, he has been an integral part of the WordPress community, contributing his expertise and creativity to the platform. Pushpak’s journey expanded further as he provided WordPress consultancy to esteemed organizations such as Nolte, HumanMade, and even 10up as a contractor. Over the past seven years, he had the privilege of collaborating with numerous enterprise clients, crafting diverse WordPress themes and plugins.

    Beyond his professional endeavors, Pushpak actively engages with the WordPress community. He is an enthusiastic participant in WordCamps and endeavors to attend as many local events as possible. Pushpak’s dedication to the WordPress community is further exemplified by his honorable role in assisting the organizing team during WordCamp Pune.

    When Pushpak takes a break from the tech world, you’ll find him tending to his rooftop garden, often with the delightful assistance of his garden ninjas, his daughter, and niece. Here, he cultivates organic fruits, vegetables, herbs, and an array of vibrant flowering plants. Additionally, Pushpak relishes moments of leisure playing games on his PlayStation.

  • × Rahul Prajapati

    Rahul Prajapati

    Senior Web Engineer

    Curiosity and passion for technology began for Rahul in his high school. He graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) majoring in Information Technology from C. G. Patel Institute Of Technology, India. It was during his college days when he learned some programming languages and picked up a few freelancing gigs building PHP based websites, Android apps, etc. The first few months post graduation consisted of creating Windows desktop apps with VB.NET/C#, ASP.NET websites while also looking for job opportunities. Soon after, he was hired on at rtCamp.

    Rahul joined rtCamp Inc. as a Backend Engineer in 2015, where he was introduced to WordPress and open source in general. He started with developing custom themes and plugins then gradually moved on to complex projects requiring data migration, performance optimization and decoupled projects. Simultaneously, he continued to explore the open source world and contributed to WordPress core and other open source projects. Over the last few years he worked with large enterprises to provide WordPress consultancy. During his term there, Rahul went on to win the ‘Progressive Employee’ and ‘Employee of the Year’ award in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

    Prior to Covid, Rahul would try to attend as many WordCamps as possible in his country and also volunteered for WordCamp in his hometown. He can’t wait to get back to attending WordCamps, meetups, and other community events in-person and hopes to be more involved as things open back up.

    Rahul has been following the WordPress community for a long time and that’s where he heard about 10up. He had heard so many good things about 10up work and culture from his friends/colleagues and wanted to be a part of the 10up team for a while. And now Rahul is finally a part of the team and he is looking forward to his next adventure alongside 10up.

    When away from work, he can be found playing games on PS and Nintendo. He does love taking a few short road trips with his friends for a quick refresher, be it on bike or in car, luckily for him – a couple of beautiful hill stations are just a few hours away from his residence in Pune, India.

  • × Rich Flaherty

    Rich Flaherty

    Senior Audience Growth Strategist

    With a wide background in marketing, web development, and broadcast, Rich has been a digital marketing professional for over 10 years, working in both agency and in-house settings.

    Rich began his professional career working in radio. After graduating from SUNY Oneonta with a degree in Music Industry, he became a producer for radio legend Brother Wease on WCMF-FM. From there, he became the Executive Producer of The Break Room, also on WCMF. For both shows, he was in charge of audio production, creating content, and booking guests that got top ratings in key demos.

    In 2010, Rich attended the Rochester Institute of Technology to study web development. As a result, he was hired as the Eastman Kodak Company’s Online Store Shopkeeper and then as a web developer for the George Eastman Museum.

    In 2012, Rich began working as a marketing web developer at EagleView, a geospatial software, aerial imagery, and analytics company. He grew in responsibilities over time, eventually becoming the Director of Digital Marketing and Operations. He was in charge of EagleView’s digital marketing transformation, which included providing strategic direction for worldwide website strategy (working with 10up!) and marketing technology across four business units.

    He left EagleView in 2020 to work for a digital marketing agency, where he led a team that provided clients with solutions for reporting and analytics, SEO, web development services, marketing automation, and CRM consultancy.

    Besides many Google certifications, Rich also has certifications in B2B campaign planning from SiriusDecisions and product marketing from the Pragmatic Institute.

    Living in Rochester, NY, with his wife Sarah and son Charlie, Rich spends his time learning to barbecue, playing guitar, making Spotify playlists, and rooting for the Buffalo Bills.

  • × Ritesh Patel

    Ritesh Patel

    Senior Web Engineer

    Ritesh holds a Bachelor’s of Computer Science and a Master’s of Information Technology from DA-IICT, one of India’s most reputed universities. His interest in computers began as a child, but it wasn’t until undergraduate school that he started playing with HTML and CSS. It was then that he began to take web development more seriously and decided to make a career out of it.

    At the beginning of his career, Ritesh developed websites in core PHP. Over time, he transitioned into WordPress. In the last three years, he has dived deep into the world of WordPress, building and maintaining themes and plugins.

    When Ritesh is not working with WordPress, he enjoys computer games, swimming, watching TV series and movies, and going on trips to explore nature.

  • × Rory Tucker

    Rory Tucker

    Senior Project Manager

    Rory is an experienced team leader with 20+ years of expertise in web and interactive projects for esteemed nonprofits, higher education, and brands. He brings a well-stocked toolbox of skills to 10up with an approach that combines analytical, creative, and technical thinking to deliver exceptional digital experiences. From websites to apps, from impossible to possible, he’s a relentless champion for the end-user without losing sight of technical solutions that clients can understand and value.

    Rory’s career began in the visual arts, initially focusing more on design. He quickly adapted to the early days of web development by learning how to code, though he soon left the intricate technical work to experts and collaborated with them to build more complex sites. At an agency specializing in tourism and action sports marketing, Rory was heavily involved in the creative process and played a pivotal role in growing the interactive department from a one-person operation to dynamic teams of five and more.

    One of Rory’s career highlights was coordinating and setting up a remote environment to support two agency offices well before the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work commonplace. This foresight ensured seamless operations and set a precedent for distributed team collaboration.

    In a career switch, Rory traded ski resorts and golf courses for nonprofits and higher education, finding fulfillment in contributing to organizations that truly make a difference. He not only delivered quality work for clients but also found joy in supporting missions that aligned with his values.

    In his latest role, Rory oversaw the impressive 270+% growth of the web support offering. In 2023, that support work also generated an impressive $1.5 million in additional project work.

    Rory lives in the west coast playground of Canada, with two boys and a chocolate lab, where they can be found anywhere from mountain bike singletrack and snowy mountain tops to hockey rinks. Rory also has a serious mobile photography habit, offering techniques and tips in workshops and sharing photos and adventures on Instagram.

  • × Ryan Degnan

    Ryan Degnan

    Senior Account Strategist

    Ryan is a graduate of Fordham University with a BS in Marketing. Initially an Accounting major, Ryan developed a deep affinity for marketing while on the campus at Rose Hill and quickly changed his path. The psychology behind consumer behavior is what fascinated Ryan and is what still draws him in today.

    Ryan comes to 10up with experience in account strategy, client services, digital marketing and technology. Each position has given Ryan a unique perspective on how to approach various situations with clients. Ryan spent 8 years at Hearst Media Services where he rose through the ranks to become an influential voice in their digital media division. He was one of the architects of the Customer Success department, and after 18 months of proven success in Connecticut, the model was then emulated in every office around the country.

    Always a team player, Ryan is someone that enjoys collaborating with others. With his new venture here at 10up, he is eager to continuously learn about new technology and industry standards in the digital space while also contributing back by sharing his own learnings along the way.

    Outside of 10up, Ryan is a proud husband and father of 3 beautiful little girls. He is a huge sports fan and is an avid NFT collector and trader. Ryan is also as competitive as they come and can often be found making a game out of even the most mundane of tasks!

  • × Sanket Parmar

    Sanket Parmar

    Senior Web Engineer

    Sanket has completed his Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from DDIT (Dharmsinh Desai Institute of Technology). During his study, he started working on ASP.NET framework and he completed a couple of projects. But after his study, he shifted his career with PHP. He always says that PHP is so simple that anyone can learn it from scratch.

    At the beginning of his career, Sanket started to explore Magento. He has done some theme integrations and styling in Magento. His introduction to coding was through PHP and got involved deeper with the WordPress world. In the last 5+ years, he has worked on many enterprise level clients. He has contributed to WordPress ( Core Development + Translation ) and many other open source projects, created some plugins as well. He is also one of the organisers for WordCamp Pune.

    When Sanket gets some free time from work, he travels mostly on his bike, listens to music, watches TV series or movies, goes swimming. He loves cricket and often goes to play.

  • × Santiago Galeazzi

    Santiago Galeazzi

    Senior JavaScript Engineer

    Santiago’s journey into the world of technology began at the young age of 13. The announcement of the first iPhone left him thrilled, and it’s no secret that he holds Steve Jobs in the highest regard.

    His high school years saw him moving to Germany to immerse himself in the language and explore the European landscape. In 2016, Santiago initiated his professional career by joining an agency. It was here that he meticulously honed most of his technical skills, crafting custom WordPress themes and vibrant email campaigns for diverse non-profit clients across the globe.

    After a three-year stint with the company, Santiago took a bold step out of his comfort zone, relocating to Australia to pursue a one-year diploma in marketing and communication. During this phase, he also ventured into freelancing, allowing him to traverse the country and form connections with many remarkable individuals. At the close of 2019, Santiago returned from Australia to rejoin his previous company, where he dedicated an additional four years to working as a web developer and hosting several local WordPress Meetups.

    Over the span of his career, Santiago ascended from a junior developer to a senior web developer. In this capacity, he spearheaded the development of a wide array of WordPress projects and web applications, deftly utilizing various technologies such as HTML, CSS/SASS, PHP, JavaScript, TypeScript, MongoDB, GraphQL, and libraries like React, Next, Nuxt, and Gatsby for Headless. WordPress and Vue. Santiago had the privilege of working for GBMV, an entity equivalent to NASDAQ in Mexico, and he single-handedly managed the entire project.

    Santiago’s next chapter unfolds with great anticipation as he eagerly embraces the role of Senior JavaScript Engineer at 10up. In this capacity, he aims to leverage his skills to craft exceptional projects for 10up clients. Additionally, he’s interested to adopt a nomadic lifestyle, thanks to 10up’s fully remote work environment.

    In his leisure hours, Santiago’s passion for self-development is evident as he continuously explores new technologies and refines his coding practices. He also dedicates his time to mentoring a select group of former colleagues, guiding them in enhancing their coding skills in WordPress and JavaScript.

    When he’s not engrossed in the digital realm, Santiago enjoys leisurely video gaming sessions, particularly in games like Warzone (WZ) and Fortnite, with friends during the evening. And when it’s time to unwind, he relishes lazy weekends spent with his girlfriend, savoring delectable cuisine.

  • × Sean Jessen

    Sean Jessen

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Sean first got interested in coding and building websites around the age of 14 when he built portfolio sites for his musical endeavours. From this a decision came when applying for university courses of which route to take; Music or Web Development. Web Development was chosen and this kick started him into his career path after graduating with a MSc in Web Design & Development from Northumbria University in Newcastle, U.K.

    He started his career working as a junior frontend developer building e-commerce stores in Magento for an agency in his hometown. After his first role, Sean worked a couple of other frontend developer roles using different CMS platforms, eventually focusing on WordPress and Javascript frameworks. Sean also has a keen eye for design and art and is very passionate about creating beautiful and functional user interfaces on the web.

    Sean joined 10up as Senior Frontend Engineer after being impressed with 10ups Portfolio over the last couple of years and is striving too continue his career in WordPress development with his biggest achievement to date being the sole developer of a Woo-commerce site for a startup business a few years ago which has now turned into a very successful online business.

    Other than coding, Sean has a big passion for music both as a fan and musician himself having played in various different projects. He loves travelling, going surfing in his free time and spending the weekends at the beach with his partner and their dog in the place he now calls home; The beautiful algarve coastline in southern Portugal.

  • × Seth Mills-Cannon

    Seth Mills-Cannon

    Senior Team Lead, Audience and Revenue

    Seth’s relationship with technology began in the early 1980’s when his school (Talent Elementary—Mustangs represent!) added a handful of Apple machines for students to learn basic multimedia skills, and he’s been deeply infatuated ever since. In high school, he and a fellow student led the charge to move the award-winning Journalism class from manual prepress to a completely digital desktop publishing lab in less than three years, including self-educating and then training the staff in QuarkXPress.

    He graduated Hampshire College with a B.A. in Web Business Management; his Division III (senior thesis) included launching and operating a web design and development startup with two other Hampshire College students, while carrying a full course load and co-managing the on-campus café.

    After his tenure as a Technical Writer for a web development company was abruptly cut short by downsizing, Seth changed gears and took a position as Lead Developer with a marketing agency in Portland, OR. Now responsible for everything from front-end development, testing and quality assurance, DevOps, bespoke CMS architecture and back-end dev, the intersection of code and marketing brought new challenges and exciting ways to manifest abstract concepts of programming in tangible and measurable ways.

    Seth used his back-end development skills to design, build, and support a custom software solution for a clothing retailer, bridging their legacy accounting, inventory control, and ecommerce systems with a web front end which allows staff to manage orders across multiple retail and wholesale web experiences.

    More recently, he has directed and enhanced marketing automation service offerings for an integrated creative agency. As a Technical Director, Seth worked directly with clients on strategy, execution, and measurement of campaigns for the launch of a new entertainment platform for a major telecommunications company.

    In addition to his aptitude with technology and marketing, Seth has a deep creative drive that manifests in a love for building, repair of small objects, and learning about a wide range of maker-type disciplines. These include: sewing, quilting, cooking, baking, metalwork, carpentry, ceramics, papercraft, weaving, and macramé. He can often be found in the craft room or garage, where he divides his time between making something new and searching for materials to fix something broken.

  • × Severine Pozzo

    Severine Pozzo

    Senior QA Specialist

    As a Quality Assurance Specialist, Severine explores website functionalities to ensure the best product is delivered to users.

    Severine’s early career started in France within the Media, TV and Film industry. With a Master’s degree in Production, she worked on movie sets, in television and in public relations. With this experience, she eventually moved to Canada to oversee challenging projects in the Digital Entertainment and Interactive industry.

    Using her critical and analytical mind, she was able to manage teams focused on delivering major film projects, building up a reputation for meeting tough deadlines.

    Strong from this managerial experience, she joined a healthcare software project as a Business Analyst. As part of the QA team, she tested software solutions that are now being used to improve the workflow in hospitals. At the time, her role was to represent the stakeholders and always put their requirements in the forefront, while testing the platform and writing detailed documentation.

    With this new QA passion found, her natural tendency to problem solve and a testing certification from ISTQB, she freelanced to help numerous companies release high quality websites in hospitality, gaming, tourism and finances. This lead her to create detailed test plans, perform functional and exploratory testing for Fortune 500 companies.

    Her superpower is being able to understand the bigger picture to run specific routine inspections and quality tests.

    Severine defines herself as a citizen of the World after living in various cities in Europe, Oceania and North America. When she is not studying new frameworks, you can find her reading scripts and watching movies.

  • × Shannon Fuller

    Shannon Fuller

    Team Lead

    Shannon brings eight years of agency experience with her to 10up. While serving as the project and resource manager for a team of 22 front-end web developers, Shannon oversaw the successful build and launch of over 2500 web and digital marketing projects. Over the last four years, she served as the PMO director for a full-service digital agency with offices across the American Midwest. There she led the company through the process of selecting, customizing, and rolling out new project management software, in addition to managing the agency’s team of project managers and a full book of client accounts.

    With her knowledge of WordPress from her days working in the non-profit arts sector and an ever-expanding understanding of Drupal, Sitefinity, Sitecore, and Kentico, Shannon has managed projects for clients like Kubota USA, The Hershey Company, Kindred Healthcare, Lunazul Tequila, and Progress Software.

    Shannon is a proud native of Richmond, Virginia, where she graduated Cum Laude from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BA in Art History and spent the first several years of her career as a program coordinator in the non-profit arts sector. During that time, she began working with WordPress as the unofficial content and e-commerce manager for her art center’s website.

    Never one to turn down the opportunity to pet a puppy, Shannon volunteers with a local animal rescue, fostering dogs awaiting adoption. In her spare time, you can find Shannon riding her Vespa around town, reliving her college days analyzing art at the local museum, or planning the next project for her 101-year-old home. She currently resides in Louisville, KY, with her collie, Roxanne.

  • × Shazahan Kabir

    Shazahan Kabir

    Senior Web Engineer

    Shazahan grew up in the quaint city of Rajshahi, Bangladesh before heading off to the capital city, Dhaka where he completed his Diploma in Computer Technology from Dhaka Polytechnic Institute followed by a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Daffodil International University.

    Since childhood, Shazahan has been a tech enthusiastic and at the age of 17, he wrote his first computer program. This enthusiasm continued during university studies, where he was an active problem solver at Codeforces, Hackerrank and a URI online judge. His real fascination though was in Web Development and Shazahan can clearly recall creating his first website after a short course in college. It was a simple static website built with very basic HTML & CSS. He enjoyed the whole process so much that It pushed him to further explore other web related languages like PHP, JavaScript.

    After graduation in December 2018, he joined Themeum and started working with WordPress. He was given the opportunity to work with some amazing WordPress plugins like, WP Page Builder, Qubely, and Tutor LMS. At Themeum, Shazahan joined as a Web Application Developer but thanks to his outstanding technical skills and leadership qualities, was promoted as Team Lead of Tutor LMS which is the most promising learning management system of WordPress with 30,000+ active installations.

    Apart from programming, Shazahan loves to travel and play indoor games like Table Tennis, Foosball. He loves to sing and people around him often get surprised hearing him singing to his heart’s content out of nowhere.

  • × Siddharth Thevaril

    Siddharth Thevaril

    Senior Web Engineer

    Siddharth’s passion towards mathematics resulted in him pursuing a major in Computer Engineering. Then in 2009, he first came across WordPress while planning to set up his own blogging site. This got Siddharth started with tweaking themes which slowly grew into him developing his own custom themes that eventually landed him a job as a WordPress theme developer at Ink My Web.

    His career brought him to rtCamp where he worked on WordPress VIP projects for clients like Penske Media Corporation and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. Simultaneously, he began contributing to WordPress Core and the WP-CLI Open Source Project regularly which earned him a place in the Core Committer Team.

    Prior to 10up, Siddharth worked as a Senior Software Engineer at News Technology Services, a technology division for NewsCorp where he mentored cross-functional teams and guided architectural decisions for the sites – The Times Literary Supplement and The Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Awards.

    When he’s not working, he actively reads up on UI Design Systems, Software Design Patterns, and techniques to optimize Page Speed Performance. At heart, Siddharth is an art fanatic, especially music and cinema. He plays the Drums and Guitar for recreation, enjoys hiking, riding his bike and trying out new eateries.

  • × Stephani Worts

    Stephani Worts

    Senior Account Strategist

    Stephani is a professional with nearly two decades of experience in the digital space. Armed with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Business, both proudly earned from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Stephani’s journey has been a remarkable fusion of technical brilliance and strategic acumen.

    For over a decade, Stephani honed her skills as a freelance full-stack developer, specializing in the intricate world of WordPress websites. Her technical prowess and unwavering commitment to excellence marked her as a standout in the field. She has worked for clients in a variety of industries and locations and even did a short stint as an author and writer for GoDaddy. During this period, she ventured into the fast-paced realm of B2B agency work, mastering the art of client relations and project delivery.

    In the past 5 years, Stephani has excelled as a strategic account manager, where her true brilliance shines. She possesses a unique talent for translating complex technical concepts into easily digestible terms, ensuring effective communication with both clients and technical teams, making her an exceptional communicator in the digital world.

    Now, as a senior account manager at 10up, Stephani aims to continue her mission to provide top-tier service and innovative solutions to clients. She loves the global nature of the remote environment, and the challenge of delivering quality digital services with a creative edge, working hard with the team and for her customers to achieve great things.

    Stephani calls Missouri home, where she lives with her husband of two decades and their three lively teenage boys. When not conquering the digital world, she enjoys the simple pleasures of reading, sewing, and all things Sci-Fi. Her happy place is anywhere there is a body of water. She is deeply active in her church and children’s school activities and spends a lot of time at archery, show choir, and band competitions.

  • × Stephen Iles

    Stephen Iles

    Senior Audience Growth Strategist

    Stephen began managing content as a technical writer/editor, spurring his interest in synthesizing information for varied audiences. He then transitioned into SaaS customer experience. As an account manager and team lead, he partnered with clients in travel and tourism to develop both online marketing and platform optimization strategies. He helped coordinate several WordPress website launches and migrations during his tenure, ranging from small to enterprise operators. He also developed analytics and reporting services for his department; from this, he drove the creation of a dedicated team run by his direct report that he trained and mentored. Stephen built deep relationships with clients, their businesses, and his teammates, owning one of the strongest retention and growth records in the department.

    He returns to 10up after leading strategy as an SEO Manager. In this role, he was privileged to work on impactful projects such as driving beta users for a mission-driven B-corp platform and growing the enrollment pipeline for a university’s graduate programs. He brings with him a renewed focus on content optimization to bolster his passions for analysis and user experience.

    When not working, Stephen loves collecting records, introducing friends to those records, cooking, jumping rope (truly), martial arts training, and enjoying all that Oregon has to offer.

  • × Sudip Dadhaniya

    Sudip Dadhaniya

    Senior Quality Assurance Specialist

    Sudip’s journey in the coding world wasn’t easy as he always found it boring in his early days. But destiny had some other plans and he is now a wizard of testing web-based applications and mobile applications. It was back in 2014 when he started his journey in QA at a well known agency and then never looked back.

    A major turning point in his career came when he joined Multidots, a WordPress VIP Agency partner where he got major exposure to working on some top-notch projects. He is excited to be a part of 10up and help contribute to a better experience and product.

    He has experience in performing different types of testing like Integration, Smoke, System, Functionality, Regression, User Acceptance, Browser Compatibility Testing, and Black Box testing on web applications. He has very good knowledge about SLDC and is highly proficient in working with software testing best practices, test case creation, test case execution, bug tracking, and reporting.

    He is a family man and when he is not working and loves traveling with his family and exploring new places. You can find him outside as much as possible usually partaking in water sport activities, jungle trekking, biking, or simply enjoying time with friends.

  • × Thrijith Thankachan

    Thrijith Thankachan

    Senior Web Engineer

    Thrijith had his initial interactions with WordPress in U.G (2014-2015). When it came time for project submissions, WordPress didn’t interest him much. At the time, he scoffed at the ready-made plugins and themes which could have helped him complete his projects in a shorter amount of time. At that point, for unknown reasons, he didn’t want to take that route, so he opted to build a project using Codeigniter framework.

    Fast forward to post completion of a M.Sc.ICT degree from V.N.S.G.U university, when Thrijith began looking for jobs in PHP and was hired as an intern at rtCamp Solutions. It was at rtCamp where he started digging deeper into WordPress projects. He finally realized what goes into making easy and ready made solutions for end users! Since then, he has had the opportunity to work on several projects and also be part of the WordPress community.

    After leaving rtCamp, he spent sometime freelancing before making his way to 10up. Over the years, he has developed plugins, committed to the WP-CLI Project, and has also contributed fixes to WordPress core. He’s especially proud of having created a handy tool to manage maintenance mode using WP-CLI.

    Before the pandemic Thrijith used to go out with friends to the beach or for bowling, but currently he watches series and has digital hangouts with friends on weekends.

  • × Tina Macko

    Tina Macko

    Lead Front End Engineer

    Tina has been building websites for over a decade. Her love for the web started with a strong focus on visual design that quickly evolved into a passion for all things front-end development. She loves to work at the sweet spot you can find at the intersection of design and code.

    After completing her MS in Media Technology, Tina got her career start working for the University of Pittsburgh where she built over 15 websites for the university and standardized the web process for the development team.

    Next, she moved on to a local agency where she spent over 5 years leading the web development efforts and launching websites for nationally known CPG brands like Nestle, J.M. Smucker, Pinnacle, and Premier Nutrition, as well as many higher education clients.

    When Tina is not spending time with her husband and son, you can usually find her outside walking, kayaking on Lake Erie, or planning her next climbing trip.

  • × Vikram Moparthy

    Vikram Moparthy

    Senior Project Manager

    Vikram comes with 5+ years of experience delivering web and mobile applications primarily utilizing agile development methodologies.

    Vikram completed his Bachelor Degree in Computer Science and later received his Master’s in Game Design and Production from Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. His Master’s was an extensive program covering all aspects of game development with a bit more emphasis on project management. Vikram gained an understanding of how to manage projects from start to finish while involving multiple creative disciplines in his Master’s program. This experience led him to pursue project management as his career path right after graduation. He was attracted to the execution side of the creative process.

    After graduation, Vikram went on to work with several tech companies while living in Orlando, Florida, including a mobile app development agency where he delivered multiple mobile apps and websites to clients such as Orlando Magic, Orlando Health, SunRail etc. Later (through acquisition) Vikram joined VenueNext where he helped deliver various mobile apps and web apps to major sports clients such as NBA, MLB, NFL and MLS.

    In late 2019, Vikram moved back to India, where he joined PriceWaterhouseCoopers. While serving as a Scrum Master at PwC, he helped streamline Kanban process throughout the organization and managed a team of 15+ software engineers following Nexus Scrum framework. Along with all of the PM experience, Vikram is a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM from PMI) and is also a certified Professional Scrum Master (PSM I).

    While not working, Vikram enjoys playing games in his gaming PC that he recently built and enjoys playing his electric guitar in spare time.

  • × Wade Bekker

    Wade Bekker

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Wade has always been captivated by art, colour, design, and technology. This fascination ignited his passion for becoming a designer and front-end developer, enabling him to seamlessly blend creativity and functionality. With over 16 years of experience, Wade has amassed extensive knowledge in both the design and development phases of the digital product lifecycle, crafting visually stunning and user-friendly experiences.

    After graduating from college, Wade joined AUX Studio, a small design agency. As part of a compact team, he honed his skills as both a UX designer and front-end developer, managing projects and engaging directly with clients. One highlight was building the TapOff app, a gamified platform that encouraged water conservation during Cape Town’s 2018 water crisis. The app trended in the App Store and Play Store, receiving recognition from Monocle24 and Google. After twelve years, Wade helped grow the AUX Studio team and attract global clients.

    In 2021, Wade sought new challenges. He accepted the role of lead front-end developer at Emerge Gaming, and saw this as an opportunity to expand his professional horizons by engaging with a larger team and serving a broader user base. Leveraging his robust UX and UI design expertise, he collaborated closely with the design team and spearheaded the front-end development of a white-labeled online gaming web app that was built from the ground up. By late 2022, the platform was successfully launched and achieved significant user engagement at its peak.

    Before joining 10up, Wade was instrumental in developing and launching the Dark Fusion wallet, a cutting-edge crypto wallet web app. This open-source platform allowed users to efficiently mint and trade contracts and execute batch transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain at a fraction of the cost.

    When not at his computer, Wade enjoys relaxing at home, watching rugby, Formula 1, or car reviews, and exploring all that Cape Town has to offer with his supportive family and fur-child, Zoey.

  • × Will Howat-Comandré

    Will Howat-Comandré

    Senior Front End Engineer

    Will is a technologist with a long history of creating and developing in the digital media industry. Having worn a number of hats over his career at various agencies he has a keen interest in the meeting of creativity and technology, an interest that has seen him work alongside and consult with many household brands.

    Originally self-taught, Will went on to pursue a Bachelors in Information and Computing before embracing a career amid London’s digital agencies, an environment where he championed best practice, accessibility and performance as well as cross-discipline integration. He believes in creating solutions that work for the user first, whilst also supporting the business and teams designing them.

    Will is a family man who recently moved to his wife’s home country of France where they enjoy spending time with their two young boys amid the culinary delights of wine country and are now coming to truly appreciate the value of having grandparents nearby.

  • × Adam Dunnage

    Adam Dunnage

    Support Specialist

    Adam was born in North Devon in the South of England but has lived all over the Country. He moved from South to Midlands to North and back down South where he has now settled in. Even with living all over, Adam made sure to stop long enough to graduate from the University of the West of England Bristol with a 2:1 in computer science.

    Adam didn’t know what he wanted to do when he left school. He was always on his computer so thought he would go to college to study IT. He gained his degree and started his career in software development. Software development eventually transitioned to software testing before finally moving into software/platform support. After 2 years in his previous role as a product support engineer he was promoted to senior on the team which is a proud moment in his career.

    In his previous role, Adam was initially introduced to WordPress by supporting the companies 100 WordPress events sites. Nearly 5 years later, he has gained a wealth of knowledge about the WordPress platform, managing site go-lives for big food and drinks events, plugin installs and testing as well as any issues within site themes and PHP/JS files.

    Adam is a very outgoing individual who likes to travel and explore new places. He enjoys watching/playing sports particularly football and darts. He is also making his way through England’s vineyards one by one (all 700+ of them).

  • × Alejandro Perez

    Alejandro Perez

    Front End Engineer

    Alejandro was born on the sunny island of Gran Canaria, where he graduated from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria with a degree in Computer Science. But really, his interest in technology started back when he was at high school, and he began his self-taught journey into web development by creating a website to share desktop wallpapers with his classmates – just like the good old days of Microsoft Frontpage and Dreamweaver! This was his first contact with HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

    In 2009, he discovered WordPress and started playing around with it until, what was a hobby, then became a real job when a few local businesses in his town offered him to build their website. After completing his studies, he moved with his girlfriend to the southern Spanish city of Seville, where he has worked for some digital agencies as a Front-End developer on a wide range of projects involving Angular, Ionic Hybrid apps, Chrome extensions and Shopify development.

    A little later, after having now built a good relationship in the web development world, he continuously pursued to improve his tech skills. Lo and behold he found once again in his path, WordPress, which was when custom blocks had been already introduced. This gave him the final push to immerse himself into the platform and find a passion to want to know more. Since then, he’s collaborated in some WordPress projects for big clients like Facebook, creating delightful experiences while keeping an eye on performance and accessibility.

    These days, Alejandro doesn’t stop requiring the know-how and is also involved in some open-source projects and contributes to public libraries. But not only coding, he actively participates in translation projects such as Mozilla MDN and Vivaldi Browser to make them available in his native Spanish language.

    When Alejandro is away from the keyboard, he’s likely cooking at the kitchen, drinking a shot of espresso at his favorite coffee shop, assisting local meet-ups or planning his next travel adventure.

  • × Alix Blevens

    Alix Blevens

    Project Manager

    Getting her start in the agency world shortly after college, Alix joins 10up with a heavy background in client retention and social media management. As a wearer of many hats, she was responsible for creating and executing advertising campaigns, managing social platforms, and even doing voice overs as well as promotional videos, among a variety of other tasks. She excels in working with both clients and their consumers, bringing a unique perspective to her work. Her favorite part about working with clients is her ability to dive into each client’s business and take pride in her work, as if she were an employee of that business herself. She’s worked with small mom-and-pop shops to large corporations and everything in between.

    Alix is a proud Chico State almuna with a degree in communication and public relations. As a natural leader from a young age, Alix served as both senior class president and captain of her cheer team in high school.

    Alix is a California native and has lived in various cities throughout the state, and currently resides in her hometown of Fresno, California. In her spare time, she loves to go to the gym, attend music festivals, and most importantly, watch football. She made history in her fantasy football league by being the first woman allowed to play. She’s a die hard Los Angeles Chargers fan, something that was instilled in her at a young age by her father.

  • × Amy Zahensky

    Amy Zahensky

    Account Strategist

    With nearly 10 years of experience developing and managing enterprise-level websites, Amy values the importance of cultivating lasting relationships and transforming the digital experience into an engaging front-facing look and feel while also providing data-driven results across the web.

    Amy graduated from Franklin Pierce University with a BSM in Marketing, accelerating her course load to finish in two and a half years while also participating as a member of the Division II Field Hockey team. She launched her career in the web world at a small agency out of Manchester, NH, strategizing and building technologically driven solutions for Financials Insitutions across the country. Amy has since moved onto other Marketing agencies where she has worked to build and manage over 70 sites across the world in various industries and technical architectures.

    Amy’s passion for the web stems from her inner-nerd. She likes to dive into the deep end with her clients and understand their wants, needs, likes and even pain points to help inform what digital solutions will improve their users’ experience and also drive back end results to achieve the organization’s goals for the future.

    In her free time, Amy spends time with her Fiance, children, and 2 pups traveling the world and taking on life’s next adventure.

  • × Anjula Hettige

    Anjula Hettige

    Project Manager

    Anjula loves knowledge and technology. His eagerness to try new tech exposed him to WordPress during his early teenage years when he wanted to build a website that provided tech tutorials to visitors.

    He used his self-taught experience with WordPress to clinch an internship at the biggest English digital magazine in his home country. He quickly rose through the ranks, and was promoted to Assistant Editor and was also given an additional role as the Head of Public Relations during his last months. Among his many other responsibilities at the company, he was in charge of training and assisting Content Writers on publishing content through the WordPress backend, and liaising between the web developers and the Editor-In-Chief to build additional features for the website.

    In 2016, after a 7-year long stint at the digital magazine, Anjula left the company to pursue his passion for web platforms and WordPress. He then joined an agency in his hometown providing web development and WordPress support services to clients in Sri Lanka and Australia. Initially joining as a Support Specialist, he progressed to lead a team of support specialists towards providing customer-centric support services.

    Anjula joins 10up as a Support Specialist with over 7 years of WordPress, Customer Support, and Remote Work experience. Anjula enjoys troubleshooting WordPress and providing support for clients. His next big dream is to become a Web Engineer in the years to come.

    Anjula mostly lives in Colombo, Sri Lanka — right next to the sunny beaches, but has also been traveling to Singapore and Malaysia as a “trendy” digital nomad for the past few years. He is an avid photographer who loves taking pictures of his friends and family. He spends his free time researching world history, politics, and science. Among other things, he also “dreams” about going to the gym during his free time but prefers sleeping in.

  • × Annie Gieser

    Annie Gieser

    Content Marketer

    Annie is a Content Marketer with a passion for and focus on writing. She started her career working for a magazine publisher but soon took up freelance writing and marketing for small businesses. Although she was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Annie left the high altitude for some California sunshine and attended San Francisco State University as a journalism major. In her last year there, Annie served as Editor-in-Chief of the school magazine, Xpress, paving the way for a career focused on written word.

    A stickler for proper grammar, Annie loves diving into a blank page and making it come to life. She has written hundreds of blog posts, articles, personal essays, and case studies for numerous companies and publications. Annie also loves creating spaces for her writing to live—be it websites, graphics, or printed publications. Because of this, she has spent time learning graphic design and basic coding skills.

    Annie joined 10up to help execute written content and configure internal marketing needs. In her role as a Content Marketer, she is able to utilize her wide range of skills to create quality online content under the 10up brand.

    Outside of her garage office, Annie spends her free time lying on the beaches of San Diego, grabbing happy hour with friends, and hiking with her dog, June. June is a sweet sausage of a rescue mutt who loves the dog park and hates loud garbage trucks.

    To fulfill her continuing passion and creativity for magazine publishing, Annie owns a quarterly children’s magazine, Boulder County Kids, with her best friend/business partner.

  • × Burhan Nasir

    Burhan Nasir

    Web Engineer

    Burhan is a Computer Science Graduate. In his last year of university, he got the chance to work at an agency where he worked in PHP.

    Following his deep dive into PHP, he got the chance to work with WordPress and since then, his love for WordPress has only grown. He has spent much of his career working full time with WordPress agencies. Burhan loves Open Source and always looking to contribute to it. He contributed to WordPress core, WP CLI, Gutenberg and many other plugins. He is co-organizer of WordPress Sialkot Meetup.

    Prior to joining 10up, he worked on a SAAS-based company where he gained experience with Django and React JS and contributed to Open edX.

    Burhan enjoys spending time with his family, watching movies and TV series, and going on road trips with his friends when he is not working. He also loves trying out new restaurants.

  • × Colin Swinney

    Colin Swinney

    Front End Engineer

    Colin comes to 10up having spent most of the last decade as a freelance developer working primarily with WordPress. Though originally from Wisconsin (where he currently resides), he began his tech career while living in San Diego, CA, attending local WordPress meetups and WordCamps when he wasn’t trying to learn how to surf. From humble blogging beginnings where his coding interest first piqued, Colin soon found himself working as a contractor for local agencies before eventually taking on clients of his own.

    Web development gives Colin the same feeling he gets from being a musician, finding programming to share similar ebbs and flows in its structure to that of a great melody played over a solid harmonic foundation. Code is just like the notes on a staff, written with strict syntactical rules but allowing for infinite creative possibility in its arrangement.

    What draws Colin to WordPress is the ability to work on such a wide variety of skill sets within one framework. Whether crafting accessible custom themes, extending the platform’s abilities with a php plugin, or modifying and consuming data from its REST API using JavaScript, there’s always something new and exciting to learn with WordPress. He couldn’t be any more excited to join such a strong team of like-minded professionals at 10up.

    When away from his desk, you’ll usually find Colin spending time with his wife and young daughter, sitting behind his pedal steel guitar, or trying to free the princess in whatever Zelda game he’s playing that week.

  • × Fernando Mejia

    Fernando Mejia

    Project Manager

    Fernando’s graduated in 2007 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Law. Following his formal education, he started working as an HR representative for a manufacturing company.

    Armed with initial experience in the workforce, in 2010 he joined the System Administrator team at San Services, an affiliate of Sandals and Beaches resorts where he took his first steps in the IT world. Along with 2 other System Administrators, Fernando worked to set up servers on a data center before jumping into the customer service area. His role was playing middle man, trying to solve issues reported by the customers and the technical staff.

    Then in 2015, a need for the consolidation of a project management department was urgently required. Fernando’s boss pulled him from the System Administration department, knowing it would be a perfect fit. It was an incredibly journey during which Fernando worked on the last 4 versions of the Sandals and Beaches website. His biggest achievement during that time was the latest version of the Online Booking Engine. This project allowed him work closely with different departments and get involved in every single step of the delivery process. Fernando’s technical knowledge and ability to understand customer needs has made him incredibly valuable in the project management process.

    Fernando loves to watch and play football (soccer) during the weekends. He enjoys waking up early in the morning and heading to the gym just as much as he loves craft beer and having drinks with friends. Overall, what he loves the most is to hang out with his 2 boys and lovely wife!

  • × Frankie Bordone

    Frankie Bordone

    Web Engineer

    Frankie is a Brooklyn, NY native who graduated from Brooklyn College in 2015 with Magna Cum Laude Honors as a Computer Science major. Frankie has 5+ years of experience working as a web developer, specializing in WordPress development and responsible for creating dozens of custom themes and plugins for clients, friends, and family.

    Frankie started his professional career as an intern at NPR’s StoryCorps in 2016 and hasn’t looked back since. After rising through the ranks at StoryCorps, he moved on to work at a digital agency called Experience-Interaction, where he had the opportunity to work with well-known clients such as Jose Cuervo, 1800 Tequila, and Mountain Dew.

    When Frankie is not programming, he enjoys hanging out with his friends, catching up on the latest streamed television series, and playing sports. Frankie’s favorite sport is bowling, taking part in his high school bowling league and currently holding a personal high score of 297.

    Frankie aspires to keep growing both professionally and personally in the years to come and especially looks forward to learning more about WordPress in the future.

  • × Gabriel Glogoski

    Gabriel Glogoski

    Front End Engineer

    Gabriel always knew he would be working in the IT industry. 10-year-olds usually don’t even think about the college they’ll attend, but for Gabriel, it was clear from the start that it will be related to IT.

    He started his web development journey in a smaller agency that was, by chance, oriented on custom WordPress development. Even though he always envisioned himself as a frontend engineer, through WordPress he got the opportunity to practice the backend side of development. Other than building custom WordPress sites and eCommerce solutions he found a passion for mentoring new colleagues and teaching them best coding practices.

    On his next job, in one of the leading Croatian development agencies, he got the opportunity to put his mentorship skills to the test by taking a role as a lecturer in a company education program. He was teaching how to build modern and sustainable WordPress sites and utilize the block editor for a better editorial experience. On the engineering side, he worked on a really broad spectrum of WordPress projects: migrating and rebuilding a college site from Drupal to WordPress, rebuilding the REST API from django CMS to WordPress and a fully interactive presentation web for an up-and-coming payment processing platform.

    Lately, he picked up an old hobby again: collecting and playing trading card games. Organizing his Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh decks and collections have become his main pastime. Other than that, he unwinds in VR and latest PC games.

  • × Hilary Reid

    Hilary Reid

    Account Strategist

    Hilary found her love for the digital world after working in a variety of different industries; trying to find that perfect fit. Starting in sales, to building and maintenance operations, to the beauty industry. Finally, upon entering the digital world, she knew instantaneously that it was something she wanted to learn more about and further her career in. The passion within the industry drew her in, and she hasn’t looked back since.

    Beginning at a small startup agency as an account manager, she worked closely with her team and creative director to design and develop websites, create and run digital campaigns, manage SEO and social media, and take on full branding projects. Due to the size of the agency, she was able to wear many hats. She gained a deeper knowledge of each aspect of the agency and an understanding of how to provide successful results for each and every client. Working with B2B and B2C companies ranging from small mom and pop to non-profits and large corporations nationwide. No matter the size of the company, her main goal was always to provide an unforgettable client experience and optimal results. Using her experience at the startup digital agency, she landed a role as an account manager with an IT/software development company. During her time there, she was able to apply her understanding of user experience in an entirely new light, while continuing to build and maintain client relationships. She also learned an incredible amount about the technical aspect and backend operations of web portals and integrations.

    During her years as an account manager, she knew that she had found what fit, which ultimately led her to 10up and joining the team as an account strategist. Hilary is excited to be part of a company that possesses considerable talent and learn and grow alongside the 10up team.

    Hilary lives in North Carolina with her husband and two young daughters. In her free time, you can typically find her with her family on the coast, chasing her energetic toddlers, dabbling in different forms of art, jewelry making, and reading.

  • × Jennifer Maloney

    Jennifer Maloney

    User Experience Designer

    Jennifer moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington and get her B.S. in Psychology. She initially wanted to continue her education and pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology. During her time there, Jennifer became heavily involved in academic research and continued working in the field after graduation. One gap year turned into several, and eventually she realized she wouldn’t enjoy a career as a Clinical Psychologist. At the peak of not knowing her next move or how to advance her career, a coworker suggested she check out the User Experience field.

    Initially Jennifer thought she would end up liking User Research most, but after completing a User Experience Certificate Program at a tech school in Seattle, she had fallen in love with the entire UX Design lifecycle. Her background in academic research keeps her curious and helps her unearth the needs and desires of users. Jennifer’s background in psychology helps her develop empathy and understanding of their struggles. Little did she know she was building skills for this new career even when she felt stuck in the old one! Jennifer worked on a few additional projects after completing her certificate program and then started looking her my first full-time gig.

    Jennifer started out contracting with 10up in March of this year. Already, she says she has learned so many new skills and is excited to be officially joining the 10up team. Because this is her first full-time position in the field, she is happy to have landed at a company with so many fantastic designers to learn from. Jennifer is looking forward to bringing her background experiences to the team and growing in her career!

    In her free time, Jennifer loves going to live shows, following extreme weather events, and trying out new recipes in the kitchen. She is also a self-proclaimed Crazy Corgi Lady, and this fall her and her boyfriend will finally be welcoming home their very own corgi puppy!

  • × Joji Langston

    Joji Langston

    Quality Assurance Specialist

    Joji spent 12 years building and supporting web applications for some of the largest sports brands in North America, including the NFL, UFC, NHL, and countless NCAA Division I athletic programs nationwide. From his work in customer and client-facing support teams to internal development teams, Joji has honed his communication and problem-solving skills and continued to develop strong attention to detail to deliver fantastic user and client experiences.

    It was during his time as a web developer that Joji discovered his interest in QA. He found that breaking things and punching holes in code was more challenging, and he would QA his code before delivery to the actual QA team. Each project presented a new opportunity to get zero bugs returned from that team. With each project, he learned, added checks to the checklist, and continued to develop a system that worked. After being laid off due to an acquisition, Joji did just as much freelance QA work as he did freelance programming. The transition from programming to QA was natural. “QA can make or break an organization’s reputation. QA allows me to play goalie, the last line of defense. I feel like I do my best work in that critical zone. I enjoy the sense of accomplishment when stamping my name on something successful.”

    When not working, you can find Joji hiking, surfing, biking, or playing video games with his son, Motoki. They frequently enjoy the beautiful year-round Florida weather outdoors or take long road trips to experience new places, people, and cultures. With extra free time, you can find Joji catching up on some of his favorite YouTube channels related to woodworking, sailing, off-grid living, and content creation.

  • × Kelvin Balloo

    Kelvin Balloo

    QA Specialist

    After graduating from Nottingham University, Kelvin joined a Malaysian fin-tech company where he worked for more than 7 years. He started as a Junior Business Analyst and quickly became a Senior Business Consultant where he managed a team of 14 people, serving the reputable DBS banks of Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and India. He wore several hats from quality assurance, BAU lead, lead trainer, project manager to providing consultation for analysts.

    During the pandemic, Kelvin saw the huge shift towards online businesses. Realizing its power and how much more this industry will grow in the future, he decided to shift industries by applying at 10up. Though a digital agency like 10up is a new industry is new to Kelvin, the commitment to quality service to clients is not.

    When he’s not working, he is either looking for his next travel destinations with his wife or creating content for his Youtube channel : Kelvin Balloo. He also invests/trades in the US stock markets using options. Other than that, he enjoys participating in contests and has won more than $20,000 worth of prizes, allowing him to travel to 10+ countries for free.

  • × Laura Martinez

    Laura Martinez

    Visual Designer

    Laura is passionate about composition, color and experimenting outside the box. She loves creating illustrations in traditional mediums such as ink or paint. Some of her artworks appeared in the 9th annual edition of a book published in Spain for young artists and other small publications.

    With her background in digital marketing, programming and illustration; Laura took part in a variety of projects, from start-ups and small agencies to collaborating with non-profit organizations and software development companies. She continues expanding her knowledge of UX to create not only something visually appealing but a complete functional design experience.

    She’s also an aspiring filmmaker; during the last three years she directed and produced several independent short films and a music video for a local artist. In her free time, Laura enjoys going to rock concerts or the occasional road-trip to experience a gastronomic adventure in Baja’s wine country and taking lots of photos.

  • × María Anguas

    María Anguas

    Quality Assurance Specialist

    María studied Journalism and Filmmaking. Her initial career was focused on making some short films and taking video editing jobs. But fate made her accept a remote job in QA for an American company, where she began a new career path.

    She learned from scratch and through working, the basics of QA. She worked closely with her colleagues and clients, and learned directly from them to improve each of her reviews. Being the only QA focused employee at her previous company, she quickly had to learn how to handle multiple projects at the same time, and different environments such as Sh​opify and WordPress.

    Her constant quest for improvement brought her to study and learn new aspects of QA on her own. After more than two years working alone in a QA department, María was ready for a team environment. She was looking to grow more and learn more, so María joined 10up to continue her career on a QA team.

    Outside of work, she combines her passion for movies and animals. She loves to watch Marvel and Disney movies, and play video games. Also, she is volunteer at a local pet shelter since 2014

  • × Mehidi Hassan

    Mehidi Hassan

    Front End Engineer

    Mehidi was born and raised at Rajshahi, a serene town by the mighty Padma River in Bangladesh. He started his career as a Frontend Engineer and worked at various local agencies. There he got introduced to WordPress and fell in love with the ecosystem and community. Since then he worked extensively in WordPress theme and plugin development. Which ultimately led him to become a WordPress core contributor.

    With the advent of the latest front-end technologies, he diversified his skillset into ES6 and popular front-end frameworks like React and Vue. His passion for technology has led him to work in decoupled WordPress architecture projects built with Next.js and Gatsby. After working as an engineer both in local and international markets, he finally made his way to join 10up as a Web Engineer.

    Outside of work, he likes to spend his time with his friends by roaming around the countryside.

  • × Mohit Dadhich

    Mohit Dadhich

    Quality Assurance Specialist

    Mohit’s love for computers started as a gamer, and later he pursued a Master of Computer Applications. Mohit started his career as an intern C# developer. But once he got familiar about the product and business logic, he started noticing critical bugs in the product (which were not easy to find out). It was at that time Mohit discovered his interest in testing and became a Software Quality Analyst after the internship.

    He was introduced to WordPress when he started his journey with Multidots in 2017. Mohit’s first career success was completing 3 VIP projects as a single QA, after-which Multidots became WordPress VIP silver agency partner. After that, Mohit worked on every VIP project for Multidots. Later, he joined BuddyBoss and had time to work on popular WordPress Plugins and Themes. In BuddyBoss, he worked as Lead QA for the Web Product Team.

    For the last five years Mohit has been working with WordPress and enjoying this focus. He contributed as a developer and tester for the dot store WordPress Plugin. He is also a member of the Hindi WordPress Polyglot team and looking forward to contributing more to WordPress.

    As a QA, Mohit worked on several WordPress websites, Plugins, Themes, WooCommerce web applications, and mobile applications. Despite having 6.5 years of experience, he is constantly learning and making himself better to face bigger challenges.

    Mohit’s previous team members would say he is friendly and very easy to work with. His previous managers love his calm and logical approach in critical situations.

    Outside of working hours, Mohit loves spending time with family and friends. Being a member of a Social organization, he also spends time doing different social work as a Volunteer. He loves reading and watching news related to technology, economy, sports and the auto sector. Mohit loves traveling and exploring places through different and local modes of transport. Furthermore, he loves spending time between mountains.

  • × Nick Ortiz

    Nick Ortiz

    Front End Engineer

    Nick is a web developer and tinkerer of all things technology-related. Everything he owns must be customized or modified, –especially if it has an API. Nick has been a speaker at various WordPress and web-related events talking about extending the capabilities of WordPress.

    Prior to joining 10up, Nick worked with a remote company providing fullstack development to some large, important, non-profits and helped them to obtain their substantial dreams and goals.

    Nick started his journey into the web as a kid with a dial-up modem and a PC. He got his start learning different web languages and technologies by stealing front-end code from sites he liked, modifying it, and adding it to add to his own website. Nick went on to learn design at a local community college, realized he had a knack for debugging and problem-solving and ended up working in the schools programming lab to assist students and teachers. He moved onto freelancing and got a sub-contracting job doing WordPress development and began learning all the ways he could extend WordPress.

    In his freetime Nick enjoys exploring the various deserts of New Mexico with his family, reading about information security, and making noise with his musical instruments.

  • × Quamruz Zaman

    Quamruz Zaman

    Web Engineer

    Born in the rural greenery of Bangladesh, Quamruz Zaman had always a thirst and keen interest in anything tech related. He loved to tinker and build DIY stuff since he early days of his childhood.

    During his second semester at the University, he first learned about WordPress while searching for a platform to publish his personal journals. He started to dig deeper and began working freelancer where he helped numerous clients with their online presence and website needs.

    His extraordinary skills and problem solving capabilities landed him in his first remote job as a Web Developer at an online marketing agency based in Montreal, Canada. During his tenure with the agency Zaman helped them standardize process, create boilerplates and configure and manage their internal network of 50+ blogs which were created with WordPress. Zaman is always in the lookout to work with modern and popular technologies which led him to work at a startup as Software Engineer helping them with a custom WordPress solution which was intended for working class people. He helped them by developing a geofencing and geolocation based time tracker.

    Besides WordPress, Zaman also worked with React and React Native. He has built extensions for a popular WordPress theme builder using react and PHP best practices. After that when COVID-19 first struck, he and his team realized the need of a remote solution for doctor and patient appointments and based on that idea, the team developed a mobile app using React Native and Nodejs to facilitate doctor appointments, prescriptions, reports and medicine management. The app was a well praised solution during the pandemic.

    After joining Themeum as a Senior WordPress Developer, Zaman managed all the WordPress related projects at themeum. Some of them are quite popular in the industry, like Tutor LMS e-Learning plugin, Qubely – a Gutenberg blocks plugin, WP Crowdfunding to name a few. He also developed a starter theme for the Tutor LMS plugin to facilitate the overall user experience while using Tutor LMS. Thanks to his super multitasking abilities and great team management skills, he was promoted to Senior Software Engineer at Themeum within a short period of time.

    When not working, Zaman loves to watch movies, play with his kid, travel country-sides, visit his parents and relatives and spend quality time with them.

  • × Raquelle Fahle

    Raquelle Fahle

    Front End Engineer

    Raquelle comes from a long line of computer programmers who worked all over the world in the fields of video games, educational software, and classified technology. She found computer science working on premed studies in quantitative biology. Ever curious about logic and the connection the internet allows, she went into web development in 2013.

    She has worked with nonprofits, hospitals, major airlines, world-class amusement parks, and international clients, with extra enthusiasm for empowering companies that are ethical and purposeful. Accessibility and user experience are at the forefront of each development project.
    She has contributed to open source tools for WordPress that allow for better practices in development, and joining the front end team at 10up will allow her to focus on contributing to WordPress core and making the internet a more accessible platform for all.

    Raquelle is drawn to problem solving, whether it’s a coding challenge within a project or making code animations for personal pleasure. When not behind a computer screen, you can find her rock climbing in the mountains of Peru, floating in the Dead Sea in Israel, upside down in handstand classes or hiking to bodies of water with her pup for a swim.

  • × Ryan Cosimi

    Ryan Cosimi

    Account Strategist

    After spending four years as a Technical Sales Engineer in the manufacturing industry, Ryan has a great appreciation for following through a long term project cycle and bringing thoughtful solutions to customers. Ryan has a knack for listening to client pain points and diving right into solving the things that keep clients up at night.
    Ryan studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Dayton; a background he utilizes to quickly understand and solve technical problems. Becoming a subject matter expert through his constant excitement to learn and grow has given Ryan’s clients the trust that the right solution will be found. Being an efficiency enthusiast, Ryan is constantly looking for ways to make life easier on those around him.
    In his free time Ryan is an avid skier, hiker, golfer, adventurer, etc. He loves the outdoors and takes every opportunity to fully immerse in nature as a quick refresh. He has goals of hiking a few 14ers and getting more into backcountry skiing. He loves music, food, coffee, craft beer and his sports teams. He is a huge fan of the Denver Broncos and Dayton Flyers Basketball. Ryan and his Fiancée live in Denver, taking in all that the outdoors has to offer.

  • × Shahzaib Mushtaq

    Shahzaib Mushtaq

    Systems Engineer

    Shahzaib always had an interest in computers and early on would actively explore new functionalities that occurred when using different operating systems. Due to his curiosity and desire to learn more, he decided to take a few courses related to System Administrator. Those courses helped him get a job as Technical Support Representative for a hosting company in 2012. Escalating his path from Support Representative to Junior System Admin, Shahzaib was then promoted to Senior Systems Engineer & Technical Strategist due to his quick learning abilities.

    He started working on larger-scale deployments, scaling & troubleshooting the Servers & Networks. He could do it all – optimizing servers to handle high traffic jumps, troubleshooting high servers load, or finding the bottleneck to eradicate the root cause of the lagging. He also gained experience setting up clusters for high-traffic sites and managing/troubleshooting multiple high-traffic CMS websites (including WordPress). Thanks to his expertise, he was often brought in to scan for malware, digging into the vulnerabilities and optimizing the server. Shahzaib cares about security and regularly helps others configuring monitors and alarm triggers to detect abnormalities in their systems.

    Diving into the DevOps, he worked on various companies multi-tiered products including VOD/OTT platforms and dockerized it into a micro-architecture environment. As he transitioned to the next level of his career, he was directly involved in building a co-located data center for web applications from scratch. This project included infrastructure deployments(CPUs, Ram, Chassis, Controllers, Storage) to operating system setups and configurations according to the application needs. Shahzaib felt honoured to be involved in in building the infrastructure that spanned around multiple racks with Petabyte of storage backed by high bandwidth pipes.

    Prior to joining 10up, Shahzaib was working as an IT – Infrastructure Head, in charge of the data center for the entire organization.

    Outside of work, he spends his time hitting the gym, playing cricket & getting together with friends for a cup of tea.

  • × Shenan Sherwell

    Shenan Sherwell

    Audience Growth Strategist

    From creating growth strategies for web properties to leading development teams to deliver top-notch functionality, Shenan has spent his time balancing the fine line between creative and technical work.

    After graduating high school, Shenan went straight to work as a musician and as an audio engineer. He continued to study online while performing as a bassist in several groups, creating original scores and working in the studio, recording music for documentaries, t.v. and online games like Warcraft.

    His journey as a front-end developer and a visual artist began when he started working with Adobe Flash and became a self-taught programmer learning ActionScript 3, HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL to create websites, animations, and interactive installations.

    Around 2008, he began working as a freelancer performing VFX and motion graphics for film and t.v., designing logos, illustrating, and leading web development projects for national and international enterprises.

    By 2010 Shenan began using WordPress as a CMS, becoming his go-to tool for web development since then.

    He also led development teams and worked as a technology consultant to create interactive art installations and applications for corporate events like award ceremonies and product launches for big brands like Volkswagen, Huawei, and BASF.

    Since 2015 Shenan has refocused his attention to complement his design and development knowledge by learning SEO and other inbound methodologies. Today he spends his time helping clients grow their online authority, visibility, and expertise to achieve their business goals.

    In his spare time, you can find Shenan outdoors, cooking, dining with family and friends, hiking with his dogs, or doing some gardening to get his fair share of sunshine.

  • × Stella Stopfer

    Stella Stopfer

    Project Manager

    Stella comes to 10up with 15 years of experience in the industry through marketing, social media, design, front-end development, and project management.

    In the midst of her architecture studies at the University of Zagreb in Croatia, back in 2007, she realized the potential for future remote work and the media shift to the online space. Soon after that, she secured her first marketing job with an agency in San Diego, CA. Expanding into social media, her positions shifted towards concepts for early Facebook apps and advertising across social platforms.

    She transitioned from marketing to web design and then soon to a front-end developer position at an agency based out of Denver, CO. Her agency and freelance work included websites for anything from small to mid-sized businesses across different industries, to complex e-commerce, memberships, and multi-lingual solutions, all on WordPress. The client base was mostly focused on North America and Europe. In 2019, she transitioned to a project management role, taking on a new challenge to look at projects from different perspectives, working with cross-functional teams, and assuring client satisfaction.

    In her free time, you will most likely find her traveling around the world, enjoying art, scuba diving or possibly learning yet another foreign language. At home, she is either cooking for friends and family, playing Splatoon on Nintendo, or listening to a podcast currently on topics such as neuroscience, and psychology.

  • × Sumit Bagthariya

    Sumit Bagthariya

    Quality Assurance Specialist

    Since childhood, Sumit had a natural inclination toward computers. He was fascinated with technology and decided to dive deep in the realm of information & technology.

    He started by learning and executing programs on HTML and was creative enough to bring out various outputs by using different keywords and formations. His interests brought Sumit to pursue a bachelor’s and masters in Computer Applications. He proudly earned both degrees!

    His career began as a software developer and he started working with Multidots, a gold partner of WordPress, as a Sr. QA Engineer. He worked there for 4 years and contributed significantly in his sphere of influence. It was the same case with his next company, BuddyBoss. At BuddyBoss, he worked as Lead QA for the Web Product Team.

    He loves to spend his leisure time with his family and hanging out with friends. Sumit is actively involved as a volunteer and provides selfless services in many of the other ways.

  • × Sunil Verma

    Sunil Verma

    Web Engineer

    Sunil has begun his journey into web development during his college years. He earned a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in Computer Science, where his passion for creating web pages led him to learn HTML and CSS. After graduation, Sunil explored various platforms and frameworks, working with Drupal 6, Magento 1.7, and CodeIgniter. Eventually, he found his niche in WordPress, a decision that changed the course of his career.

    Over the years, Sunil refined his skills and became proficient in modern web technologies. He recently added React.js and TypeScript to his toolkit, which he uses to build single-page applications(SPA) and custom Gutenberg blocks for WordPress. His expertise has also extended to marketing/automation tools like Marketo and HubSpot, alongside various content management systems, including Shopify. Notably, he has worked with WordPress VIP, adhering to best practices in his collaborations, which have enhanced the performance and scalability of various projects.

    Before joining 10up, Sunil spent some years at BoxUK, where he worked on impactful projects that further shaped his expertise. His contributions in this role were notable, including a significant collaboration on the OneId plugin.

    In 2021, Sunil relocated from India to the United Kingdom and has been exploring his new surroundings ever since. Currently based in Oxford, he enjoys the blend of rich history and modern innovation that the city offers.

    Outside of work, Sunil recently embraced fatherhood with the birth of his daughter. He loves spending time with her, playing, and teaching her new things. Cooking is another passion of his, and he enjoys experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen. On weekends, Sunil likes to go out with his family and explore new places, creating lasting memories together. He also believes in giving back, volunteering for charitable causes at least once a month.

  • × Trey Kane

    Trey Kane

    Front End Engineer

    Trey is a lover of all things technology, having started his technology journey in the late 90s by breaking family computers. As soon as he got his hands on an internet connection he became fascinated with building websites. After several career paths and while attending the Culinary Institute of Michigan, Trey was given an opportunity to work at Longerdays.com working on WordPress sites for their virtual assistance clients.

    Trey quickly realized that he loved this work. He immediately changed his major from Culinary Arts to Web Development, later working at a local marketing agency and then freelancing for a year. In 2015 he was offered a job with Red Ventures in Charlotte, NC. Moving to Charlotte provided him three years working as a Front End Developer on Red Ventures Partnerships. Then, wanting a change and a move back to Michigan, he took a new role as Software Engineer with Red Ventures at Bankrate.com in Detroit where he’s been for the last two years.

    During his time at Red Ventures, Trey used WordPress in a variety of implementations at the enterprise level, ranging from traditional custom WordPress themes and plugins to entirely proprietary solutions. Later working at Bankrate using WordPress to help manage Bankrate’s massive amount of editorial content.

    Trey is excited to be joining the 10up team as a Front End Developer. He is interested in strengthening his core skills as a developer and using WordPress in new and interesting ways, and getting a chance to continue developing his React skills.

    Outside of web development, Trey juggles a wide array of hobbies including: table top games, music production, technical theater, 3D printing, video games, and golf. He has worked as a volunteer on the Michigan Irish Music Festival for 16 years, the majority of that time as a Production Team Lead and manager of the events main stage.

  • × Aimee Hiebert

    Aimee Hiebert

    Recruiting Manager

    Aimee grew up in a rural town in Idaho & later moved herself to the “big city” of Boise, Idaho to become the first in her family to attend college. She maintained a full-time job while putting herself through school at Boise State University where she obtained her bachelors in Human Resource Management. Aimee has always been curious about the world, so after college she took a short break before transitioning into her career to embark on a solo backpacking trip throughout Europe.

    When she returned from traveling, Aimee worked as a recruiter & became an active member of her local Human Resources Association. Over the next 5 years, Aimee built a strong foundation in recruiting fundamentals by recruiting at both small & large company levels. She’s worked in various HR roles & found great joy in helping others achieve their career goals. From advising hiring managers to scheduling interviews with prospective applicants, Aimee’s no stranger to wearing many hats. Her passion for people combined with her upbeat attitude are genuine & she cares greatly about the organizations & people she helps.

    Aimee is quite the busy bee & has many hobbies. Traveling, hiking, & fly fishing name a few… but she is most passionate about the environment, serving others, & gardening. She recently combined these passions to create “The Petal Project.” The Petal Project is a small, seasonal project where she grows beautiful cut flowers on what she refers to as her “farm.” When ready, she donates the cut flowers in mason jars to local hospitals, nursing homes, & often to people who just need something to brighten their day. Additionally, she has a small orchard where she grows pears, cherries, apricots, & apples to donate to her local food bank.

  • × Alicia Remedios

    Alicia Remedios

    Accounts Operations Manager

    Alicia graduated with honors from the University of South Florida with a degree in Professional Writing, Rhetoric, and Technology, and following that, joined a small web agency based in Clearwater, Florida. It was during this time that she worked more closely with WordPress and gained a better understanding and appreciation for the entire process behind creating engaging websites for clients.

    Starting at 10up in 2015 as an Accounts Coordinator, Alicia quickly put her experience managing multiple projects and operational responsibilities to use and leveled up to Accounts Operations Manager. She enjoys using her skills to assist with anything and everything the Strategy team handles day to day.

    When not at the computer, you can find Alicia enjoying family time at the beach or a local bookstore, fully enjoying life in Charleston, South Carolina.

  • × Alyssa Lee

    Alyssa Lee

    Staffing Specialist

    Alyssa has always been passionate about understanding technology and how it works. She remembers checking out books on HTML & CSS in middle school to customize her profile on a virtual pet website, playing early computer programming games, and competing in robotics competitions. Her professional experience includes social media management, WordPress site management, project management, video editing, email marketing, and many things in between. 

    Before joining 10up as a Resourcing Coordinator, she worked as a freelance Online Business Manager for 3.5 years where she grew tremendously as a professional. She shined as an effective project manager for her clients: coordinating workloads, assisting with many administrative tasks, and diving into the backend to set up all the technical processes behind a small business. She prided herself on being a flexible problem solver for her clients and really enjoyed the puzzle of making everything work together to help her clients.

    She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and attended Centre College, a small liberal arts school in Kentucky. She and her husband, Adam, also lived outside of Seattle, Washington for a few years when they were newlyweds because they desired an adventure to see new parts of the country. She is now back in East Tennessee, living more rurally – her closest neighbors are cows, and is enjoying being back closer to her family.

    In her free time, you might find her at a pottery wheel, playing video games, running her Minecraft server, or volunteering at her local animal shelter. She also spends a lot of time just snuggling on the couch with her two cats, Gizmo and Moonpie, and reading a book.

  • × Ashley Hill

    Ashley Hill

    Client Services Operations Specialist

    Ashley’s first passion was education. After graduating from Arkansas State University with her teaching degree, she began her career as a middle school teacher in central Arkansas. After her first year of teaching, she went on to teach science, math, and English to various grade levels in a few different school districts throughout Arkansas. During this time, she also earned her masters degree in Library Media and Information Sciences from the University of Central Arkansas. Eventually, Ashley ended up back in her hometown teaching at her alma mater. Her time as an educator helped her develop resiliency and adaptability in the face of adversity and a passion for helping others succeed.

    After nine rewarding years in public education, Ashley was motivated to accept a new challenge which led her to seek out a career path outside of the education field. With no idea where to begin, a friend recommended project management due to her strong interpersonal skills, exceptional organization, and a keen eye for detail. After enrolling in a few online courses, she found that she loved every aspect of this field and wanted to move forward in a similar area. Seeking to find the right company fit for her, she was introduced to 10up and immediately knew this was where she wanted to be.

    Outside of work, Ashley enjoys spending quality time with her husband and two young daughters. You can often find her gossiping about books with friends over a glass of wine, gardening, hand-lettering in her journal, or singing to The Eagles on a sunny day. She enjoys supporting local schools and her former students by attending various school events. Ashley and her husband also look forward to becoming small business owners in the near future.

  • × Catlin Hays

    Catlin Hays

    People Operations Manager

    Catlin attended San Diego State University before transferring and completing her program at Sacramento State University in 2014 with a B.A. in International Business. After putting herself through college by working full time during her coursework, she became a Project Coordinator and Administrative Assistant for a local commercial furniture dealership which solidified her professional administrative experience.

    Her experience in a mixture of administrative, business, and retail management strategies paved the way for her to become an Executive Assistant at 10up. This step into the agency world eventually led to the People Operations Manager role she holds today.

    In her spare time, Catlin enjoys spending time outside with her husband in sunny San Diego. Catlin also enjoys strategic board games, traveling as often as she is able, relaxing at the beach, and making delicious vegan food for friends and family. She is also the proud cat mom to her fur baby: Mance Rader, King of the Wildlings!

  • × Celeste Chapman

    Celeste Chapman

    Senior Accountant

    Celeste fell in love with numbers at an early age. As a child, she played with her parents’ billing statements and check registers for “fun.” As she grew up, she worked as a bookkeeper for a local small business, where her infatuation only deepened. She attended and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with a Bachelor of Business Administration, majoring in Accounting & Finance.

    Since then, her experience in accounting has grown from small businesses to corporations and non-profits, working with companies such as March of Dimes, the Arthritis Foundation, and SHRM. She is currently a member of the advisory board for WINDS Recovery House, located in Milwaukee, WI.

    When Celeste isn’t counting pennies, she can be found doing yoga, spending time with her husband and pup, and enjoying kayaking, swimming, and just being around any body of water!

  • × Dena Wilkerson

    Dena Wilkerson

    Staff Accountant

    Dena comes to 10up with over 38 years of accounting experience from a variety of industries, but most recently from the healthcare space. Before joining 10up, she spent a year as the Financial Systems Administrator at a regional healthcare system, with a focus on interface functions of various programs within the financial software. Prior to this, she spent a decade as the local hospital’s Payroll and Accounts Payable manager, serving over 1,300 employees.

    Dena is based in Kentucky where she enjoys hanging out with her husband, son, two daughters, and four grandchildren. In the free moments in between, you can find her traveling or interior decorating for her friends and family.

  • × Haley Wyrsch

    Haley Wyrsch

    Executive Assistant

    Haley graduated from California State University, Chico with a Bachelor’s Degree in Resort and Lodge Management, and Special Events. While getting her degree, Haley interned with Oracle, Portola Hotel and Tuscan Ridge Golf Club. During her collegiate years, she also increased her event knowledge by working special events such as the annual St. Judes Fundraiser and AutoDesk conferences in Las Vegas. 

    After college, Haley moved to the Bay Area to start her career at a Financial Advisory Firm. There, she gained experience in administrative tasks and customer service relations. She then moved into the recruiting department at the Workday implementation company, Collaborative Solutions. Haley focused on building a strong foundation of knowledge in the recruiting and human resources department. She took pride in providing the best interview and onboarding experience possible for others.

    Haley took all her previous experience and then transitioned to work in the Election System and Software industry. She flourished in her role as an Office Manager and Project Coordinator, while working with the Secretary of State and County Officials on the Voter Registration projects. Being no stranger to wearing multiple hats, Haley worked in the Sales and Escrow department at KB Home during her next career move. She worked closely with Division leadership to execute and exceed sales goals while increasing client satisfaction.

    For the past several years, Haley has had extensive experience in administrative tasks, business operations and corporate event planning. Having held positions in the Finance, Software and the Real Estate industry, Haley is able to tailor her skills to meet the needs of various clients. Her passion for organization and desire to help assist where needed, has prepared her to become an Executive Assistant at 10up.

    When Haley is not working on her computer, you can find her walking her dog Sage at the local parks. In her spare time, Haley loves to be in the kitchen cooking and baking new recipes, binge watching maybe a few too many shows on Netflix, or researching which country to travel to next.

  • × Heather Marshall

    Heather Marshall

    Senior Recruiter

    With 12 years of recruiting experience in the eCommerce/digital agency space, Heather works with prospective candidates and teams to find the best fits and to build a team of world class talent. She enjoys learning about people and what motivates them. Her passion is helping to build a culture that makes work life feel like so much more than just a job.

    Heather graduated from Miami University with a marketing degree. Her career path has taken her through a variety of roles in the HR space including recruiting and benefits. She has taken 2 start-up tech companies through periods of aggressive growth and evolution of their business models to become trusted leaders in their space.

    When not recruiting, Heather can be found working out with friends at the gym, hiking, enjoying time at the family lake house in Tennessee and cheering for the Michigan State Spartans (fan by marriage), and eating too much chocolate. With 3 now grown children, Heather is making the adjustment to empty nesting by spending as much time as possible traveling.

  • × Kathleen Gremo

    Kathleen Gremo

    Accounting and Finance Manager

    Kathy joins 10up with 20 plus years of experience in the Marketing and Accounting/Finance fields. She began her career on the account/project management side of the marketing industry prior to moving over to the accounting/finance side of business.

    Kathy has worked for various agencies overseeing the finances for interactive, relationship, promotional, and experiential marketing divisions. She previously worked for Geometry Global (a WPP Company) where she was responsible for the day-to-day finances for various divisions. She was also part of a 3-person team that was responsible for overseeing the financial software conversion as well as software training for the agency which was completed in a 3-month timeframe.

    Kathy moved from the marketing side to the financial side at her first agency where she assisted the finance team in completing the month end close. She really enjoyed working with the numbers as she has always enjoyed strategy and problem-solving puzzles and games. So, it was natural fit and she eventually became a permanent part of the finance team at this agency.

    Kathy was born and raised in Chicago, IL but spent a short time living and working in NYC. She moved back to the Chicago area in 2013 and currently lives in a suburb of Chicago. In her spare time, she loves spending time with friends and family usually with her German Shepherd, Layla, by her side. She also enjoys traveling and visiting historical sites.

  • × Mircea Enache

    Mircea Enache

    Lead Technical Recruiter

    Mircea is a senior technical recruiter passionate to discover the brightest developers and help them find a team where their talent could build something awesome. With a BA Psychosociology and a MA in HR Management he has enjoyed the past 15 years in roles as Recruiter, Technical Recruiter, Talent Advisor and Consultant. Mircea is a subject matter expert in tech job ads, referral programs and a Certified Individual (Adlerian) Psychology Coach.

    Having a diverse background in cross-cultural organizations Mircea’s specialty is to build core development teams across Europe, Asia, North and South Americas from small 2 people startups to full-featured 16 people professional teams with multiple technology stacks. He came to 10up to help scale our tech teams with the best web developers out there.

    Mircea is more of a people person than anything else – he loves helping others, brainstorming and having meaningful conversations. He is described by peers as encouraging, creative and perseverant while finding new ways to make work fun and enjoyable.

    In his spare time, you’ll most likely find Mircea tinkering with a classic american car from the ’70s, playing strategy games with his two boys or planning the next long drive.

  • × Nelson Martins

    Nelson Martins

    People Operations Specialist

    Growing up in small, sunny Portugal at the easternmost point of Europe, Nelson wanted to pursue a career that would lead him to be the next World Emperor like many of his Portuguese ancestors, but somewhere along the way, he had to compromise. Nelson finished his Bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Events management in one of the worst years in the European economy. He then had to be creative and explore different options, and thus began his journey in the corporate world.

    His first steps were at AXA – an insurance company, where he provided Insurance Claims Management. Fast-forward a few years into the future and Nelson was invited to a new role -Executive Assistance at BNP Paribas – the 7th largest bank in the world, where he was able to put into practice his skills in travel planning, events organisation and budget control. This allowed him to collaborate with international teams as he learned the specificities of the corporate banking business. Taking advantage of the mobility policy and thanks to his ability to detect fraud, he joined the Compliance department as an Anti-Money Laundering officer. After a while, he ventured into the fascinating world of Compliance HR Learning & Development, where he managed and deployed worldwide training campaigns.

    The common factor in all of these roles is People. Nelson is a caretaker at heart, collaborating with other people and helping them achieve their goals is one of the things he enjoys most.

    Outside of work, you may find Nelson spending quality time with his wife and daughter. He enjoys recording videos of their adventures and then editing them – a skill he learned on one of his internships at a music studio.

    His hobbies include traveling and food, lots of food! Being a 90’s kid, you can also find Nelson playing video games or catching up on the latest trends on Reddit.

  • × Sara Vickers

    Sara Vickers

    Senior Staffing Specialist

    Sara graduated from the University of Central Florida with a Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Art. Her love of creativity has manifested into an excellent knack for problem-solving. With an insatiable love of learning, her career path has taken meandering turns from expert burrito roller to social media management. However, after taking accounting courses a few years after graduation, Sara uncovered another great passion for data and planning.

    Sara has worked for various digital agencies in the Central Florida area, taking leaps from Office Manager, to Project Manager, to Scrum Master, and finally into her current passion for resource management as a Resource Coordinator for 10up. Sara has extensive knowledge and interest in spreadsheets, schedules, and planning which she is excited to leverage to help 10up continue to grow. Working with teams and the different sets of challenges each day at an agency brings is her bread and butter.

    As a born and bred Florida woman, Sara has a love of Central Florida and its community, as well as places like Clearwater and Miami, where she travels every year for the Art Basel festival. Outside of work, Sara has an endless list of hobbies and interests. These include, but are not limited to: painting (both digitally or traditionally), board games, British television, sculpting, Dungeons & Dragons, tennis, genealogy, sci-fi, history, knitting, horror movies, piano, writing, video games, streaming, and continually updating her new (old) home built in the 1960’s with the help of her husband and her cat.

  • × Sara Wilson

    Sara Wilson

    Client Services Operations Specialist

    Sara Wilson is a recent graduate of Northeastern State University with a degree in Multimedia Journalism and Graphic Design. She is a published writer, with work in investigative journalism, feature writing and magazine publications. Before joining 10up, Sara served as editor-in-chief for The Northeastern, an award-winning, collegiate newspaper and as marketing coordinator with Tahlequah Trails, a non-profit outdoor activities program.

    Wilson had the privilege to serve as president of a sorority for two years, where she gained invaluable public speaking, event-planning and leadership skills. The position afforded her the opportunity to speak at the international summer leadership institute in 2020, where she taught about team strengthening and its effect on overall success.

    Wilson was introduced to 10up during her final semester at college. She was impressed with the company’s values and the opportunities it afforded her for personal and professional growth. As a result, Sara aspired to be part of the team. With experience in website maintenance and design, corporate marketing and administrative operations, Sara was confident in her ability to make an impact on the company.

    When she isn’t working, Sara enjoys painting and teaching small art classes virtually. She plays piano, trumpet and ukulele, and is eager to learn more instruments in the future. Sara likes to engage with the local music scene and designs gig posters for friends and artists. She also enjoys cooking for her friends, hiking, kayaking and spending time with her spoiled cat, Zelda.

  • × Sarah Christathakis

    Sarah Christathakis

    Billing Manager

    Sarah comes to 10up as an experienced Billing Manager from a global technology services firm specializing in software engineering, quality engineering, telecom engineering, managed services, cyber security and data analytics. She started off as a billing administrator 14 years ago while putting herself through college. She then obtained her Associates in Business and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Accounting. Sarah has continued to educate herself by assisting in different fields of Accounting over the years which has landed her into the Billing Manager role. She has proven to be dependable and willing to dive into any task that challenges her. She has a passion for numbers which makes her love what she does.

    Outside of work, Sarah and her husband Peter have 3 young boys, Nico, Maximo and Alexio that make sure to keep her busy when she’s not behind the computer. She enjoys spending time with family, being silly with her boys, and is always ready to cheer on a good football game.

  • × Tyler Lal

    Tyler Lal

    Staffing Specialist

    Tyler graduated with honors from Boise State University in 2016 with a degree in marketing. She immediately accepted a job offer upon graduation work for the Boise State Broncos Athletic Department working in ticket operations. As someone who thrives in fast paced and project-centric work, the world of sports management was a great fit for this passionate sports fan at the beginning of her professional career. During her time with the Broncos, Tyler was fortunate enough to travel to multiple NCAA Football bowl games and help manage the ticketing operations for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament when it came to Boise in 2018.

    Later that year, Tyler left to become the Officials and Social Media Coordinator at the Idaho High School Activities Association. During her time there, Tyler helped create original content for social media campaigns and developed crucial project management skills managing the state database of certified high school officials. She also completed her Master’s degree in Athletic Administration and also began coursework for her MBA.

    It was during her MBA coursework that she decided she wanted to get out of sports and utilize her project coordinating and management experience in another platform. Initially, she spent a year as a committee facilitator working under a Department of the Interior contract, but when an opportunity at 10up presented itself, she knew it would be a much better fit. Tyler brings a unique perspective to the team and looks forward to learning and growing with the 10up name.

    In her spare time, Tyler is a serious home chef with a constant desire to try new things. When she’s not in the kitchen, she can be found spending time with her new husband Rahul and their two puppies, either golfing or watching a sporting event of some kind.

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