\n
Who or what helped you find your footing in WordPress, and how do you try to pay that forward today?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe old, tiny GiveWP team from 2018. I started just after Michelle Frechette and Amanda Gorman. At that time, I was fresh to the software product world, though I had been using WordPress for years before that at an agency, and before that as a hobby. Amanda and Michelle both taught me a lot about customer expectations in WordPress and how to handle them. Matt Cromwell and Devin Walker both taught me a lot about the WordPress community overall. Matt and I both really honed in together on how best to boost GiveWP marketing. Around then, it really thrived for a solid several years as a product and pillar in the WordPress community. I\u2019m really proud of that, because it was a team effort and literally every person on the team was invested and involved in its success. Back then, Ravinder Kumar answered tons of my technical questions, even when they probably sounded a little dumb to an engineer, which ultimately helped me go from nontechnical to technical over time. Kevin Hoffman also taught me tons about product management and was probably the first spark that inspired me to move into Product from Marketing later on in 2024. When he came on board, Jason Adams taught me tons about systems thinking, backend engineering, and honestly how to speak to a developer and translate between types of stakeholders on a project- which is really important in my day-to-day work now. Ben Meredith taught me what to expect from a support team as a customer, marketer, and product manger. Now every bug ticket triage review has Ben\u2019s voice in my head. That whole original team really triggered my career in WordPress and helped get me to where I am now. Now that I\u2019ve landed at Fueled, I try to bring everything I learned to my current role and teach others what I\u2019ve learned where it applies. In the WordPress community, I participate when and where I can to help bring what I\u2019ve learned to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you could engineer one connection at WCEH 2026 \u2014 a conversation, an intro, a collaboration \u2014 what would it be?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is a really good question, and I\u2019m not sure. Every career-changing conversation I\u2019ve had at a WordCamp has been completely accidental. If I\u2019d tried to scheduled it ahead of time, it probably never would have happened. The best part about these events is wandering into a hallway conversation, sitting down to eat with someone you\u2019ve never met, or sticking around to talk about a session afterwards. I\u2019d rather leave room for that kind of organic inspiration than manufacture it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Community<\/strong><\/span>+<\/span><\/button><\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n
WordPress powers 43% of the web, but it’s the people who keep it alive. What’s a moment in this community that reminded you why you stay?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nProbably getting laid off, which sounds backwards. But the reason that I landed on my feat at that time was this community and my time networking at WordCamps. Through an interesting series of events, I not only found a new position quickly, but Fueled found me just at the moment where I realized that first new position wouldn\u2019t work out long term. Now I\u2019m part of helping shape the future of a team I\u2019m really excited about and even more deeply embedded in the community that helped me when I needed it most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What does the WordPress community get right that other tech communities don’t. What could we still do better?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI struggle with this question a little. I think it\u2019s because I don\u2019t think about it as a \u201ctech\u201d community as much as where I found my place. WordPress attracts people from all kinds of backgrounds. Plenty of us, me included, didn\u2019t start out as engineers and still found a place where our skills mattered. That\u2019s probably what WordPress does best. What it could do better is perhaps welcoming in these folks and making it easier to navigate the waters. Coming in fresh is not easy for a newcomer, especially one who came from a nontechnical background.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Contribution<\/strong><\/span>+<\/span><\/button><\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n
What’s a form of contribution you think is undervalued, and why does it matter?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nCommunication. Documentation, UX writing, support, translating between engineers and users\u2026 all of that gets taken for granted because it\u2019s invisible when it\u2019s done well. I\u2019ve spent most of my career somewhere in the middle, taking technical information and turning it into something people can use or turning user needs into feasibly technical solutions. AI can draft documentation and requirements all day long, but it cannot understand people the way humans do. Somebody still needs to bridge that gap, and that is a hard skill to come by in tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lot of people want to contribute but feel they’re not technical enough. What would you say to them?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nI used to be one of those people. I wasn\u2019t writing code (still don\u2019t), but I started out by learning just enough to keep up with engineers until that bloomed into a highly technical background. My focus has always been on what customers actually need combined with what will grow the business in the market. Those are valuable skills to have. WordPress needs writers, designers, support specialists, testers, organizers, product people, marketers\u2026 a full team of real humans with a wide set of skills, to make it work<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Director of Technical Product Ownership at Fueled, with roots at LearnDash and GiveWP, making complex product talk approachable and real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3657560,"featured_media":2498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_wcpt_user_name":"telizarose","footnotes":""},"speaker_group":[61],"class_list":["post-2400","wcb_speaker","type-wcb_speaker","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","wcb_speaker_group-first-round"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"avatar_urls":{"24":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=24&d=mm&r=g","48":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=48&d=mm&r=g","96":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=96&d=mm&r=g","128":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=128&d=mm&r=g","256":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=256&d=mm&r=g","512":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2ec2f0765d14f8b5fac9563ad14186d6f508e7c1ce7eda33a64aeec1e25fa183?s=512&d=mm&r=g"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/2400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/wcb_speaker"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3657560"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2400"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/2400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2803,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speakers\/2400\/revisions\/2803"}],"sessions":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sessions\/2423?_embed=1&context=view"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wcb_speaker_group","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada.wordcamp.org\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/speaker_group?post=2400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}