Woo-hoo!! Ready for the rounds of rides?! Everyone on the Organizing Team is super thrilled to announce our lineup of speakers who will be participating in WordCamp Santa Clarita 2021! From accessibility to neurosciences, the speakers have graciously volunteered their time to share their knowledge with the WordPress Community and the world.
Just like you would grab a ticket to get on a real ride at Magic Mountain, be sure to head on over to get your ticket. Without further ado, please join us as we welcome our first round of speakers from The Sky Tower:
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Alicia St Rose
Alicia St Rose began her adventure with WordPress when a UX friend offhandedly suggested using the CMS for a mutual friend’s website. That was over 15 years ago and the adventure has turned into a torrid love affair. Now she is a freelance developer, exclusively powered by WordPress, and has yet to find a limitation in this magical piece of software.
She is the owner, principal designer and developer and WordPress Coach at WP with Heart, a small agency that employs one — so far. In addition to creating for WordPress, she provides an online one on one DIY website coaching for heart inspired entrepreneurs and content creators. She is also a Creativity and Mindshift Mentor, empowering people to kick their limitations to the curb and express themselves with unapologetic authenticity.
She has spoken at several So Cal WordCamps including WC Orange County and WCLAX. She was also co-organizer of the one and one time only WordCamp Ventura County. She currently organizes the only WordPress Meetup between Santa Cruz and Thousand Oaks called The South Central Coast WordPress Adventure Group.
Outside the WordPress realm, you can find Alicia hosting rooms in her club, Wow with Alicia, on Clubhouse and bringing virtual immersive Burning Man experiences to the Altspace platform as a member of team BRCvr.
Alicia currently lives in Santa Barbara, California with her two rambunctious cats, Oscar and Milo. She divides her time between that seaside town and Black Rock City, Nevada.
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AmyJune Hineline
AmyJune Hineline is the Open Source Community Ambassador and QA Engineer at Kanopi Studios. With a dual focus on both open-source community development and inclusivity, she is uniquely positioned to help individuals become more comfortable and confident as they contribute to their communities. She co-organized various open-source camps and conventions throughout North America, empowering individuals to forge deep community connections that benefit the whole. As a self-described non-coder, AmyJune helps communities discover how they can contribute and belong in more ways than coding.
Her ongoing experience as a hospice nurse keeps her in touch with the challenges faced by many end-users. In her continued efforts to make a difference, she helps organize A11yTalks, an online meetup where they invite folks on every month to talk about all things accessibility – one of the core components of building an inclusive web.
Outside of her mission in the technology community space, she has a deep love for mycology, geocaching, and air-cooled Volkswagens.
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Meryl Evans
A solo marketing and accessibility consultant for over 20 years, Meryl is an author and contributor to books on business and technology. She helps accessibility companies rock their content marketing initiatives. Prior to striking out on her own, she worked for two Fortune 500 companies and the FAA. A highly sought-after speaker who happens to be deaf, Meryl is renowned for sharing her personal experiences and passion for accessibility and high-quality captioning. Her marketing and education backgrounds come in handy in educating audiences on why accessibility is for everyone and everyone’s job.
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Rian Rietveld
Rian is a web accessibility specialist from the Netherlands. She works in Rotterdam for the digital agency Level Level as an accessibility consultant and is a trainer for the online learning platform about web accessibility: The A11Y Collective.
She is part of web projects from start to finish training both the Level Level team and their clients in web accessibility. Besides that, she does accessibility reviews and audits, in-house training, workshops, courses, and consultancy for major web agencies.
She loves to share her knowledge at conferences worldwide.
When not coding, reviewing, or teaching, you can find her working in her garden. -
Stefano Minoia
Stefano is a self-employed, all-around website manager for small local businesses. He describes himself as a front-end developer and an accessibility specialist, but he is curious about all aspects of website building.
He joined the WordPress Community in early 2018; since then, he tried his best to give back by speaking at and co-organizing WordPress events, and by contributing to the WordPress Accessibility Team. He’s been one of the Accessibility Team Reps for the past year and he was one of the co-organizers of the first WordPress Accessibility Day.
When he isn’t busy bothering his friends by talking about WordPress, he sings in a choir and goes ballroom dancing (at least, he used to before the pandemic). A few months ago he also rediscovered his passion for playing chess.
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Trevor Calabro
Trevor is a Nielson Norman Group master certified UX professional with more than 15 years of experience. He has worked as the lead UX strategist for multi-billion dollar tech conglomerates, mid-sized software companies, and startups alike.
Trevor has the unique combination of being an analytical thinker with a data science background that loves psychology and is a self-proclaimed people person.
Trevor currently works at Aten Design Group. Outside of work, he helps Penn State University’s pedagogy advisory board create the next generation of user experience curriculum and conducts pro bono user research for local nonprofits. Trevor lives at Penn State University with his spouse and two children.
