Team

Matt first found his love for WordPress and WooCommerce when doing small projects with Brent back in 2013 and is now one of our Prospress engineers in Australia. A surf-loving, bonzer guy with a positive attitude Matt enjoys listening to crime podcasts, travelling to Japan and talking about Robot Ninja, not necessarily in that order!

If he’s not coding or talking Robot Ninja, he’s most likely drinking coffee or finding new dogs on Instagram to follow. If you see Matt out and about, say hello (or こんにちは) and mention Robot Ninja or Subscriptions’ REST API for brownie points.

Ali has a PhD in Behavioural Economics and uses the skills she learnt in that to do the non-software things at Prospress, including cleverly crafting a wonderful team. She is somewhat nomadic, tending to circumnavigate the globe on an annual basis, but can usually be found somewhere close to nature.

Ali has a deep understanding of other people and can artfully balance the business of incentives with empathy and emotions to help humans flourish. She is very proud of what she does to help our team and Prospress itself grow in awesomeness!

Brent is the founder of Prospress and developer responsible for all the bad parts of WooCommerce Subscriptions. He’s been contributing to WooCommerce core since December 2011; has spoken about WooCommerce in half a dozen cities on 3 different continents, and co-organised the WooCommerce San Francisco meetup for 5 years before returning to his home country of Australia.

Prior to falling in love with WooCommerce, Brent worked as a WordPress freelancer for clients like Designer Fund and the Australian Government, while finishing his Master’s degree in Internet & Web Technologies and co-organising two WordCamps in Australia.

Another member of the Australian crew, James is a self-confessed politics nerd who loves Game of Thrones & Cool Runnings, which tells you all you need to know.

He joined Prospress after completing a degree in game development and is rather proud of the Pressurizer game he helped develop.

James started with us by creating the Subscriptions Gifting extension. He now leads development of WooCommerce Subscriptions, in between episodes of the Good Wife that is.

Jason is a web designer/developer and Certified Information Systems Security Professional. He has a passion for simple, usable web design and has contributed to a range of sites for organisations all over the world, including the Australian Government, Designer Fund and Stanford University.

Jason has an intrinsic understanding of both user needs and the needs of content development. He’s not afraid of hard work- “this can’t be done” is not an expression in his vocabulary! Which is why he now leads the Robot Ninja team at Prospress.

Although proud of his work, his biggest achievement is his growing family.

Lauren’s first degree was in Anthropology from Princeton; but as the evolution of man led us to technology, so it led Lauren to WooCommerce! She is now in the last quarter of a Computer Science degree having discovered a love of the puzzle solving involved in programming.

Inspired after a summer internship with us, Lauren chose to join the team full time and has been a warm and calm component ever since. With a knack for the creative, Lauren can be found baking in the kitchen or wood whittling in the garden. Ask to see her marvelous wooden Prospress “flying P”!

Nick is a former air ambulance pilot in the Pacific Northwest US who first taught himself to program on a Mac Classic with a 9″ black and white screen. Intrigued yet? We were!

Nick is is a bright spark with a huge passion for learning that meant he went from a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts and German language to the fine art of programming languages (we love a pun). He is now a Support Engineer in our growing West coast team having moved back to Portland.

Nick tells us he joined Prospress because of our positive influence on the WordPress community and the world as a whole. But we know it was really just for our mad gifs.

In a former life Carolyn was a documentary producer on more than 30 documentaries for worldwide broadcasters – with a few high profile names from Michael Caine to Morgan Spurlock. One of her favourite films to work on was an independent documentary about men with a love for My Little Pony (yes, that’s right – Google A Brony Tale!).

After years living in London, UK, Carolyn went for a change of pace and now lives in a mountain town in Canada in order to get into the wilderness as much as possible. As part of the Human Factors team Carolyn is putting her Journalism Masters to good use to help with Prospress storytelling.

Menaka was first inspired by her high school teachers to learn coding and gained a solid foundation in the specifics of programming at the erstwhile NCST. Once she decided to learn WordPress she became her own teacher and taught herself web development. Menaka is proud of her determination and is very goal driven; hence managing to achieve the daunting task of a PHD in Natural Language Processing. Her love of words continues and she enjoys reading – especially books that have a good mystery to solve! She also enjoys puzzles and crosswords and spending time with her partner and children. With a shared passion for sport the whole family can often be found watching competitions together – and Menaka herself has a particular penchant for wielding a table tennis bat when she gets a chance!

Austin is a very smart chap with a keen eye for detail. He loves figuring out the answers to new and tricky questions, making him a great fit for our support team! This dedication to learning led Austin to teach himself how to code, and he now passes his knowledge along by running coding classes for middle school and high school kids. He finds this almost as rewarding as Magic: the gathering, a game he swears he will play professionally once he figures out minor details like “winning.” Austin worked at a local tech company before joining Prospress and now hopes to explore the world and expand his knowledge even further.

Our first and only team member based in Europe, Bernat started using WordPress for clients while working for a digital agency. He later became a freelance developer and shared his knowledge with  new developers by teaching at university. A fan of low budget ‘Z’ movies he is prepared to travel ~400km each year to assist at the ‘International Shitty Films Festival’. One of his proudest achievements is an interactive mini film that he made with more than 25 sychronised cameras. With a love for life and laughter Bernat enjoys spending time with his family and friends, either at home, in the city of Barcelona, or on the rugged coast of the Costa Brava. La vida es bella!!

It was while working as a bank teller that Joey first discovered his ability for offering great support! His past also included studying finance and mechatronics engineering; until he discovered his aptitude for Web Development and switched degrees. Even after two courses his University was not ready to let him go and gave him a full time job as a Web Developer. This was before he realised he truly belonged at Prospress! Joey appreciates life in the moment and takes the time to value the people and things around him, whether he is wake-boarding, hiking, or snowboarding in his local mountains – sometimes all in the same day.

Sarah was born with coding ancestry; having a tech savvy Mum and a programmer Dad. She started coding at 14 and moved onto WordPress at the ripe old age of 16. An information sponge with a broad range of interests she then went onto art and design school and learned about visual arts and screen based design, including film and further web development studies. In a competition she and a group of classmates managed to whip a short film into shape in a mere 48 hours; aided by her ability to stay calm in any stressful situation. Creative, yet calm – Sarah has a splendid combination of skills to bring to our support team!

Jeremy has had a problem-solving mind since childhood when LEGO captured his attention. Now, he’s delved into the world of programming and is mostly self-taught in PHP, WordPress, and WooCommerce. He’s always been interested in learning proper coding practices, so he’s focused on learning from people and places that teach good coding techniques.

Jeremy is a stand up guy; in fact, he designed and built his own sit/stand desk for his home office. He loves to discover solutions to problems in all areas of life, and is often found scheming up other wood-working projects to build as well. One of his favorite projects was designing a digital picture frame as a gift, which used both his woodworking and programming expertise (it was powered by a Raspberry Pi). He’s always up for hearing about other people’s clever projects and experiments, whether they involve programming, woodworking, how things work, or even cooking.

Jeremy lives in his home state of Pennsylvania, in a small town with his wife and three kids. He counts himself blessed to have a supportive and loving family.

Jorge is a mathematician, aspiring pilot, and cat lover who also happens to really enjoy programming. Growing up Jorge loved SNES and DOS games, but this was a child who didn’t just play games – he found out how they worked! Wanting to share the knowledge he gained, Jorge created his own development website to provide pieces of code – until he discovered the joys of Open Source. One of his most positive experiences was discovering that a US university professor was using some of his code in class. When not working, he likes to watch movies, cook for his friends and family, and think about his next fountain pen — his guilty pleasure. Originally from Colombia, Jorge is currently exploring his love for pizza and gelato in the cafes of Buenos Aires.

Zach’s first experience with computers was when his older brother brought home a Commodore Vic 20. He was able to personally witness the transition of personal computing into the mainstream – and he was hooked; riding the wave by pursuing opportunities as they presented themselves. Before Prospress, Zach was working for an ERP software Development group in Portland OR. He worked his way up through Systems Support, implemented new technology solutions as a Network Administrator, and ultimately joined the Professional Services team where he consulted, trained, deployed and migrated software on a variety of customer based and hosted platforms. He has a unique ability to tackle problems in a goal oriented order and to assume personal responsibility for completeness. Instant friends with anyone he meets Zach will often treat others to both a dry sense of humour and a dry wine. A real ‘yes’ man he has backpacked all North America and Europe, rode a bicycle 160km in the Texas summer heat and even saved a man’s life by pulling him from a fire! However, his greatest achievement to date has been to raise beautiful, clever children with his spouse in the “Silicon Shire” of Eugene, Oregon.

Dan taught himself code while working as a graphic designer – when he realised he wanted to build websites not just design them! Since then Dan went on to be the founder of AutomateWoo – a powerful marketing automation plugin for WooCommerce stores. Dan met the team on our Prosparis meetup and knew he’d found a home for himself and his products, so they all became part of the Prospress family. Dan is an active soul who especially enjoys bouldering. He also likes to travel. He has just returned home to Adelaide after living in Germany for a year, but his feet are already getting itchy again so who knows for how long! Music is another passion – and he has played guitar in a few bands. Dan likes to push himself and it is not afraid of a challenge – whether it’s a problem to solve or an adventure to tackle! He is therefore the perfect fit for Prospress and we are excited that he will continue to develop AutomateWoo and future amazing products with us.

Jess’ online journey started in 1995 – when she wrote for the first online middle school newspaper in the country. It was 100% static HTML pages – if you wanted to write for the paper you had to learn how to code your own articles – and so that is what she did! Later, in 2008, a friend called Jess up and asked her to help her with her website because she was “the geekiest person she knew.” As it was a Joomla site, open-source documentation was available. Jess printed out the documentation and read it on the commute to her day job – and so the journey continued! As Jess learnt, she slowly moved into doing professional WordPress configuration and development jobs for clients.

Jess is the proud owner of a houseboat. Solo-owning and caring for a boat has been both challenging and rewarding! As a curious and determined individual, Jess overcame her initial mistakes, and has found that living on the water has given her the opportunity to dig deep within herself and learn what really matters and motivates her. She is currently moored in Portland – she initially came to play roller derby, but stayed for the city and the people!

Rommel started learning programming when he was 12 by reading Visual Basic books that he borrowed from his brother. He started his professional career at the age of 16 writing HTML & CSS websites and eventually moved to software applications development with backend technologies including WordPress and Javascript.

Rommel has worked on everything, from small websites, to building web applications, to large-scale and complex systems applications. After years he embraced WordPress as his tool platform to develop applications.

Rommel has also contributed back to the community by helping to organize meet ups, giving talks and sharing knowledge. He also started the local WP community in 2014. When he’s not solving problem with code, Rommel is looking for new places to travel and new books to read or share with his family.

Jillian arrived at Prospress after adventures in several fields: executive assistance, business strategy, banking, marketing, acting, and bartending. She earned her BA in Theatre and MBA in International Business. Through her attempts to learn all of the things, the common theme has been using her forensic-like powers of organization, research, and planning. She loves using her strengths at Prospress and is always up for a new problem to solve, project to research, or just good old making the magic happen! Jillian is also on a non-profit board for an organization that raises money to help pay medical bills for Shiba Inus in rescue.

Ron is our first ever WooCommerce Core Contributor. This is the first such position sponsored by someone outside of Automattic. Ron is uniquely qualified to take on this role – he was the first WordPress contributor given guest commit access and he helped bring WordPress multi-site into WordPress core. In fact, over the last 13 years he has made regular contributions to the WordPress community – sometimes working full time on those contributions.

Ron qualified with honours in Computer Programming Technology from New Brunswick Community College – but he also puts his knowledge down to life long learning. Ron lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, with Andrea, his partner and best friend of almost 30 years. They are proud to live close to their adult children and grandchildren – including his daughter Sarah, who is another member of the Prospress team! Being close means the family can take advantage of Ron’s other skills outside of technology – he loves to cook and is also a dab hand at home renovations – even making his own stain glass window for this last house. We are very lucky to now be able to also count Ron as part of the Prospress family!