About

I am a Developer Advocate at WooCommerce, the open source ecommerce platform for WordPress.

Previously, I made things for the web, working on projects for clients like UCLA, Syracuse University, Harvard, WordPress.com, and more.

My newsletter and YouTube channel goes out to a community of more than 2,000 WordPress professionals, and you’ll see my writing on WordPress industry sites like WP Tavern, MasterWP, The WP Minute and WordPress.org.

This is my personal blog, where I share links to my latest writings, tech videos, and podcast appearances and sometimes scribble down thoughts on everything from WordPress to having five kids.

Before all of this, I was a high school English teacher and an adjunct college writing instructor. I worked in a Title 1 high school where my students were more worried about the on-campus gang violence than Romeo and Juliet. Needless to say, they taught me as much as I taught them. After that I taught writing to a group of college students who were turning their lives around and kicking ass doing it.

Before that I was a waiter and a barista, going to college and playing music in my free time. My friends and I hosted an open mic for local stars and weirdos to come together and share music and coffee. In the meantime, I was studying American literature and Greek tragedy, working on my master’s degree and eventually my teaching credential.

Before that I was in high school, watching a lot of Star Wars and reading a lot of J.R.R. Tolkien. If there’s a high school nerd checklist, I completed it. Marching band, drama club, listening to too much Weezer- that was me.

Now I am the technology director and editor specializing in WordPress development. I believe that every one of my previous lives gives me the experience to be unique at what I do. I’m a developer who likes to teach. I’m a writer who likes to develop. I’m a nerd who likes to write.

Oh and I’m also a father, raising four daughters and one son with my wife in Orange County, California.