My Story

Early Curiosity

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved computers. It started with games, then the internet — AOL, Geocities, Tripod. I was hooked on creating and connecting online.

I built some of my first websites back then, hunted for the best AIM screen names, and discovered the thrill of making something digital come alive.

Finding My Path

Through high school and college, that curiosity never faded. I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do, but things started to click during the summer of my junior year.

Back home in San Diego, I landed an internship in the IT department of a mid-sized company. It wasn’t glamorous, but I got to be online all day and started learning the basics of programming.

After graduation, they hired me full-time, and that’s when I realized how much I loved being creative with code and pixels.

Discovering WordPress

I began by building intranets in ASP.NET, then moved into ActionScript 3, and eventually found PHP and the world of open source through Mambo, Joomla, and Drupal.

Then I discovered WordPress. I still remember that first five-minute install and seeing wp-admin for the first time — it immediately felt right.

Plugins, themes, an entire creative ecosystem. I knew this was what I wanted to do full-time.

Taking the Leap

I quit my stable job, moved downtown, and started applying to creative agencies. My parents thought I was crazy.

Two weeks later, I landed a role at a small startup that worked almost exclusively with WordPress. Every day, I pushed its limits to meet client needs and designed many of the concepts myself.

WordPress kept evolving, and so did I — from creating themes to building plugins, I loved it all.

Becoming a Creator

My first plugin, wp_no_tag_base, was a simple one that did exactly what the name says. Seeing people use it and share feedback was addictive.

I kept going, releasing more plugins, each one more advanced than the last. Eventually, I left agency life to pursue my own projects full-time.

That’s when I truly discovered the WordPress community. From meetups to WordCamps, I felt at home among people who shared the same passion for creativity and open source.

Building GiveWP

That’s also where I met my future partners, Matt Cromwell and Jason Knill.

At first, we ran an agency and built many nonprofit websites. Nearly all of them needed better fundraising tools. We tried WooCommerce, but clients didn’t love the cart system. They wanted a donation form wherever they saw fit.

So I created Quick Checkout, a WooCommerce extension that allowed site owners to place a pre-filled checkout form anywhere. It helped, but it wasn’t perfect. We also tried Gravity Forms, which met some needs but not all. There was a clear gap in the market — we just needed to fill it.

After the State of the Word at WordCamp San Francisco 2014, Matt and I were sitting in a bar when I said, “Let’s build a donation platform… and call it Give.”

He didn’t take much convincing, and neither did Jason. We built the MVP in six months and launched GiveWP at WordCamp San Diego 2015.

Growing a Business

From there, everything accelerated. We worked tirelessly, often joking that we were “cockroaching” — refusing to die off or give up.

All that persistence paid off. By 2017, we had a growing team and a thriving product. Then the pandemic hit. The world went online, and nonprofits needed reliable donation tools more than ever. Growth exploded.

It was both exciting and humbling to watch GiveWP help organizations adapt and survive.

The Acquisition

By 2021, WordPress businesses were consolidating rapidly. We were approached by several companies about acquisition, but we had a few core principles:

  1. They had to take care of our team.
  2. The brand had to live on.
  3. The deal had to make sense for everyone.

Liquid Web checked all the boxes.

We were acquired in May 2021, and I stayed on with StellarWP, Liquid Web’s WordPress division, to continue leading GiveWP and support other brands.

Two years later, when my contract ended, I decided it was time for a new chapter.

Joining Automattic

Around that time, Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, reached out. We’d worked together before on a nonprofit project in San Francisco called Illuminate, and he’d noticed how I approach leadership and product vision.

During our conversation, he suggested I could help lead the next chapter of Jetpack.

Jetpack has enormous reach and impact across the WordPress ecosystem. It’s powerful software that’s both loved and misunderstood. Matt challenged me to help evolve it — to make it something WordPress users everywhere can truly connect with.

And that’s what I’ve signed up to do.

Today

Today, I’m proud to be an Automattician and Head of Jetpack — focused on making powerful, user-friendly software that helps people share their ideas and build with confidence.

This is my story, still in progress.