Board of Directors
The WPCampus Board of Directors governs the WPCampus organization and is responsible for overall policy, direction, and leadership.
The Board plays a crucial role in setting the direction and priorities for WPCampus. Their impact on the organization lies in their ability to provide strategic guidance, oversee operations, and serve as advocates for the needs and interests of the community.
By working collaboratively with other members of the WPCampus community, the Board helps to ensure that the organization remains focused on its mission of providing resources, support, and networking opportunities to those who use WordPress in higher education.
Board meetings
The WPCampus Board of Directors hosts monthly meetings which are open to the public.
WPCampus Board meetings are held on the first and third Tuesday of each month from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time.
The meetings are listed in the WPCampus community calendar. The minutes from each meeting are published online and available to the community.
If you’re a member of the WPCampus community and care about the future of higher education and WordPress, the directors would like you to attend their meetings.
As a community member, your voice matters and can significantly impact decisions made by the Board. By attending meetings, you can hear directly from the Board about the organization’s future, share your ideas and feedback, and learn about ways you can get involved and contribute.
Subscribe to Board updates
You can subscribe to automated email updates about the Board, including meeting minutes and other related blog posts about the Board.
Contact the Board
You may contact the Board via the WPCampus contact form. Be sure to select “WPCampus Board of Directors” as your reason for contact.
Our Directors
The WPCampus Board of Directors brings together individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences in higher education and WordPress. They are united by a shared passion for supporting the growth of higher education through the enrichment of its people and its technology.
Officers are Directors who have taken on extra responsibility and leadership of the Board. Each Officer role has its own specific responsibilities. You can learn more about the Officer positions by reading our Bylaws.
The chairperson of each standing committee is an ex officio voting member of the Board, providing each committee with a direct voice and a vote. This allows our organization’s Directors to focus more on the areas they are passionate about and be empowered to create change and growth.
The Board often looks to fill seats, usually towards the end of the year. Please consider the Board if you are interested in leading our community.
Learn how to nominate someone for our Board of Directors.
David Dashifen Kees (they/them)
- First term
- Term on the Board: Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2024
- Term as President: Jan. 2024 to Dec. 2024
By day, David Dashifen Kees (they/them) is a mild-mannered software developer working with Georgetown University's web services team. By night, they're the same thing, except asleep. They've been working in higher education since 1998 at both public and private institutions, and the one time they left the warm embrace of academia for the fast-paced lifestyle of digital agency work, it lasted only eight months before they scurried back into the ivory tower. In addition to their work in tech, Dash earned a Masters in Divinity from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO in June 2022. This is both a personal accomplishment for them as well as a warning to you: ask them unanswerable questions at your own risk; they will spend hours trying to answer them!
Nearly everyone calls them Dash, and you're very welcome to do so as well.
Questions
What is your favorite WordPress functionality?
The extensibility of the action and filter ecology.
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
A sense that we're truly helping folks prepare for their lives and careers, even if only indirectly.
What is your first WPCampus memory?
Arriving at Canisius College for my first in-person WPCampus conference.
Kevin Grimley (He/Him)
- First term
- Term on the Board: Mar. 2024 to Dec. 2025
Biography coming soon.
Questions
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
The knowledge that where you work is doing good in the world.
What is your first WPCampus memory?
I came into higher ed from a corporate job. Early on one of my colleagues pointed me towards the WPCampus slack.
What is your favorite WordPress functionality?
The ease of adding custom functionality.
Kevin Shoffner
Biography coming soon.
Nathan Wallace
Biography coming soon.
Reed Piernock (they/them)
- First term
- Term on the Board: Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2024
- Term as Secretary: Jan. 2024 to Dec. 2024
Reed is a front-of-the-front-end developer who is passionate about usability and accessibility. They work with HTML and templating languages to write strong semantic markup that, in addition to their CSS and Sass code, creates accessible websites with an intrinsic design that works well across all devices for all audiences. Their undergraduate degree concentrated on digital media and web technology, and they have also earned a professional certificate in web accessibility. Reed recently completed a master's degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University, and is active in the Popular Culture Association, focused on horror studies and marginalization in media.
Questions
What is your favorite WordPress functionality?
It took some time in the beginning, but I love coding WP templates in Twig. Writing patterns in Twig allows us to more easily create templates for our themes, and now we also use those patterns for custom blocks as well. theme.json really lets us adjust core and custom blocks to make content creation not so scary for our editors.
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
I enjoy working in higher ed because being in an academic environment surrounded by scholarly pursuits is inspiring. The website is often the first impression a prospective student has for the university, and I want to make our websites as accessible as possible for all our users, both in-house editors and outside audiences.
What is your first WPCampus memory?
My first WPCampus memory is working with my colleague Danielle Held on a lighting talk for the 2020 online conference. Neither of us had presented at a professional conference before, and everyone involved with the conference committees were so helpful in guiding us in putting together a great talk. We opened the conference, and we nailed it!
If you could describe WPCampus in one word, what would it be?
For me, WPCampus means "community". People are welcoming and warm, and excited to share their knowledge or support others in learning new things.
Rachel Cherry (she/her)
Rachel Cherry is the Lead Digital Accessibility Developer at the University of Rochester. She is also a freelance software engineer and consultant with over 15 years of experience in back and front-end web development, working primarily in higher education and enterprise-level environments. She has become a focused specialist in accessible and performant web development. Rachel is the Founder of the WPCampus organization. Rachel led the WPCampus accessibility audit of the WordPress Gutenberg editor and helped spur change in the software project that benefited users worldwide. Rachel loves to travel and explore. She is quite fond of feminism, running lots of miles, and eating tacos.
Questions
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
Working in higher ed is a way of fostering education and investing in positive change in people’s lives. It holds a strong sense of constructive purpose. I also love how universities can feel like their own world. It’s a special community that you belong to.
What is your first WPCampus memory?
As the Founder of WPCampus, I have a wide variety of “first” memories. But our first conference, WPCampus 2016, in Sarasota, Florida, is one of my favorite early memories. After months of online planning, we were finally able to spend time together in person. It was magical to meet people and learn more about them and their work.
If you could describe WPCampus in one word, what would it be?
Community. I founded WPCampus because I wanted to find folks working on the types of projects I was working on. I wanted to find my people. And find them I did. WPCampus is filled with warm and welcoming humans eager to share knowledge and support one another.
L. Danielle Baldwin (she/her)
- First term
- Term on the Board: Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2024
- Term as Vice-President: Jan. 2024 to Dec. 2024
L. Danielle Baldwin is an award-winning digital strategist with more than 20 years of experience in development, design, marketing, content, and media strategy. Danielle uses that experience and knowledge to help advocate for women in technology and STEM in the digital world.
Questions
What is your favorite WordPress functionality?
Auto-upgrade to themes and plugins. I cannot believe that there was a time when we did not have this feature.
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
The room to create something from nothing (and by nothing, I mean budget. LOL). Sometimes you have to be scrappy and creative at the same time to make something happen.
What's your favorite team mascot in higher ed?
Tarheel / Ramses the Ram
What is your first WPCampus memory?
Getting the first email discussing WPCampus as an organization/group and being excited because it was sorely needed at the time.
If you could describe WPCampus in one word, what would it be?
Evolving.
Ed Beck (he/him)
- First term
- Term on the Board: Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2024
- Term as Treasurer: Jan. 2024 to Dec. 2024
Ed Beck has been working in the Educational Technology field since 2013. His current position is at SUNY Oneonta, where he works with faculty on the development of online, hybrid, and face-to-face courses. Some of Ed’s interests include scaffolding digital competencies across the curriculum, and the exploration, adoption, and creation of high-quality open resources. Ed is one of the co-founders of the SUNY Create initiative that invites students to build a web presence using open source tools.
Questions
What is your favorite WordPress functionality?
I’m a huge fan of WordPress Multisite. It’s part of what allows me to manage sites for hundreds of students at my institution. The first multisite I managed was a Pressbooks network, where each subsite is an OER textbook. I also manage our institution’s OpenLab which uses Commons in a Box OpenLab so that students and faculty can have sites for portfolios, courses, organizations and projects.
What is your favorite aspect about working in Higher Ed?
I like the variety of my job. I work across campus on projects at a variety of levels in completely different fields. In a day I can go from meeting with fashion faculty designing a web magazine, into a meeting with a biology faculty member building an online lab manual, and finish my day working with museum students who are publishing oral histories. Working in higher ed means I’m constantly learning.
What is your first WPCampus memory?
The first time WPCampus came on my radar was the accessibility review of the Gutenberg editor.
If you could describe WPCampus in one word, what would it be?
Support. It’s so important for institutions that choose open-source solutions to have that affinity group of other professionals who are dealing with the same and similar issues. I love seeing community members support each other in Slack, answering questions, making recommendations and sharing successes.