By 1996 he was hand-coding HTML websites. Then WordPress emerged and by 2007 he was designing WordPress websites for his clients and giving them a 2-3 hour training class on how to manage their new website.

In December of 2009 he was reading an article about WordPress in Forbes Magazine. “The numbers were shocking; 20% of all new websites were WordPress. At that time there were an estimated 60 million WordPress websites on the web – and counting! Corporate WordPress websites were the fastest growing segment in the CMS market.”

He founded  WP Training Courses, LLC the very next day.

By January 2010 he had launched a nationwide Google Adwords campaign. By April he had given WordPress classes to someone in every US state but Alaska. By June, all of Canada was enrolling in WordPress classes and The WP Learning Center was being Skyped by people in every continent on Earth!

Today, WP Training Courses, LLC delivers customized WordPress training to every state in the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Africa and Central and South America.

Chris has been in graphic design, printing and advertising for 20 years working in design, website coding, marketing and broadcasting. He has been working in WordPress for the last 5 years.

In his free time he volunteers in the community, serving on two local chamber of commerce boards and volunteering with the Boy Scouts of America for the last 11 years.

Brandy brings 20 years of web design and international project management experience to The WP Learning Center. With skills including instructional design and brand management, her contributions to The WP Learning Center are invaluable.

Brandy has managed the design and production of various core training products, including translation of  WordPress websites into several languages. Brandy has extensive experience with CMS, support and training, and is a practitioner of Problem Solving and Decision Making, Analytic Troubleshooting, Project Management and Human Performance Management methods.

In her role as International Training Director with The WP Learning Center, Brandy identifies process improvement opportunities, streamlines workflow, manages resources and is a key contributor in the implementation of our own CMS.

Brandy holds a BS degree in Advertising Design from BYU.

Michelle Swindner is a professional WordPress web developer and has been assisting others to learn web Design, HTML, CSS, and XML since 1995.

Michelle has maintained sites of over 5000 pages, small business websites, and tiny personal web pages and blogs, as well as several intranet and extranet sites. She has also worked as a contract WordPress Web designer on numerous sites. She has worked with nearly every web technology including XML, CMS, HTML, PHP, Perl, C, JavaScript, Ruby, and Java.

Michelle received a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from the University of Texas, and an MBA in Technology and Management from Rice University.

Michelle has also taken many design, web development, programming and other classes at various colleges. She regularly updates her skills in web design and development to stay abreast of the current trends and best practices.

Shawn grew up in Whitby, UK and graduated from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne with a BSc Degree in Food Marketing in 2000.

In 2003 Shawn started an internet based inbound travel company in Whistler, which we eventually sold in 2008. He wore many hats in the business but his main focus and passion was in sales and marketing. He also had a particular interest in SEO and internet marketing, which was so critical to the success of the business.

After selling his business he finally had the time and opportunity to pursue his goal of having formal training in web design and development. He graduated with a Diploma in Advanced Commercial Web Development at The Institute of Advanced Media in Vancouver in September 2009. He has a very solid understanding WordPress and of other tools available to build and maintain websites including hand coded XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash. His web development skills include: PHP, MySQL, Action Script, JavaScript/AJAX and XML.