At the end of the last year, the Training Team nominated and voted on a number of motivated and dedicated contributors to the team. The new Team Representative nomination and voting period is a special time where folks in the community affirm work ethic and confidence, and the outcome of these votes ensure fresh leadership and new perspectives guide the team.
It’s been amazing to watch the growth the team has experienced last year, and the rise in leadership in various individuals. This year, the Training Team has voted in two newcomers and one previous Team Representative; Benjamin Evans, Destiny Kanno, and Pooja Derashri.
This is a post to share more about your newly nominated Team Reps!
Pooja Derashri – @webtechpooja
Pooja Derashri is from Ajmer, India and first got involved with WordPress in 2013 as a Developer. Not so long after that, she co-founded her company WPVibes, a plugin development agency, in 2015 with her husband Anand Upadhyay. Pooja works on Marketing and Content while her partner works on coding. She splits her time with work to contribute over 20+ hours to the WordPress Community Weekly.
Pooja joined the Training Team in 2019, and became a Team Representative in 2022. She was regularly having 1:1s with APAC folks to help them get involved, so it seemed like a natural move into leadership. Pooja also spends her time as a Co-organizer for the Ajmer WordPress Meetup group.
Alongside the above duties, Pooja is also Co-Organizing WordCamp Asia 2023 on the Speakers team.
In her non-working time, Pooja likes traveling, gardening, music and reading books.
Benjamin Evans – @bsanevans
Benjamin Evans is from Hokkaido, Japan, where he lives happily with his wife and puppy. Benjamin got started with WordPress in 2014 by making a site for his local church. During that time he was doing technical teaching, and eventually made a move to join Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2019. Soon after joining, Ben worked on new employee training before becoming a Community Education Manager in 2022.
Ben is also a Co-organizer of the WordPress Sapporo Meetup group, and will be a speaker at this year’s WordCamp Asia flagship event.
In his non-working time, Ben likes to travel, play the flute, take long drives, and read books.
Destiny Kanno – @piyopiyofox
Destiny Kanno is from California, USA, and currently lives in Tokyo Japan with her husband and Formosan Mountain Dog. Destiny got started with WordPress in 2016 while working for the digital agency ASA Digital, and joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2017. Since then she has experienced the various faces of WordPress through its end users and developers, companies using WordPress at scale when she joined WordPress VIP as a Technical Account Manager, and now through the open source community in her current role as a Community Education Manager.
Destiny became more involved with the WordPress community in November 2021, and began dedicating more of her time to the Training Team specifically in early 2022.
Destiny is also a BlackPress Co-Organizer, and is involved in the Japanese WordPress community. She will also be at WordCamp Asia this year as a Sponsors team Co-organizer.
In her free time Destiny enjoys traveling, making music, watching films, and dancing.
Once again, we give huge thanks to our 2022 Team Representatives @courane01 and @azhiyadev for their hard work leading and nurturing the team last year!
The new Training Team Representatives are delighted to be serving the community in this capacity this year and look forward to what we will all accomplish together.
You can reach out to the Reps in the #training channel in the Make WordPress Slack.