Joining Automattic

Published on by David A. Kennedy

I’m thrilled to announce that I’m joining the Automattic family soon as a Theme Wrangler.

For those that don’t know, Automattic runs WordPress.com, Jetpack, Simplenote, Cloudup and other awesome web products. Woohoo! (I keep asking my wife if it really happened. She assures me it did.) 🙂 It’s hard to put into words what this means to me, but I’ll try. It’s my dream job, yes, but it goes beyond that.

I’ve been lucky enough to work for and inside some organizations with fantastic missions. I don’t get excited unless I’m attacking big problems with a chance to drive change. From being a newspaper reporter, to working for a one of the oldest disability organizations in the United States to working with one of the United States government’s most watched and most admired “start-up” agencies, a lot of my work has been for a “greater good.” At least I hope so. 🙂 At Automattic, I get to combine a lot of the passions I’ve developed along the way: publishing, WordPress, web standards and accessibility, and open source and the open web. All for a greater good: making the web a better place.

But how can someone who builds and cares for WordPress themes do that? I wanted to be a Theme Wrangler because I believe that a good WordPress theme can open up a new world to those using it, and in turn, reveal something unique about the site’s owner to the world. A theme can become the centerpiece to someone’s story. That’s something I want to do for as many people as possible. I look forward to whatever form that takes, including helping themes evolve in new ways and bringing my accessibility experience to my every day work on WordPress.com.

The best is yet to come.


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