Lisa Sabin-Wilson is Chief Operating Officer and partner at WebDevStudios, a leading WordPress agency who’s motto is “Build Big or Go Home”. She is a very active member of the WordPress community, as a contributor, frequent speaker, and published author.

In addition to being an expert on all things WordPress, Lisa has a unique background that we felt would be perfect for Prestige Conference Minneapolis. She didn’t go to school for tech. In fact, her first college major was Vocal Performance, with a minor in Music Education. After changing directions to pursue a career in nursing, she spent a decade working as a Registered Nurse.

It wasn’t until she embarked on ANOTHER career change that got her on the path to Internet Technology. Now she’s one of the most successful and sought-after people in the industry. At Prestige, she’ll be sharing her career change story, and for those who are considering a similar jump, how to push past basic success into the realm of profitability.

For those that haven’t met you yet, please share a little about what you do for a living.

I work with a large team of talented developers and designers to build amazing, custom web sites and apps in WordPress for clients.

What first got you interested in WordPress?

I started using WordPress in 2003 and was enamored with the ability to run a web site and publish without needing to be overly technical (at the time).

You’ll be speaking at Prestige about making a big career change. Without giving away any spoilers, can you share a little about how you started pivoting from one career to the next?

My natural curiosity led me towards internet technology, it wasn’t planned - it just happened. At the time, I worked a full time(+) job in nursing. I used my off time to self-teach myself things like PHP, CSS, HTML, JS and WordPress core, as much as possible.

What was one of the biggest challenges during the initial transition phase?

For a year, I worked two jobs. I was a Registered Nurse by day, and I was a web designer by night. I wouldn’t have kept that up any longer than that if I wasn’t convinced that I could make a living at web design someday.

You do more than just make a living at it these days. You’ve written several books about WordPress and speak frequently on Internet Technology topics across the country. How does an expert like yourself continue learning?

I read my books. 😉

Just kidding - - I consume as much material as I can online and I rely on my team of extremely talented developers and designers, they constantly bring new ideas and techniques to the table.

Speaking of books, what are you reading right now?

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

Back to this massive career change - How has your career as a web designer & business owner been influenced by people you met during your nursing days?

My biggest influence and mentor is a close friend who is a physician and has taught me much about interpersonal relations, human dynamics and (believe it or not) the art of negotiation.

Any industry predictions for 2016?

Continued growth and adoption of WordPress as the content management system and web application framework of choice, not only for developers, but for large enterprise organizations - we are already seeing that with the likes of Microsoft moving key web properties to WordPress.

What’s coming up next for you?

In the short term, personally - I’m working on my annual vegetable garden, that takes up the majority of my off-work time in the spring/summer months.

Professionally, I have the 7th Edition of WordPress For Dummies coming out this fall, followed shortly by the 3rd Edition of WordPress Web Design For Dummies in the winter. At WebDevStudios, I continue to work with my talented team on amazing projects.

You’ve spoken at Prestige Conference before (different topic). What are you looking forward to most for this upcoming event?

The people, always!