annezazu (@annezazu) – WordPress user profile

Bio

A minimalistic, optimistic, and athletic nomad who enjoys photography, deep conversations, and thought provoking questions. I aim to be a dot connector, accelerant, and doer across the most impactful areas of the WordPress ecosystem, alongside my work within Automattic.

WordPress Origin Story

I discovered WordPress my freshman year of college at UNC Chapel Hill while searching for a job on campus. I had been using Blogger for a private blog with friends the previous 5-6 years. When I saw an “Instructional Technologist” job pop up, I jumped to apply. That was in 2011 and I haven’t looked back since.

Badges

CODE

4 badges

Core Contributor '20 Core Team '20 Meta Contributor '21 Plugin Developer

CONTENT

2 badges

Documentation Contributor '22 Photo Contributor '22

COMMUNITY

2 badges

Community Contributor '20 WordCamp Speaker '21

PRACTICE

4 badges

C Credits Graduate '26 Support Contributor '26 Test Contributor '21 Test Team '21

Current Job

Architecture & Open Source Director

Feb 2025 – Present

Automattic

Accelerant, integrator, doer, and dot connector working on the leadership team across Automattic’s 270+ person engineering organization and the broader WordPress.org open source community.

Job History

Product Manager

Mar 2022 – Feb 2025

Automattic

Led cross-functional initiatives across Automattic and the global WordPress.org open-source community to drive product development and user adoption.

Developer Relations Wrangler

Apr 2020 – Mar 2022

Automattic

First developer relations wrangler at Automattic, approached the role with a mindset of paving the way to grow the practice internally while cultivating a welcoming, interactive, and knowledge-rich environment within the WordPress.org open source community through creating resources, facilitating meaningful conversations, initiating targeted outreach efforts, and more.First developer relations wrangler at Automattic, approached the role with a mindset of paving the way to grow the practice internally while cultivating a welcoming, interactive, and knowledge-rich environment within the WordPress.org open source community through creating resources, facilitating meaningful conversations, initiating targeted outreach efforts, and more.

Developer Experience Operations Wrangler

Jan 2019 – Apr 2020

Automattic · Full-time

Scaled and improved hiring and talent development by analyzing hiring funnels, leading research to inform recruitment strategy, and partnering with engineering leadership to strengthen onboarding, culture-building, and leadership growth initiatives.

Happiness Engineer Team Lead

Sep 2015 – Jan 2019

Automattic · Full-time

Managed three different globally distributed support teams, driving operational efficiency through process creation, product insight reporting, and cross-team development while supporting major Automattic products including Jetpack, VaultPress, Akismet, Crowdsignal, WP Job Manager, and Sensei.

Happiness Engineer

Sep 2014 – Sep 2015

Automattic · Full-time

Specialized in VaultPress website security and recovery on a team of developers with a focus on both product improvements and improving customer response times from an average of five days to five hours.

Key Accomplishments

WordPress 7.1 Release Lead

WordPress 6.6 Test Lead

WordPress 6.5 Editor Triage Lead

WordPress 6.4 Editor Triage Lead

WordPress 6.3 Editor Triage Lead

WordPress 6.2 Editor Triage Co-Lead

WordPress 6.1 Editor Triage Lead

WordPress 6.0 Release Coordinator

WordPress 5.9 Test Co-Lead

Ran the Full Site Editing Outreach program from May 2020 to February 2024, a pioneering new program designed to gather feedback from users, builders, and developers to improve phase 2 of WordPress.

Recent impact

Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

Last 30 days

39contributions

high5

medium34

score49

Last 90 days

140contributions

high41

medium99

score222

Last 12 months

399contributions

high79

medium320

score557

Team focus

Share of contributions across teams during the last 365 days

WordPress releases

Contributed to 17 releases

Time commitment

30 hours per week

Automattic 30 hrs/wk

Contributions

Type

September 2026

Sep 18 Fri · 22:57

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Roadmap to 7.2, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Props to @jorbin for giving a review!

Sep 18 Fri · 22:18

Meta high

Wrote a new post, Roadmap to 7.2, on the site Make WordPress Core:
WordPress 7.2 is set to be released in early December 2026. Notes leads the way…

Sep 17 Thu · 18:15

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Introducing Ipsum, the new default theme, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Can't wait to try this out on my own site. Thanks for all the hard…

Sep 16 Wed · 17:23

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Introducing Ipsum, the new default theme, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Hey @xilonz. Thanks for your questions. This has been a longstanding swirling question, going back…

Sep 16 Wed · 01:53

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Maintainer changes for WordPress/WordPress GitHub repo, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Thank you for maintaining the mirror for so long, @markjaquith!

Sep 15 Tue · 23:12

Meta high

Mentioned in [15204] on Meta SVN:
Photo Directory, Uploads: Show a preview of the photo chosen for submission.

Sep 15 Tue · 23:00

Core med

Closed pull request #70312 on WordPress/gutenberg:
Fix: Site logo & image block takes huge space if we try…

Sep 15 Tue · 23:00

Core med

Closed issue #70311 on the WordPress/gutenberg repository:
Site logo & image block takes huge space if we try to…

Sep 15 Tue · 22:05

Core med

Closed pull request #70846 on WordPress/gutenberg:
Fix: Prevent deselection of initially pressed ToggleGroupControl options