In his talk, “Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall – Ways On Debunking Imposter Syndrome,” Alex Juchniewicz will open up the conversation around the impact our mental health can take towards us on a daily basis, as well as provide tools and insight, so you can find common ways to identify signs of Imposter Syndrome and how to combat it to improve your mental health.

Alex Juchniewicz spoke at WordCamp DFW several years ago about mental health and handling a hard situation his family went through about losing their son in the womb at 38 weeks.

The response and the community were overwhelmingly just incredible. I will never forget my friend, who I will leave nameless and I didn’t know at the time, came up to my wife and I crying at the end of our talk and just gave me a hug. He explained to us about his family member went through a similar situation and how our talk touched him. It was very impactful to see how the response was for such a vulnerable topic, this makes me love our community, even more, to rally and support people that have gone through something.

This year, there are some new and exciting things happening in his life relating to mental health, and he hopes to share some stories about how he has battled Imposter Syndrome, and the ways he has learned to manage anxiety in his personal and professional life.

If you have ever felt like you are not good enough, a fraud, and even doubtful or questioning the ability to be confident and successful, Alex Juchniewicz wants you to know you are not alone.

Recently, Alex Juchniewicz was a guest on the WP&UP PressForward podcast to talk about his history with mental health over the past decade.

Their mission to help promote positive and mental health awareness to the WordPress community resonated with me so much that I wanted to volunteer. That lead to having a conversation with Dan Maby, CEO of WP&UP, to come onboard part-time helping with partnerships.

Alex Juchniewicz assures that if you’re thinking about going to WordCamp EU this year, you must check out a project their team just launched called #HeatToWCEU. Throughout May 2020, they will take on the challenge of riding 3,000 km, across six countries, over 30 days, arriving at WordCamp Europe 2020, to help raise awareness of positive physical and mental health within the WordPress community. 

I started experimenting with WordPress creating websites for people I knew while working at a technology company around 2010. I found a love for how simple it was to create a website that I actually changed jobs just to be able to grow and level up my WordPress skills. I started attending WordCamps in 2014 when the last WordCamp US was held in San Francisco. Since then I’ve been a regular attendee and volunteer at a handful of camps, even having my incredible wife serve alongside me. I got hooked on the community experience and the relationships that can be built by attending. I enjoy going for the people and opportunities that might evolve because you never know who you will meet or what situation you will walk into.

In 2017, he started speaking at WordCamps and has learned a lot of lessons along the way on how to present myself, the topics that I’m passionate about and the value that I can give to the community.

Alex Juchniewicz’ first full-time job in WordPress was working for Pagely back in 2014 as a Customer Success Engineer. He furthered his career after that by working at Pantheon as a CSE while moonlighting as a contractor for Valet (formerly WP Valet).

Alex Juchniewicz and his wife, whom he met on eHarmony, moved to Houston and his career took him to cPanel where he worked and coached two agile teams as a Scrum Master. He was able to work with the JetPack team at Automattic and their internal product team to be part of some of the updates cPanel made to the WordPress installer.

During this time, he missed being involved with the WordPress community since cPanel didn’t really have a large presence in it.

I followed my WordPress desires of working remote again and landed the opportunity to join the amazing team at SkyVerge who also runs Jilt, an online email marketing platform built for eCommerce. I worked on partnerships and business development and was able to travel to WordCamp, creating some incredible relationships and meeting some of the most intelligent people in the industry.

They created a partnership with LiquidWeb which included Jilt being available for free to anyone that signs up for their Managed WooCommerce Hosting plan.

If you ever get a chance to work on a project with Chris Lema and AJ Morris, jump on it, those guys are fantastic to work and fun.

He later transitioned to becoming a Website Project Manager at LyntonWeb, a remote agency that specializes in HubSpot and WordPress websites and integrations, where he currently is.

We are Diamond Level partner for HubSpot and I am working on growing our WordPress clients to provide scalability and education on how to use the platform. Our vision is to create new integrations between HubSpot and WordPress to leverage both platforms and increase functionality for users that use them.

Today, he manages website projects during the day and the evenings and weekends are spent talking to people and companies about their mental health and seeing if there are any opportunities to work together.

Alex Juchniewicz uses WordPress every day with his job and looks for opportunities to create new relationships within the community. Depending on the website requirements, he typically always recommend using WordPress for building a new site due to the simple learning curve and the abundance of resources out there from beginners to advanced experts.

There are a few clients he manages websites for on the side, which helps keep him updated and involved with new changes and updates to WordPress.

A fun story we’ve heard from Alex Juchniewicz:

I did a trial for Automattic one time as a Happiness Engineer and during my trial, we had a town hall meeting on Slack. During the live stream, Matt Mullenweg was trying to play a video to share with everyone and he ended up playing my application video and I saw myself on his screen. That was a very interesting experience as I don’t think a lot of people knew it was me and I read comments in Slack that said: “hire that guy!” I didn’t end up getting hired but I will remember my 10 seconds of fame on Matt’s computer screen.

Make sure to tweet @atjuch during his session, using hashtag #WCDFW and ask him about how he’s managed to never break a bone in his life even though he’s crashed on a motorcycle!

We’d love to see you at this year’s WordCamp DFW!  Get your Tickets here!