Our Team

Siana Alcorn

Siana joined the Maker Faire team in 2014 as a Maker Faire Traveler and has worked as part of the Maker Faire team ever since. She now works at Make: as Maker Relations lead for Maker Faire. Siana concentrates her efforts on providing information and creating tools for makers participating at Maker Faire. Siana has an extensive background in project management, software design and development, data management, and quality assurance.

Jennifer Blakeslee

Jennifer Blakeslee keeps the Global Maker Faire program running smoothly and has been a maker at Maker Faire since 2011. An American-Canadian-Australian citizen, she has lived across the world while working professionally in writing, event production, education, project management, qualitative and quantitative data analysis and survey implementation, and public policy. She has a PhD in Political Demography and really likes to cook, hike, and swim in the ocean. She is also a mama of two little humans, and lives in Oakland, CA.

Juliann Brown

Juliann Brown has been with Make: since 2012 and has been a Designer and Art Director since 1995. Her creative work has been concentrated in the skateboarding/snowboarding, videogame, and maker industries. She was born in Illinois but has lived in California since 1988, and the Bay Area since 2000. She especially loves seeing what makers bring to the world that help people and animals in need.

Rob Bullington

Rob started his adventure with O’Reilly Media as a CS agent in 2003, working his way up to Marketing and PR Coordinator, where in 2005 he was introduced to Make: magazine. These were the things he grew up on, “books that are bigger than a nutshell about coding are great and all, but people building and blowing up things in their garage, that’s where I wanted to be”. After some begging and pleading, he took on the responsibility of starting our e-com platform, which consisted of 4 magazines and a t-shirt. From that he helped grow Maker Shed (coined over burritos at the Austin Maker Faire) both online and at events until mid-2014. Moving to the Events team, under Sherry Huss, he worked on process development, departmental and Sponsor activation, onsite production management and logistics for the flagship Maker Faires. Currently he is managing operations which allows him to get back to his roots of working across the whole company.

Craig Couden

Craig oversees production of our Makezine and is a stickler for grammatical correctness.

Patrick DiJusto

Patrick entered the Make orbit as a book author in 2011, and in 2013 joined full time as a book editor, where he has been dedicated to producing the best and most informative tech books possible. If he had spare time, he would be interested in astronomy, robotics, machine learning, and sustainable civilization.

Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty is the President of Make Community LLC.

Dale first developed and launched Make:magazine in 2005, and Maker Faire in 2006, while at O’Reilly Media where he had worked since 1984 as an editor of computing books. Dale’s vision and mission continue to be the guiding force for the maker movement and its personal impact on improving education and empowering more people to see themselves as creators and innovators using the tools and skills practiced by hobbyists as well as professionals. He wrote the book “Free to Make” in 2016 to provide deeper insight into the ideas and people behind the maker movement. He lives in Sebastopol California.

Maker Trivia: Dale developed GNN, the first commercial website, in 1993. He identified and named Web 2.0 as a conference in 2003. “Web 2.0” was declared the one-millionth word in the English language.

Keith Hammond

Keith joined Make: in 2006 and previously served as copy editor, managing editor, and projects editor for Make: magazine. Before that he worked for magazines including The Nose and Mother Jones, and for wilderness advocacy nonprofits the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance and California Wilderness Coalition. He’s a dad, husband, cook, brewer, music fiend, space geek, map nerd, and surfer who delights in all manifestations of recreational hydrodynamics.

Caleb Kraft

I get ridiculously excited seeing people make things. I just want to revel in the creativity of the masses! My favorite thing in the world is sharing the hard work of a maker.

Katie Kunde

Katie Kunde is the Director of Make Community. She joined the MAKE team in 2006 to help produce the first Maker Faire. Today, she works with top global brands and leading companies, helping them develop maker strategies through integrated and innovative programs. She’s a competitive dressage rider and enjoys making wine with her family.

Kelly Marshall

Kelly Marshall grew up in Northern California and has been at Make: since 2013. She enjoys baking, dancing, painting and spending time with friends and family, as well as traveling as much as possible. She hopes to visit many different countries in the very near future. At the moment she mostly travels to visit her two Son’s at their different Army duty stations.

Gillian Mutti

Gillian became a part of Maker Faire Marketing Team in 2014 after moving back to the North East from Florida. She was hoping to meet up with a dear friend and instead worked her first weekend at World Maker New York. There was no looking back. As the years pass her role has evolved from media and press registration, to customer service, and currently she serves at a Marketing Manager.

Nancy Otero

Nancy Otero is a laser cutter and AI fan. Her biggest passion is human learning, she has spent the last ten years working with educational organizations designing environments that mix technology with project-based learning. Nancy was the Founding Director of Learning Design at Portfolio School, a project-based learning school in NYC. Students from this program are the youngest presenters -6, 8, and 9 years old- at Stanford’s conference FabLearn. She was the Director of Professional Development at the awesome Beam Center in NYC, where she created a program that has served more than one hundred teachers and thousands of students. She co-founded FAB! a non-profit in Mexico that works with underserved communities for 5 years. Nancy was a OpenAI fellow, and a software engineer in her previous life. She has a Master in Learning, Design and Technology from Stanford University.

Rio Roth-Barrerio

Rio is a front-end developer with a passion for CSS tricks and javascript libraries. When he’s not making things online, he’s making things IRL, drawing and printing mini-comix with his art collective, painting murals or crafting miniature terrain.

Dan Schneiderman

Dan joined Make: Community in 2020 as a Community Manager. Since 2014, he has worked with the Make team as a Producer of Maker Faire Rochester. He can often be found hacking away on space related projects and volunteering with Nation of Makers.

Mike Senese

Mike oversees editorial for Make, helping share stories about incredible people building incredible projects around the globe. Previously he worked at Wired and ReadyMade, and hosted TV shows on Discovery and Science channel. He spends his spare time trying to make the perfect pizza with his wife and son.

Cathy Shanahan

Cathy has been with Make since 2014. At Maker Faire, Cathy is the onsite HR person and also runs the Merchandise Stands. When not at work, Cathy can be found spending time on their Ranch, camping, traveling or on a Harley ride with her husband.

Todd Sotkiewicz

Todd Sotkiewicz has been at Make since 2014. He is a jack of all trades — business operations, finance and sales. Todd attended his first Maker Faire in 2010. Fumbling over the last name? It happens…a lot. Sut-KAY-vitch.

Alicia Williams

You may see Alicia walking around Maker Faire with her Bat Girl cape. Do not be afraid, she is devoted to saving the world, one website at a time. Her magical powers include turning coffee into code and fixing 404 not found errors.

Alicia has been coding since before coding was cool (OK, we aren’t talking way back to punch cards, but there were green screens involved). In her ‘down time’ she enjoys spending time with her family, reading, puzzles, and is a huge advocate for Autism.

Light it up blue!!