As a sign of respect, we order this page by number of times a person has been around the sun.
Stephen Wolfram — Special Board Advisor
Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, physicist, and entrepreneur best known as the creator of Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, and the Wolfram Language. He founded Wolfram Research in 1987 and has led it as CEO ever since, making it one of the longest-running independent software companies in the world. His research spans cellular automata, computational science, and the philosophy of computation. His book A New Kind of Science argued that simple computational rules can produce the complexity seen throughout nature, and his Wolfram Physics Project extends that idea to the foundations of physics. He held academic appointments at Caltech, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Illinois, and in 1981, at age 21, became the youngest recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He has blogged at writings.stephenwolfram.com since 2003.
Hugh Howey — Board Member
Hugh Howey is a bestselling author and a pioneer of independent publishing. His Silo series began as the self-published novel Wool and became an Apple TV+ series. His fiction builds worlds to ask how societies survive isolation, information control, and the cost of blind obedience. Having built a major career outside the traditional publishing system, he’s a model for how creators can own their work and the audience for it. HughHowey.com has run on WordPress since 2013.
Jaime Waydo — Special Board Advisor
Jaime Waydo has spent her career getting robots to drive themselves safely, on Earth and far beyond it. Over more than a decade as a senior engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she helped build a rover that drove on Mars. As head of systems engineering at Waymo, she verified the safety of its prototypes and helped decide when they were ready for public roads in Phoenix in 2016. After a stint at Apple, she co-founded Cavnue, which builds connected infrastructure for autonomous driving, and served as its CTO. She later served as CTO of the wearable technology company WHOOP.
Hiten Shah — Special Board Advisor
Hiten Shah is one of the most respected product and SaaS thinkers in tech and a longtime Automattic advisor. He co-founded Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, FYI, and Nira, and remains CEO of Crazy Egg. Dropbox acquired Nira in October 2024; its technology now powers Dropbox Dash, the company’s AI search product.
Amy Chan — Board Member
Amy Chan is a bestselling author who blends psychology and neuroscience to understand how people connect. She is the founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp and the author of Breakup Bootcamp. Before founding Renew, Amy was the Chief Marketing Officer of SPiN. She built her career in marketing and public relations, leading communication strategies for private and publicly traded companies. She now facilitates leadership and communication workshops for companies including Google and YouTube and has guest lectured at Columbia University.
Matt Mullenweg — Board Member
Matt Mullenweg is the co-founder of WordPress and the founder and CEO of Automattic, a role he has held since 2014. He also runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been profiled by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fortune. Matt is originally from Houston, Texas, where he attended the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and studied jazz saxophone. In his spare time, Matt is a photographer (hence his username ‘photomatt’) and the co-owner of Keys Jazz Bistro and the TinkerTendo art warehouse in San Francisco. He also serves on the board at Field Effect and previously served at GitLab. Matt has been on the Automattic board since 2005.
Matt Van Horn — Special Board Advisor
Matt Van Horn is a serial founder who co-founded June, the “self-driving oven” later acquired by Weber, and Zimride, the company that became Lyft. These days he’s a prolific open-source builder in the AI agent world and contributes to projects across Python, Go, and the major agent frameworks. His recent work includes /last30days, an agent skill that researches any topic across Reddit, X, YouTube, Hacker News, and the web — and Printing Press, which generates ship-ready CLIs for any API. Together they’ve earned tens of thousands of GitHub stars.
Henry Khachatryan — Board Member
Henry Khachatryan is a founder and 10x engineer whose products have reached tens of millions of people, with deep expertise in product growth, network dynamics, and how large communities form. With fellow board member Krutal Desai, he co-founded FAQ platform Sponge, social messaging network IRL, and mobile-first hotel software Vacant.com. Building on WordPress since 2005, he has been Om Malik’s longtime collaborator, built a plugin adopted by tens of thousands of sites, and created the first major online presence for author and journalist Nick Bilton.
Krutal Desai — Board Member
Krutal Desai is a technology entrepreneur who has helped shape Automattic, WordPress, and many other companies over two decades. He has built on WordPress for more than 20 years and helped early publishers including GigaOm, TechCrunch, and Mashable grow search-driven traffic on the platform. After surviving a brain aneurysm he was given a 1% chance of surviving, he sold Sponge, his True Ventures–backed startup, and joined Automattic, where he worked from 2012 to 2020. There he drove key acquisitions including WooCommerce and DotBlog, launched WordPress.com’s first paid marketing, and helped secure key domains and trademarks including Jetpack.com, Woo.com, and WP.org. He also founded the Special Projects concierge team that brought Childish Gambino, Snoop Dogg, and Seth Godin into the WordPress ecosystem.
Advisors: Robert Perkowitz, Jeffrey Zeldman, Michael Little, Bruce Schneier, Bob Olson, Jeffrey Veen, Scott Berkun, Hunter Walk, Tim Ferriss, David Edery, Magnus Jepson, Mark Forrester.
Board Emeritus: We are deeply grateful to Michael Hirshland (2005–2011), Tony Conrad (2005–2018), Phil Black (2005–2025), Ann Dunwoody (2018–2026), Sue Decker (2020–2026), and Toni Schneider (2005–2026) for helping Automattic navigate the trials and transoms of forging a new path for how startups could be built in an Open Source, open web, and distributed way. We also want to express a deep gratitude to folks who have graced our board meetings at key points over the years, including Anne Dorman, Lee Fixel, Will Griffith, Jeremy Kranz, Deven Parekh, Stu Phillips, Bret Taylor, Marc Benioff, Hugo Barra, and Bill Macaitis.
