Margherita Pelonara receives the Yoast Care fund for her contribution to the WordPress community

Margherita Pelonara is a precious contributor to the WordPress Community Team. Most importantly, she’s a treasure to the Italian WordPress community. Her contributions are extremely valuable, and that’s why she was nominated for the Yoast Care fund by Piermario Orecchioni. Let’s learn more about this WordPress devotee who loves the community.

Nominator Piermario Orecchioni: “Margherita is an active member of the Italian WordPress community. She’s a Meetup organizer, web designer, and social media wizard. I first collaborated with her while we were both part of the WordCamp Italia organizing team. Since then, I have learned more about her (many) contributions. We recently crossed paths again when we were both nominated as Locale Ambassadors for the Learn WordPress Italian team. In short, she’s a pretty awesome community contributor! :)”.

Let’s get to know Margherita Pelonara

That’s quite an introduction, Piermario! We would love to get to know Margherita even better. That’s why we asked her some questions about her work and her passion for WordPress:

Hi, Margherita! What do you do?

I create websites for freelancers and self-employed women. I help and support them with moving their profession into the digital space, building, fixing and updating WordPress websites, and teaching women to use their blogs and social media. I’ve had a stable relationship with WordPress since 2012.

Since 2016, I’ve organized the WordPress Ancona Meetup. I’ve also been involved in the activities of the Italian community as an organizer, a speaker, and recently as a Local Ambassador of the Training Team. In 2022, I received the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship from the WordPress Foundation, which allowed me to attend WordCamp US 2022 in San Diego (CA).

In addition to WordPress, I have a husband, two grown children, four cats, and an unknown number of lipsticks (more than 50, and all in different colors).

Why did you start contributing? Could you share your first contribution with us?

My first contribution was organizing the WordPress Ancona Meetup. I’d already been using WordPress for work for a few years, but I never really paid attention to the notice board with news from the WordPress blog. One day, by chance, I read about Meetups in the dashboard. I don’t even remember what city it was in anymore. I got curious and started looking for a WordPress Meetup near me, because I wanted to find out what it was. Unbelievably, there were no groups near me. I found it absurd, and I knew I had to do something about it…

I nurtured the idea for months, maybe a whole year, without doing anything. Then one day, on impulse, I filled out the application: I had never attended a meetup or even a WordCamp. I just wanted to meet people who did the same job as me; who used and loved WordPress as much as I did. This was late June 2016. After a couple of Meetups, I realized that creating this time to talk to other people and share ideas about WordPress was also a way to give back to the community.

What does WordPress look like in your perfect world?

In my perfect world, WordPress is as it is. Could I be so madly in love that I don’t see any flaws? More than saying what WordPress would be like, I’d like to say what WordPress people should be like. I want more contributors to the technical teams to be women.

Who is your WordPress hero?

Every person I have met at a WordCamp or in a Slack channel who contributes to WordPress is my WordPress hero! But there is one person I follow on social and international Slack that I’ve never met in person, and who I want to meet as soon as possible because she’s a big inspiration to me: Pooja Derashri. She, like Simona Simionato and me, received the Kim Parsell Scholarship last year. I started following her on Twitter when the winners were announced. I’d hoped to meet her in person in San Diego, but she could not attend WordCamp US in San Diego due to a visa delay. I think she is an absolute force of nature. Now, I follow her even more closely because she is a Learn Rep; the contribution team I started participating in after the San Diego experience.

What would you love to do in the future?

I want to be more present and active in the Learn team, to involve more people and speed up content localization even more… and move on to the next phase: the production of Italian content. I think gathering our skills on WordPress and making them available to everyone is a crucial step to implement the WordPress claim to ‘democratize publishing.’

Furthermore, I’d like to participate in WordCamp Europe next year, or be on the team of organizers. I’m going to apply, and we’ll see what happens… After all, this is not ‘unicorn’ stuff. They’re possible and achievable wishes!

Thank you for this interview, Margherita, and for all of your contributions to the WordPress community! Do you know someone like Margherita Pelonara who also deserves to be in the spotlight? Go to our Yoast Care page and nominate them right away.