Tor-Björn Fjellner receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community

Meet Tor-Björn Fjellner, a cherished member of the WordPress Community Team! His dedication and invaluable contributions are precisely why Estela Rueda nominated him for the Yoast Care fund. Let’s take a moment to get to know this passionate WordPress enthusiast a bit better.

Nominator Estela Rueda: “Tor-Björn has been a contributor to polyglot for a long time. Nowadays, he is a mentor for the polyglots team, and his support has been invaluable for the launching of the mentorship program, now in its third cohort. Tor-Björn is always ready to provide guidance, support, and mentorship to us as mentors and to the mentees recruited.
All around, he is a fantastic WordPress contributor.”

Let’s get to know Tor-Björn Fjellner

That’s quite an introduction, Estela! We would love to get to know Tor-Björn even better. That’s why we asked him some questions about his work and his passion for WordPress:

Hi, Tor-Björn! What do you do?

I’m currently actively looking for a job. I have a lot of experience as a Project Manager, Product Manager, and Change Manager in Telecom and IT, but those labels only give a slight hint of my wide experience.

Why WordPress?

I started blogging (in Russian) on LiveJournal in 2004, when I moved from Moscow to Muscat to work for a new GSM operator. I wanted to share some of my experiences in Oman with friends and former colleagues. Around 2010, I wanted to start parallel blogging in three languages, and WordPress turned out to be flexible and versatile enough for my needs. I still remember how super-easy it was to migrate my LiveJournal blog to WordPress.

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

I updated the Russian and Swedish translations of the WordPress theme I used for my trilingual blog, and shared that with the developer. This was early 2011. I started maintaining the Swedish translation of WordPress core, themes, plugins, and “meta” (UI for various sites on the WordPress.org network) much more actively 2016. Since then, I’ve become deeply involved in the global Polyglots team, but I am also one of the most active volunteers in the Swedish support forum.

What does WordPress look like in your perfect world?

I already like the flexibility of WordPress now. As a linguist, I’d want terminology around WordPress to be a bit more structured.

What contribution or moment are you most proud of?

I want to highlight three moments:

• Despite living in Spain, I was a co-organizer of WordCamp Stockholm 2017.
• My presentation at WordCamp Europe 2023.
• Being one of the initiators of the Mentorship Program for new WordPress contributors. You’re welcome to tag along when a new cohort starts in October. Join the global Slack team for WordPress contributors (“Making WordPress“) and add yourself to our channel “mentorship-cohort-oct-2024”. I can guarantee you’ll pick up many valuable tips and ideas even if you’re an experienced WordPress contributor (Yep, that’s my secret – the fun thing about being a mentor is that you always continue to learn new things).

Where can people find you, online, at WordCamps, at other meetups?

I’d say mostly online: my wordpress.org account and on WordPress Slack, which I mentioned above, plus Linkedin and Facebook.

I live near Barcelona in Spain, but my Spanish is only on an intermediate level. I don’t actively participate in the local meetups. There used to be an international meetup here, but it was discontinued several years ago.

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