Introducing Nadia Williams

Nadia Williams is a Jane of all trades. An educator by profession, she has always enjoyed technology tools, stumbling into the world of ed tech and WordPress around the same time. Nadia is a teacher, a polyglot, a yogi, a travel addict, and a lifelong learner.

Show Notes

Website | MsWillipedia

Instagram | MsWillipedia

Twitter | @mswillipedia

Episode Transcript

Liam: This is Hallway Chats, where we talk with some of the unique people in and around WordPress.

Tara: Together, we meet and chat with folks you may not know about in our community.

Liam: With our guests, we’ll explore stories of living – and of making a living with WordPress.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 50.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today, we’re joined by Nadia Williams. Nadia is a Jane of all trades. An educator by profession, she has always enjoyed technology tools, stumbling into the world of ed tech and WordPress around the same time. Nadia is a teacher, a polyglot, a yogi, a travel addict, and a lifelong learner. Hi, Nadia, welcome.

Nadia: Hi, guys. How are you doing?

Tara: Hey, Nadia, welcome. So glad to meet you and welcome to Hallway Chats. Can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Nadia: Sure. Well, Liam, thank you for that awesome introduction. As he mentioned, I am an educator by trade and I spent seven years as a classroom teacher, I taught middle school English. Yes, middle school teachers are a little on the quirky side so I apologize in advance for any random pop culture references or things that might suggested that I have an arrested development because middle school. But I loved it dearly, I had a wonderful time, the kids were one of my favorite parts of the job because I always had great stories to tell at dinner parties. But in that process of being a teacher, it was really fascinating that I kind of came into the field non-traditionally. I actually was originally thinking of going into corporate law and then didn’t get into my first-choice school so that kind of threw me off-track a little bit and I was like, “Well, but I really want to be like Oprah, she seems awesome.” So I went into broadcast journalism as my major in undergrad, came back, decided I didn’t want to do that. I swear I’m not wishy-washy but what happened was I spent a year abroad and had some amazing professors who were actual in-field journalists, and they, unfortunately, did not look like they really liked their lives. As awesome as they were as professors, I came back, kind of had a personal, as they say, come to Jesus moment, realized that with a four-year degree starting pay and that level of dissatisfaction, I saw some people who were actually in the field. I thought I look for other options and one day by the pool, one of my friends said, “Hey, why don’t you think about teaching?” I thought, “Surely, you jest.” But it kind of weighed on me and it really steeped into my brain and I just couldn’t shake it because when I stopped and pulled back, I realized I’ve been teaching people all along. I was teaching people at my college job where I was working for Aveda doing makeup and showing people how to use right makeup products and right skin-care products to keep their skin at a nice condition, or the right hair products for what they wanted to do. I found that I was teaching people– teaching kids, actually. I was teaching color guard flag line for a local high school and I’ve been doing that throughout my college years, and realized, “You know what?