Episode 88: Lisa Stambaugh

Introducing Lisa Stambaugh

Lisa Stambaugh has been known as “Web Diva®” for over 20 years. She is a knitting enthusiast, curly girl and cookie artiste. That’s not all! She tells is also she is an obsessive wordsmither and musical theatre devotee.

Show Notes

Book | Web Diva Wisdom

Website | Collective Discovery

Website | Much Ado About You

Blog Post about Women in Tech | The Importance of Female Mentorship In The Tech Industry

Cookie Recipe | Mocha Chip Cookies recipe

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions, and our guests share their stories, ideas and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is episode 88.

Liam: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Liam Dempsey.

Tara: And I’m Tara Claeys. Today, we’re joined by Lisa Stambaugh. Lisa has been known as web diva for over 20 years. She’s a knitting enthusiast, curly girl, and cookie artist. That’s not all. She tells us she’s an obsessive wordsmither and musical theatre devotee. Lisa is a writer for the GoDaddy Blog and the author of Web Diva Wisdom: How to find, hire, and partner with the right web designer for you. Welcome, Lisa. Glad to have you here today.

Lisa: Glad to be here.

Liam: Hey, Lisa. Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, please?

Lisa: Well, I live in Fremont, California, which is right in Silicon Valley. I grew up here. I’ve pretty much always been kind of where the action is in the high-tech world, and my mom still lives in the house I grew up in and we always say, if you draw a triangle between Google, Facebook, and Apple, that house is right in the middle. 60 years ago, they landed in this sweet spot. That’s been great. I’m married, I have two kids that are both adults. one is an engineer and the other is a veterinarian. I have a grandson so being called Bubby is probably the best thing I’ve been called in my life. You mention Web Diva and I will say that when I got into this business over 20 years ago, it was all guys, they were all Web Masters. I thought that sounded a little bit too much like Dungeons & Dragons and I started calling myself the Web Diva. it was kind of a joke, and it stuck. And I have a registered trademark on that and it’s kind of my brand, it’s in the title of my book. So I kind of enjoy having that web diva reputation, so to speak. I came into the web world after 18 or so years in high tech, in more traditional, I guess what you call, engineering, quality, IT, kind of what you’d expect jobs if somebody said you were an engineer. And I was ready for a change and a lifestyle that worked better with small children and didn’t involve so much travel and crazy hours. And I had some web experience because I was managing an IT department and the website was part of our domain, and I had started doing a little fun and games website stuff on the side. It took a flier on it being a short-term, let’s see how this goes, career, and it turned into something. Right place, right time. So over 20 years in the web world based on that.

Tara: And then WordPress specifically?

Lisa: WordPress specifically– okay, when I started doing websites, the latest and greatest tool was FrontPage 95. Thank god that’s not the answer anymore. So I did some work with that, moved into Dreamweaver, got into WordPress about 2010-ish,