Speakers

Our excellent speakers for #FinCon12:

Adam Baker – “Baker” is the creator of Man vs Debt, a popular site dedicated to helping you sell your crap, pay off your debt, and do what you love. That’s not an empty tagline. Baker is living that life. On his blog, Man vs Debt, he’s chronicled his minimalist, travel-anywhere-you-want, financially free lifestyle. His travels have taken he and his family through Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Last year the Baker family was on an RV journey across North America. His last stop was essentially be the Financial Blogger Conference. This year he’s traveling the U.S. again making a documentary. Baker is the author of Unautomate Your Finances, Sell Your Crap, and You Vs. Debt.

J.D. Roth – J.D. Roth is an accidental personal-finance expert, a regular guy who found himself deep in debt. After deciding to turn his life around, he read everything he could about money and finance. In 2006, he started the award-winning website Get Rich Slowly, which Money Magazine named the Web’s most inspiring personal-finance blog. Over the past four years, Get Rich Slowly has grown into an active community where 500,000 readers each month share ideas on how to improve their financial lives. He’s the author of Your Money: The Missing Manual.

Liz Weston – Liz Weston is the most-read personal finance columnist on the Internet, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. She’s an award-winning, nationally-syndicated personal finance columnist who can make the most complex money topics understandable to the average reader. She’s authored several books, including The 10 Commandments of Money: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy and “Your Credit Score“, a national best-seller. Liz’s columns run twice a week on MSN Money while her question-and-answer column “Money Talk” appears in newspapers throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Times, the Palm Beach Post, the Portland Oregonian, Stars & Stripes and others. She also writes a money column, “My Two Cents,” for AARP the Magazine, the largest-circulation magazine in the world with 22 million subscribers. Read more about Liz.

Laura Adams – Laura is host of the Money Girl podcast, a top-10 business show on iTunes with over 500,000 downloads per month that she writes and produces each week. She is also the author of Money Girl’s Smart Moves to Grow Rich (St. Martin’s Press) which won the 2011 Excellence in Financial Literacy Education (EIFLE) Award. Laura is also a personal finance blogger, contributor, freelance writer, and MBA who is frequently quoted as an expert and featured in media like FOX News, HuffPost Money, USA Today, US News & World Report, Time, Consumer Reports, and All You Magazine.

Shannyn Allan – Shannyn started out blogging on Frugalbeautiful.com but has since expanded to TheFrugalPreneur.com and BeautifulGiveaways.com to capture her various interests. She has been notoriously dubbed “The Giveaway Queen,” and will be speaking this year on how to partner up with companies for sponsorships, reviews and giveaways without selling your soul (and have a lot of fun getting free stuff!).

Andrea Amir – Andrea is the President of SmartMoneyChicks.com, a financial coaching and education company teaching women and business owners how to make personal finance and small business rewarding, manageable, and profitable. She is also the Founder of Worth It! The Money Conference for Women and Organizer of the largest Meetup group on the topic of Women’s Personal Finance in the Region. Andrea has over 15 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry including positions as a Mortgage Banker and Certified Financial Educator.

Rob Bennett – Rob writes the “A Rich Life” blog. He developed the Valuation-Informed Indexing investing strategy, which updates the Buy-and-Hold strategy to reflect the research of Yale Economics Professor Robert Shiller. The new strategy calls for investors to increase their stock allocations when valuations are low and to decrease them when valuations are high. The academic research shows that Rob’s approach would permit millions of middle-class people to earn far higher returns while taking on dramatically reduced risk. Rob believes that the Personal Finance Blogosphere can repeat in the investing realm the huge success it has had promoting effective saving and frugality strategies.

Will Chen – Will is the co-founder and marketing director for the award-winning blog Wise Bread and the Top Personal Finance Blogs Chart—a leaderboard that showcases the best personal finance blogs. He has shared his blog marketing experience at conferences such as SXSW, Blog World EXPO, and the New York Times Small Business Summit; his blogging and business insights have also been featured and quoted by Forbes, USA Today, Nielsen’s Media, among others. In his free time Will enjoys sharing viral news on social media sites such as Reddit and Digg (where he was a top 30 contributor).

Ben Edwards – Ben has been addicted to personal finance since he was 12 years old. After asking for shares of Wal-Mart stock for birthday gifts as a kid, it was inevitable he’d end up running the personal finance site Money Smart Life. Ben’s a software engineer by day and a money nut by night, so Money Smart Life turned out to be the perfect place to share his personal finance adventures and work his programming magic behind the scenes.

Tracie Fobes, mom to 3 kids ( ages 3 – 8 ) is the Mom behind Penny Pinchin’ Mom. She and her husband began their journey to financial independence in November 2007. Together with her husband, they eradicated more than $37,000 in debt in 27 months. As she began paying down their debts, she found ways to save money and began to share her tips with family and friends. After much encouragement, she branched out and started her website to help families save on everything from groceries to tires. Not only does she share money saving tips, she helps her readers learn how they can eliminate their own debt through her annual Debt Free Challenge. In just 15 months, her readers have eliminated more than $350,000 in debt. Not only does she share her money saving tips on her site, but she is featured weekly on her local CBS affiliate in Kansas City.

Donna Freedman – Donna is an award-winning journalist who writes MSN Money’s frugality/intentional living site, Frugal Cool. She is also a staff writer at Get Rich Slowly and has her own site, Surviving and Thriving. She has been a college dropout, a single mom, a newspaper reporter in Chicago and Alaska, and a late-in-life university student. She has also picked tomatoes, worked on a chicken farm, managed an apartment building, inspected and packed bottles in a glass factory, babysat, cleaned houses, mystery-shopped, set type, and sold doughnuts, movie tickets, fresh Jersey produce and, when things got bad, her own blood. Donna has freelanced for numerous magazines and newspapers. Her work has won awards from organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Women’s Sports Foundation, the Association for Women in Communications and the Society of American Travel Writers.

Greg Go – Greg is the co-founder and CTO of Wise Bread and its industry-leading Top Personal Finance Blog Chart. His team develops and implements technical solutions in support of Wise Bread’s mission. Greg served as the About.com Guide to Online Business in ‘07-08, covering e-commerce, SEM/SEO, and social media. His business insights have been featured by US News and World Report, MSN, Web Pro News, and Blogworld Expo. Prior to Wise Bread, Greg was a systems administrator for two-time Academy-Award winning visual effects firm Rhythm & Hues Studios (LOTR, X-Men, Narnia). For fun, Greg practices “financially responsible gambling”. Ask him what it’s like to make a World Series of Poker final table.

Ryan Guina – Ryan is an Air Force veteran and the founder of Cash Money Life and The Military Wallet. He has traveled to over 30 countries, served as a consultant to the Department of Defense, and loves helping people make better financial decisions. His writing has been featured in US News & World Report and Yahoo Finance, and his websites have been mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MSN News, and more.

Mitchel Harad – Mitchel is vice president of marketing for Lending Club, the leading platform for investing in and obtaining personal loans. Mitchel leads the borrower marketing efforts at Lending Club, which includes a multi-million-dollar partner marketing program and a substantial affiliate program on the Commission Junction network. Lending Club has experienced unprecedented growth, surpassing $600 million in cumulative loan originations and is issuing over $40 million in new loans each month. Prior to joining Lending Club, Mitchel was president of Broderick Street Partners LLC, a financial services marketing firm that was the #1 affiliate for Chase Student Loans, Intuit’s online business products, Experian Auto, and other major financial services companies.

Kelly Kinkaid — who happens to come from a long line of penny pinchers, super savers, and frau frugals – is a professional blogger and freelance writer specializing in topics that explore personal finance, social media, diet and fitness, and generally living a life well lived. She is the founder and creator of Kellyology, created in 2006, and has written recently for The Centsible Life, Kidworth, and Blissfully Domestic. Kelly, married to her C.P.A. husband for forever and a day, is very active within her local community as a runner and as a soccer, swimming, basketball, band and piano parent. She especially enjoys talking about herself in third person.

Jeff from Sustainable Life Blog – Jeff started writing Sustainable Life Blog in 2009, and has been writing about helping readers improve their health, their finances and their earth ever since. Jeff has been a member of the Yakezie network since its inception and has learned a great deal about blogging, network building and finances from the Yakezie. Being one of the original members of the network has given Jeff a front row seat to many of the benefits and challenges of the Yakezie network, for both new and established bloggers. In the non-blogging world, Jeff enjoys spending time with his fiancee and their dog in the mountains.

Linsey Knerl – Linsey is a homeschooling mom of 5, the founder of Knerl Family Media, and a full-time freelance blogger, social media consultant, and writer. In addition to her work past work as the Community Manager for Wise Bread, she has had formal brand partnerships with companies like Walmart, ConAgra, MegaBloks, Energizer, and Sharpie. You can find her tips for creating work-at-home success for women at 1099Mom.com.

Luke Landes “Flexo” – After coming to the realization his own finances were on a dangerous path, Luke Landes embarked on a journey to improve his own life. With this goal, in 2003 he created Consumerism Commentary, a blog using the name Flexo to protect his identity, where he could share the intimate details of his bank accounts, engaging readers on a journey from debt to financial success. Today, Consumerism Commentary boasts an active community of hundreds of thousands of readers every month, the top-rated weekly financial podcast, and the Carnival of Personal Finance, a weekly traveling showcase identifying the best personal finance articles. Through the Carnival of Personal Finance and other efforts supporting personal finance bloggers, Luke encouraged the community to grow. From less than ten “personal finance blogs” in 2003, there are now thousands of web sites in this niche. In addition to Consumerism Commentary, he has written about money as Flexo or Luke Landes for US News, Currency from American Express, Yahoo Finance, TurboTax, and PC World Magazine.

Alex Matjanic – Alex’ mission is to help bridge the gap between financial institutions and the emerging needs of younger consumers.. In 2008, Alex and his team developed MyBankTracker.com — a banking-information portal aimed at young adults. Combining a clutter-free, easy-to-read interface with social integration, including peer bank ratings, reviews and a community Q&A forum, MyBankTracker.com marries consumers’ desire for transparency with informative data and insightful writing. The core belief of MyBankTracker is that young consumers and entrepreneurs, empowered by information, can transform finance.

Jesse Mecham – In 2003, Jesse married his sweetheart, Julie. With seven semesters to go in the Accountancy graduate program at Brigham Young University, Jesse knew their meager earnings would have to do some serious stretching. As a result, he created a unique money management system. It worked so well, he officially founded YouNeedaBudget.com in 2004, and began selling his program as a way to earn extra income for his growing family. After graduation, Jesse worked as a certified public accountant, but continued to sell YNAB on the side. Eventually he left the day job in order to focus on his business full-time. YNAB is used world-wide and can be found on Amazon.com, the Intel App-Up store, and the Apple store. In September, 2010, Jesse wrote a companion book to the software, also titled “You Need a Budget.” The program was named winner for Best Windows Personal Finance Software in About.com’s Reader’s Choice Awards for 2011 and Best Desktop Personal Finance tool on Lifehacker.com. Jesse enjoys working from home, golfing, taking his wife on weekly dates, and keeping up with their five kids.

Jesse Michelsen – Jesse blogs at Personal Finance Firewall and is the Community Manager for Money Crashers. He’s a serial entrepreneurial with way too many interests to count. His online ventures include businesses in Technical Service, SaaS, Social Networks and blogging/copy writing to name a few. He approaches life like a kid does a candy store and just can’t get enough.

Mr. Money Mustache – Mr. Money Mustache is a new financial blogger who retired, financially independent, from an average engineering job shortly after turning 30 in order to start a family. With no punches pulled, he attacks the mindless consumerism that defines America’s middle-class today, while re-teaching the traditional values of hard work and honesty as they apply to becoming wealthy in the modern world. His goal is nothing short of a complete revolution of society, although continuing to run his growing blog is an acceptable substitute for now.

Melanie Nelson – If you want to know how to build community around your business using Facebook, Melanie’s your gal. She literally wrote the book on it: Facebook All-In-One for Dummies is available in stores now. Melanie has been working with business websites since 1995 (it’s true — she remembers Mosaic). And, although she wrote HTML in Notepad before CSS was a twinkle in your eye, now she focuses on social media strategy and implementation. Melanie also owns Blogging Basics 101 which was listed in Hubspot’s list of “10 Amazing Blogs About Blogging to Start Reading NOW.”

Kylie Ofiu set herself a goal to be a millionaire by 30 and decided to blog about what she was doing to make and save money at KylieOfiu.Com. This decision changed her life. She went from being a hairdressing mum of 2 to an author, blogger, freelance writer, international public speaker and creating a variety of income streams both online and off.

Paula Pant – Paula is an award-winning mul­ti­me­dia jour­nal­ist and the founder of Afford Anything, a site dedicated to the idea that smart money moves can fuel your wildest dreams. She started the site after she traveled to 27 countries across the Mid­dle East, Asia and Europe on a shoestring budget. She is the former deputy news editor of a daily newspaper in Colorado, where her work won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, and her writing is now featured on per­sonal finance web­sites such as MSN Money’s Smart Spending blog and the Motley Fool Blog Network. She is also the Guide to Budgeting and Personal Finance for About.com, a site owned by the New York Times. She lives in Atlanta and owns three rental properties.

Len Penzo – At his eponymous off-beat personal finance blog, Len Penzo definitely marches to the beat of his own drummer. Len covers a broad array of money topics in a uniquely irreverent and highly-entertaining style, usually with a clever twist, and always with an emphasis on personal responsibility. Political Calculations remarked that “Reading Len is like reading what Dave Barry might be able to achieve if Dave Barry wrote about personal finance.” Len Penzo dot Com has been twice-honored as a top money blog by Kiplinger, and Len’s articles have been featured on MSN, Yahoo! and other major financial websites.

Mike Piper – Mike is a Missouri licensed CPA and the author of 7 personal finance books. He also writes the popular blog Oblivious Investor, which was recommended by Money Magazine in their “100 Best Money Moves” series. At his blog, Mike writes brief, plain-English articles about tax planning, retirement planning, and low-maintenance investing.

Travis Pizel – In 2009, after 13 years of financial irresponsibility, Travis and his family found themselves with over $100,000 of credit card debt and on the brink of financial disaster. He found blogging as an outlet to help cope with the stress of completely changing his family’s lifestyle while learning to live within their means. As a compensated customer blogger for CareOne Debt Relief ServicesSM, contributing to their Our Journey Out of Debt blog since 2010, he shares his family’s experiences, struggles and successes as they fight their way to financial freedom. As a father and husband he also provides a unique perspective on balancing debt, finances, and family through his personal blog, Our Journey To Zero.

Justin Premick – Justin is an award-winning email and content marketer and Director of Education Marketing for AWeber, the leading small business email marketing software. Tens of thousands of businesses have learned how to increase sales, profits and retention by reading Justin’s articles or by watching his presentations. His advice on email marketing has been featured by INC, BtoB, Target Marketing and numerous other business and marketing publications. Justin’s strength lies in ensuring that his teachings “have practical relevancy to the busy marketer and go into the necessary detail that many information sources do not or will not cover,” according to Mark Brownlow of email-marketing-reports.com. (source: LinkedIn) For more email marketing advice from Justin, read the AWeber blog. You can also connect with Justin via LinkedIn and Twitter.

Jason Price – Jason started blogging in 2009 when he created his personal finance blog, One Money Design, to share practical financial tips and his perspective on money management with others. Since then it has grown into a group of writers with unique personalities and a common goal of helping people make progress along their financial journeys. Jason is an IT project manager by day, but you’ll find him blogging about personal finance and exploring web entrepreneurship late at night and the early hours of the morning. He’s also actively involved in a financial coaching ministry in his community where he shares principles of biblical stewardship and helps people learn to manage their money wisely. Jason enjoys spending time with his wonderful wife and two awesome children and lives in north Dallas.

Carrie Rocha – In June 2006 Carrie Rocha and her husband, Marco, made a decision to get out of debt and to stay out of debt forever. In 2 ½ years they accomplished their first goal by paying off more than $50,000 in debts (they are still working on their mortgage, their only remaining debt). Radical change happened as they revamped their attitude toward money, organized their finances and reduced expenses in a million creative ways. Carrie launched PocketYourDollars.com in March 2009 to share money-saving tips with others. Ten months after launching her blog, Pocket Your Dollars became her full-time vocation with affiliate marketing, advertising and public speaking as her business model. She’s been featured on Wall Street Journal Radio, Yahoo! Finance, MSN.com, Ladies Home Journal and more. She’s currently working on her first book which will be released in January 2013.

Jeff Rose – Jeff is a Certified Financial Planner™ recently founding his own investment advisory firm Alliance Wealth Management, LLC. He is the founder of Good Financial Cents (a top 25 finance blog according to Wisebread) and Soldier of Finance – his upcoming book project that combines his military background with his financial planning knowledge. He currently writes for US News and Equifax and has been featured in major sites such as Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Kiplingers, and Fox Business. In his free time, he loves hanging with his family, tortures himself with Crossit workouts, and daydreams frequently when he can chow down on an In-N-Out Burger again.

Matt Schulz – Matt is an award-winning journalist who is the VP of Content for InvestingAnswers.com, a site devoted to helping readers build and protect wealth through education. Previously, he’s helped lead editorial teams at CreditCards.com — where he once worked on an online town hall with the White House and even blogged about Dr. Seuss — KXAN.com and Austin360.com. Many years ago, he was a sportswriter, covering NFL training camps, March Madness and college football, but now his work is focused on helping consumers make smart decisions with their money.

Ramit Sethi – Ramit Sethi is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” which focuses on personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s by weaving together threads from health & fitness, social psychology, and personal finance. His blog, iwillteachyoutoberich.com, hosts over 300,000 readers per month. He occasionally writes for the New York Times and has appeared on The Today Show, ABC, PBS, NPR, and most major media. Previously, he co-founded PBwiki, a Silicon Valley collaboration company, where he helped drive the user acquisition of millions of users. Ramit was the keynote speaker at #FinCon11.

Janet Stauble — Janet is the Social Media Community Manager for Bankrate.com. She helped Bankrate tone down the broadcasting on social networks and turn up the conversation, collaboration and curation. She believes social media has done wonders for content discovery, community building … and even competing with search engines.

Jon Stein – Jon is the founder and CEO of Betterment. Passionate about helping people make smart decisions with their money, he founded the online brokerage in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School. His interests lie at the intersection of behavior, psychology, and economics. What excites him most about his work is making everyday activities and products more efficient, accessible, and easy to use.

Jason Steele – Jason Steele read that you can’t make a living writing online about personal finance and said, “Yeah, we’ll see about that.” Since 2008, Jason has been breaking new ground as freelancer extraordinaire specializing in credit cards and loyalty travel programs. He is a regular contributor to many of the top personal finance sites, including Money Talks News, Wise Bread, Money Crashers and his work has been carried at mainstream sites such as MSN, Yahoo, and The Consumerist. Read more about Jason’s latest work.

Kasey Steinbrinck – After seven years working as a TV news producer and newspaper reporter, Kasey left the world of daily deadlines behind and now enjoys the freedom of creating web content for CheckAdvantage. He blogs on personal finances, economic news and consumer tips at the CheckAdvantage Blog. Featuring free content that people can use has helped CheckAdvantage sales grow more than 50% each year since Kasey joined the marketing team. He still uses the news to create compelling stories that drive traffic and boost rankings.

Crystal Stemberger – Crystal started blogging in February 2010 with Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. She thought she had simply found the perfect hobby for a personal finance geek like herself, but then it grew. A couple of hours a day turned into a second full time job. It only got busier in April 2011 when she started running the advertising for other bloggers along with her own sites. By July 2011, Crystal was able to make the leap to full time self employment. In January 2012, her husband made the leap too. Crystal now spends her week days working on the ad business and her weekends catching up with the blog that started it all.

Todd Tresidder – Todd came from the financial side of the business as a former hedge fund manager who “retired” at age 35 (16 years ago). He launched FinancialMentor.Com to provide a resource for quality financial advice that is separate from (and unbiased by) investment product sales. His unconventional writing on traditional financial topics is analytical, lengthy, detailed, infrequent, and basically violates every rule of traditional blogging. He is the author of several books including How Much Money Do I Need To Retire?, The Smart Consumer’s Guide To Variable Annuities, and The Smart Consumer’s Guide To Money Coaching and Financial Education.

David Weliver – David founded Money Under 30 in 2006 at the age of 25 as he struggled to conquer post-college debt on entry level paychecks. Today, Money Under 30 helps over 150,000 monthly readers jump start their financial lives with free resources like Richer By The Week, a five-day workbook designed to uncover users’ values and prioritize financial goals accordingly.

Kelly Whalen – Kelly is the author of The Centsible Life, a blog designed to help you live the life of your dreams on a budget. She started her blog 4 years ago, and has since become both a well known mom blogger and a respected voice in the personal finance realm. Kelly and her blog have been featured on The Today Show, local networks in Philadelphia, and she has been featured in magazines and print in both national and local publications including Money magazine, Kiplinger’s, and Women’s Day. Kelly is a mom to 4, and loves that she can stay at home with her kids, and still pursue her passions for writing, personal finance, and social media. Kelly is also a founding member of the Splash Creative Media team, a digital marketing agency.

Jim Yih – Jim Yih is a successful entrepreneur that started in the financial industry 20 years ago as an investment marketing manager for one of the biggest insurance companies in Canada. He quickly realized he did not like the bureaucracy of a large company and followed his entrepreneurial spirit by starting a retirement planning practice. He grew this practice to over $100 million in assets in 10 years and sold the business in 2007 at the age of 37. Today Jim is busy applying his strong business principles by growing new businesses to new successes including his Retire Happy Blog, which was recently awarded the distinction of being the BEST Personal Finance Blog in Canada by the Globe and Mail. Jim believes that the principles of business success are universal to any business and is showing this to be true with his blogging endeavors. Jim is excited to share with you his insights on growing a business to success.

Jim Wang – Jim is the creator of Bargaineering.com, a personal finance site that he created in 2005 to help him navigate the confusing and complex world of personal finance.

Thanks to our excellent speakers from the 2011 Financial Blogger Conference.

Vinoo Vijay – Vinoo joined Ally Financial in March 2008 to lead the Global Brand & Product Marketing function. In this role, he is responsible for directing the activity of a team of world-class marketers who set Ally’s brand strategy and successfully bring its products to market. Vinoo developed and launched the Ally brand, and completed the rebranding of GMAC Financial Services to Ally Financial in May 2010. He is responsible for all Marketing, Brand, CRM and Social Media activities across the portfolio of Ally Financial businesses (including the Ally Bank, GMAC, and Ditech brands). He joined Ally following a 7 year career at Bank of America where he most recently served as the eCommerce Marketing Executive during which time Bank of America became the #1 Online Bank in the country. Vinoo began his career at Federal Express, working his way up the marketing ladder, and was responsible for developing their global small business loyalty program.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Advertising from Syracuse University, and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Illinois.

Ramit Sethi – Ramit Sethi will be giving the keynote address on Saturday morning at the 2011 Financial Blogger Conference. The success Ramit has seen with his blog, best-selling book, multiple digital products, impressive media exposure, and speaking career make him the ideal person to give the first ever keynote address. Ramit is sure to educate, inspire, and challenge each of us to do more with our blogs and businesses.

Here’s more about Ramit. Ramit Sethi graduated from Stanford University in 2005 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in technology, psychology, and sociology. He is the founder and author of IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com, a blog on personal finance and personal entrepreneurship, which hosts hundreds of thousands of readers per month and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and NPR. In addition to his blog, he speaks on personal finance and entrepreneurship across the country. His book, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, was a New York Times best seller. Ramit is also the co-founder and vice president of community marketing for PBwiki, a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup.

Others who will be speaking at the 2011 Financial Blogger Conference:

Laura Adams – Laura is host of the Money Girl podcast, a top-10 business show on iTunes with over 500,000 downloads per month that she writes and produces each week. She is also the author of Money Girl’s Smart Moves to Grow Rich, which was published by Macmillan in January and won the 2011 Excellence in Financial Literacy Education (EIFLE) Award. Laura is also a personal finance blogger and freelance writer frequently featured in the media and quoted as an expert. Lastly, she is a Certified Personal Finance Counselor and MBA and works one-on-one with clients as a coach and mentor.

Adam Baker – “Baker” is the creator of Man vs Debt, a popular site dedicated to helping you sell your crap, pay off your debt, and do what you love. That’s not an empty tagline. Baker is living that life. On his blog, Man vs Debt, he’s chronicled his minimalist, travel-anywhere-you-want, financially free lifestyle. His travels have taken he and his family through Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand. This year the Baker family is on an RV journey across North America. His last stop will essentially be the Financial Blogger Conference. Baker is the author of Unautomate Your Finances, Sell Your Crap, and the soon to be released You Vs. Debt.

Will Chen – Will is the co-founder and marketing director for the award-winning blog Wise Bread and the Top Personal Finance Blogs Chart—a leaderboard that showcases the best personal finance blogs. He has shared his blog marketing experience at conferences such as SXSW, Blog World EXPO, and the New York Times Small Business Summit; his blogging and business insights have also been featured and quoted by Forbes, USA Today, Nielsen’s Media, among others. In his free time Will enjoys sharing viral news on social media sites such as Reddit and Digg (where he was a top 30 contributor).

Ben Edwards – Ben has been addicted to personal finance since he was 12 years old. After asking for shares of Wal-Mart stock for birthday gifts as a kid, it was inevitable he’d end up running the personal finance site Money Smart Life. Ben’s a software engineer by day and a money nut by night, so Money Smart Life turned out to be the perfect place to share his personal finance adventures and work his programming magic behind the scenes.

Pat Flynn – Pat is the mastermind behind the Smart Passive Income blog, podcast, and video tutorials. It was just a few years ago that Pat got laid off from his job as an Architect. He took the opportunity to create an online business designed around the lifestyle that he wanted for his young family. Since that time he’s built several online income streams and garnered a huge following due to his willingness to teach others his valuable strategies for running successful online businesses.

Donna Freedman – Donna is an award-winning journalist who writes a personal finance column for MSN Money and contributes to MSN’s Smart Spending blog. She is also a staff writer at Get Rich Slowly and has her own site, Surviving and Thriving. She has been a college dropout, a single mom, a newspaper reporter in Chicago and Alaska, and a late-in-life university student. She has also picked tomatoes, worked on a chicken farm, managed an apartment building, inspected and packed bottles in a glass factory, babysat, cleaned houses, mystery-shopped, set type, and sold doughnuts, movie tickets, fresh Jersey produce and, when things got bad, her own blood. Donna has freelanced for numerous magazines and newspapers. Her work has won awards from organizations such as the Society of Professional Journalists, the Women’s Sports Foundation, the Association for Women in Communications and the Society of American Travel Writers.

Greg Go – Greg is the co-founder and CTO of Wise Bread and its industry-leading Top Personal Finance Blog Chart. His team develops and implements technical solutions in support of Wise Bread’s mission. Greg served as the About.com Guide to Online Business in ‘07-08, covering e-commerce, SEM/SEO, and social media. His business insights have been featured by US News and World Report, MSN, Web Pro News, and Blogworld Expo. Prior to Wise Bread, Greg was a systems administrator for two-time Academy-Award winning visual effects firm Rhythm & Hues Studios (LOTR, X-Men, Narnia). For fun, Greg practices “financially responsible gambling”. Ask him what it’s like to make a World Series of Poker final table.

Ryan Guina – Ryan is an Air Force veteran and the founder of Cash Money Life and The Military Wallet. He has traveled to over 30 countries, served as a consultant to the Department of Defense, and loves helping people make better financial decisions. His writing has been featured in US News & World Report and Yahoo Finance, and his websites have been mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, MSN News, and more. He is currently working on his first book.

Trent Hamm – In April 2006, Trent went through a complete financial meltdown. He then threw himself head first into trying to figure out every nuance of fixing his financial situation, and after a few months he began to get the picture. Within eight months, he had paid off all of his credit card debt, paid off his vehicle, and also established an emergency fund. Since he has a passion for writing and had learned so much about how personal finance really works, he established a blog, The Simple Dollar, near the end of 2006 to tell the world about what he had learned and to help people who were struggling with the same things. Trent is the author of 365 Ways to Live Cheap and The Simple Dollar.

Stacy Johnson – Stacy has been a CPA since 1980 and has also earned licenses in stocks, commodities, options, mutual funds, life insurance and real estate. He spent 10 years working for three Wall Street firms (EF Hutton, Shearson and Prudential) and has been investing in both stocks and real estate for more than 30 years. In 1991, Stacy founded Money Talks News, a consumer/personal finance television news feature. Now in its 20th year of continuous production, Money Talks airs three times weekly within the local newscasts of more than 80 network affiliates nationwide as well as on many websites, including MSN Money and Yahoo Finance. Stacy has written, produced and hosted more than 3,000 personal finance videos, and has written three books: Life or Debt, Money Made Simple and Life or Debt 2010.

Linsey Knerl – Linsey is a homeschooling mom of 5, the founder of Lille Punkin’ Reviews, and a full-time freelance blogger and writer. In addition to her work past work as the Community Manager for Wise Bread and a Blog manager for Financial Highway, she is a Walmart Mom and the co-author of the recent 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget. You can find her personal finance writing at Investopedia, MSN Money, Forbes, and Today.com and her tips for creating work-at-home success for women at the newly-launched 1099Mom.com.

Luke Landes “Flexo” – After coming to the realization his own finances were on a dangerous path, Luke Landes embarked on a journey to improve his own life. With this goal, in 2003 he created Consumerism Commentary, a blog using the name Flexo to protect his identity, where he could share the intimate details of his bank accounts, engaging readers on a journey from debt to financial success. Today, Consumerism Commentary boasts an active community of hundreds of thousands of readers every month, the top-rated weekly financial podcast, and the Carnival of Personal Finance, a weekly traveling showcase identifying the best personal finance articles. Through the Carnival of Personal Finance and other efforts supporting personal finance bloggers, Luke encouraged the community to grow. From less than ten “personal finance blogs” in 2003, there are now thousands of web sites in this niche. In addition to Consumerism Commentary, he has written about money as Flexo or Luke Landes for US News, Currency from American Express, Yahoo Finance, TurboTax, and PC World Magazine.

Danielle Liss – Danielle is a lawyer in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her practice focuses on corporate litigation and social media law. Danielle’s personal money story has been featured on numerous websites, television and in Marie Claire. Danielle’s blog is currently named Kittenagogo.com (and was known as The Frugal Lawyer for a brief period). You can find her on Twitter @danielleliss. In addition to her legal practice, she is also the Influence Broker & Campaign Architect for FitFluential, a social media company that connects brands with fitness bloggers.

Kylie Ofiu – At the end of 2009, after another week of barely seeing her husband because of his work, Kylie decided enough is enough and set a goal to become a millionaire. She uses blogging as a way to share her journey. As she blogged, she discovered a real passion for finances and a desire to help others make more money and sort out their finances. Her journey to create wealth and eliminate debt resulted in her blog being discovered by an editor who wanted to turn one of her posts, 1001 ways to make money, into a book, resulting in 365 Ways To Make Money and her new blog at KylieOfiu.com.

Mark J. Patterson – Mark is an attorney with Waddey & Patterson, a Nashville firm that Mark founded in 1980 to practice exclusively in intellectual property law. Mark also teaches IP law at Vanderbilt University where he has been an adjunct professor since 1986. In 2008, Mark started writing at Tough Money Love, a personal finance blog with a hard truth attitude. Mark is also a baby boomer and in 2009, launched Go To Retirement, where he writes about retirement planning and retirement living. Mark also created and publishes the Failsafe Retirement System to help him and others design a more financially secure retirement.

Justin Premick – Justin is an award-winning email and content marketer and Director of Education Marketing for AWeber, the leading small business email marketing software. Tens of thousands of businesses have learned how to increase sales, profits and retention by reading Justin’s articles or by watching his presentations. His advice on email marketing has been featured by INC, BtoB, Target Marketing and numerous other business and marketing publications. Justin’s strength lies in ensuring that his teachings “have practical relevancy to the busy marketer and go into the necessary detail that many information sources do not or will not cover,” according to Mark Brownlow of email-marketing-reports.com. (source: LinkedIn) For more email marketing advice from Justin, read the AWeber blog. You can also connect with Justin via LinkedIn and Twitter.

Cliff Ravenscraft – In December of 2005, Cliff Ravenscraft started a hobby that, over time, had radically changed his life. He and his wife began podcasting about their favorite television show, Lost. By mid 2007, Cliff had become consumed with passion for not only creating content, but also building relationships with the individuals who listened to the shows he produced. He spent hours each day connecting with the their community of listeners and finding ways to connect them with each other. It was through these community building efforts and sharing his life and heart through the podcasts that Cliff realized that his true calling in life was to Entertain, Educate, Encourage, and Inspire others. In January 2008, Cliff left his career in insurance, after 11 years, to pursue his passion in podcasting full-time. Today, Cliff makes a decent living as a podcast producer, consultant, and coach. Cliff and his wife Stephanie have produced well over 2,000 individual podcast episodes of more than 20 different shows, and are effectively sharing their lives and ministering to tens of thousands of people around the world on a daily basis. Check out list of shows produced at GSPN.tv and check out Cliff’s consulting/coaching site at http://PodcastAnswerMan.com.

J.D. Roth – J.D. Roth is an accidental personal-finance expert, a regular guy who found himself deep in debt. After deciding to turn his life around, he read everything he could about money and finance. In 2006, he started the award-winning website Get Rich Slowly, which Money Magazine named the Web’s most inspiring personal-finance blog. Over the past four years, Get Rich Slowly has grown into an active community where 500,000 readers each month share ideas on how to improve their financial lives. J.D. lives with his wife and four cats in a hundred-year-old house in Portland, Oregon. He’s the author of Your Money: The Missing Manual.

Julia Scott – Former reporter/blogger/columnist for the LA Daily News, Julia Scott launched the savvy-spending blog BargainBabe.com back in 2009. Bargain Babe is a money-saving blog that offers daily strategies, coupons, and inspiration to save on everyday expenses. Julia has used her prior “big media” experience and passion for helping other save to quickly grow her blog. Julia is a featured contributor at AOL’s WalletPop and has been seen on Good Morning America, NBC, ABC News, Better Homes & Gardens, The Washington Post, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Tribune, AM NY, the Jewish Journal, Detroit News, the LA Times, and on Martha Stewart Living radio.

Amanda Steinberg – Amanda started DailyWorth.com as a way to give women key insights into building real net worth. DailyWorth stands out as the go-to source about personal finance for smart, ambitious women. Since its inception in January 2009, DailyWorth has garnered 100,000+ subscribers and a stream of media appearances, including New York Times, Forbes, and USA Today. A graduate of Columbia University, Steinberg also runs a Web consultancy called Soapbxx, and contributes to ForbesWoman.com. Amanda lives in Philadelphia with her two children, and her iPhone.

Farnoosh Torabi – Farnoosh is a personal finance expert, author and TV personality. The New York Times calls her advice “perfectly practical.” She is the author of the new book, Psych Yourself Rich: Get The Mindset & Discipline You Need to Build Your Financial Life. Watch her book interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today Show. She is a highly sought-after speaker and frequent financial contributor to Credit.com, Yahoo! Finance, MoneyWatch.com, AM New York, and The Nate Berkus Show.

Lynn Truong – Lynn left the corporate ladder behind in search for a shorter commute and more creative atmosphere. She co-founded Wise Bread in 2007. Being a co-founder, she wears different hats for the company. As editor-in-chief she manages an editorial staff of over 50 writers and editors. As sales director, she manages all aspects of sales and advertising for the site, drawing on her years of agency experience at CBS/King World where she created national ad campaigns for The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Phil, Wheel of Fortune, and Jeopardy. She has spoken at blogging conferences like BlogHer and Blog World Expo, and has appeared on CNN, ABC News, and KGO.

Kelly Whalen – Kelly is the author of The Centsible Life, a blog designed to help you live the life of your dreams on a budget. She started her blog 2 1/2 years ago, and has since become both a well known mom blogger and a respected voice in the personal finance realm. Kelly and her blog have been featured on The Today Show, local networks in Philadelphia, and she has been featured in magazines and print in both national and local publications including Money magazine, Kiplinger’s, and Women’s Day. Kelly is a mom to 4, and loves that she can stay at home with her kids, and still pursue her passions for writing, personal finance, and social media. You can often find her on twitter and Facebook talking money and motherhood. Kelly runs a social media consulting firm with partner Julie Pron, Just Centsible. She is also a founding member of the Splash Creative Media team, a group that creates and implements blog campaigns surrounding a topic, and their work always includes a charitable twist.