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Mary Mojisola Job · My story
I Did Not Set Out to Become a Community Strategist.
I found my way into technology through WordPress.
I did not have a technical education background, but blogging gave me somewhere to begin. I learned to build websites, started helping other people do the same, and eventually found myself teaching, speaking, and contributing to communities I had once simply wanted to belong to.
For years, I thought of myself as a website designer, blogger, educator, technical support professional, and community volunteer. I did not yet see these as parts of the same story.
Looking back, the connection feels clearer. I have always been interested in people, what they know, how they share it, and what we can build together.
Finding my way
One website became a way in.
WordPress began as something I wanted to understand. It became something I could use to help other people. Before joining Paid Memberships Pro, I spent around six years freelancing as a website designer, blogger, and blogging educator. Through How Do You Tech, I helped people and organisations use WordPress and digital tools.
Alongside that work, I began contributing to WordPress and organising community activities around 2016. Volunteering brought me into WordCamps, NetSquared, OpenCon, and initiatives such as Uwani Hub, connected to my village. Teaching, building websites, and helping people find opportunities to learn began to overlap.
In 2017, I travelled to Cape Town for my first international speaking engagement at WordCamp. My talk was about how WordPress blogging had given me an identity in the tech world. I was sharing a journey I was still living.
I went on to organise and mentor meetups and WordCamps and serve as a WordPress Community Team Representative. My contributions have crossed Community, Core, Documentation, Support, and Polyglots. For a long time, I did this because I believed in it. I did not think of community building as a career.
November 2019–August 2026
Nearly seven years of listening.
At Paid Memberships Pro, Stranger Studios, I worked in technical support, helping people build and manage WordPress membership websites. My résumé records 8,263 resolved customer support tickets. Behind that number were people trying to make something work.
The work taught me to listen carefully before offering an answer, explain technical ideas in accessible language, and notice when the same problem kept returning. A useful response could solve one person’s issue; clear documentation could help the next person before they needed to ask.
Customer feedback also showed me where a product or process could improve. Troubleshooting, customer education, and knowledge management became closely connected: understand the problem, make the answer useful, and help it reach the people who need it.
People, memory, and meaning
What Happens to Knowledge When We Do Not Preserve It?
Getting knowledge out of people’s heads and into documentation fascinates me. That interest reaches beyond work.
I come from a Yoruba culture with a strong oral tradition. Stories, history, skills, and wisdom have long travelled from one generation to another through spoken words. There is beauty in that living exchange. I also think about the knowledge we lose when there is no one left to pass it on, or no record to return to.
Preserving knowledge can mean writing, recording voices, teaching, or sustaining the practices through which people share what they know. I am interested in how we keep that knowledge accessible without losing the people and context behind it.
I believe our personal stories are also a form of knowledge worth preserving. That belief inspired my book, Tell Me Your Story, Mama, an invitation for mothers to share their stories, memories, and experiences with the generations that come after them.
My studies gave me different ways to explore these questions. My Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy at Olabisi Onabanjo University encouraged me to examine how people think. A Postgraduate Diploma in Mass Communication at Babcock University deepened my interest in how we communicate. My Master’s in Information Resources Management, specialising in Knowledge Management at Babcock, brought those interests together.
Recognising the connection
Giving the work a name.
Around 2025, I began intentionally identifying professionally as a community strategist. It was a way of recognising the strategic value of work I had already been doing for years.
I kept returning to the same questions. Why do people join, and what makes them stay? What helps them participate meaningfully? How do we preserve what a community learns? What structures let it remain useful when the people leading it change?
Volunteering, support work, teaching, and building websites had all given me different ways to approach those questions. Community strategy gave me language for the connection.
An idea with more room
From How Do You Tech to HDY Haus.
How Do You Tech was closely associated with websites, blogging, digital skills, and technology. In late 2025, I began developing the broader HDY Haus vision. I wanted room for interests that extended beyond a business defined by the word “tech.”
Live Well, Build Well. That is the idea behind it. Build Well includes technology, digital systems, coworking, learning, community, and tools that help people create meaningful work. Live Well makes room for hospitality, food, wellness, intentional living, and self-care.
HDY Haus reflects my interest in how people live, work, learn, and connect. HDY Haus Studio in Durrës, Albania, is one expression of that vision: a physical space where work and community can meet.
Looking ahead, I would like to explore a restaurant focused on intentional meals, alongside wellness, skincare, beauty, and other lifestyle experiences. There is more I hope to build, one thoughtful step at a time.
The thread continues
What I am building today.
Today, these interests show up through community strategy, customer education, knowledge management, and the digital systems that support them. They also live in HDY Haus, my WordPress and open-source advocacy, and the stories I write and share.
SoroCircle is another expression of that curiosity: an initiative I am building around meaningful conversations, human connection, and belonging. It is separate from Mary’s Circle. Different projects give me different ways to explore what helps people learn, connect, and feel they have a place.
Beyond the professional titles
Small small.
Avash avash.
Some lessons follow me across places. In Nigeria, I hear “small small” and “díẹ̀ díẹ̀.” In East Africa, it was “pole, pole.” Here in Albania, it is “avash avash.” Different languages, with a familiar reminder to take things slowly.
I write about these everyday connections: the conversations, shared experiences, and small moments that change how I understand belonging. There is a person still learning behind all the professional titles.
Read the story behind these words ↗The next chapter
There Is Always More to the Story.
I am still learning, building, and figuring things out along the way. If something in my journey resonates with you, I would love to connect.
Get in Touch ↗