Leverage.it

August is stacked with birthdays, and we’re here for it! 🥳 Wishing our birthday crew a great month full of cake 🎂, laughs, and all the good stuff worth celebrating.

Welcome back to our Star of the Month Shout-Out Series, where we celebrate our team members who go above and beyond.

This month marks a first; we had two team members nominate the same person, and honestly? We get it.

We’re giving a massive shout-out to Paruyr, Developer from Armenia 🇦🇲

Based on what people had to say, he’s:
✨ An absolute lifesaver
✨ A total rockstar
✨Always ready and willing to help

Thank you, Paruyr, for the energy, support, and skills you bring every day, and of course for being an all-around awesome addition to our team. We’re lucky to have you.

July came in hot—and not just because of the weather.

We’ve got six incredible teammates celebrating birthdays this month, and honestly, we couldn’t let it pass without a shoutout.

From Ivan kicking things off early in QA, to Kim wrapping up the month with that quiet accounting magic, July is stacked. In between? Maksym’s clean code, Godfrey’s project-wrangling superpowers, Nicholas keeping the bots in line, and Miri doing what she does best: writing :)

Happy Birthday to all of you. You make this place what it is.

Now go eat some cake. You’ve earned it.

"

Our in-house designer extraordinaire Krizia dropped some design wisdom, and we’re all better for it.
If you want your social posts to actually get noticed and feel on-brand, here are her top 3 tips for scroll-stopping design:

Hierarchy creates rhythm.
Lead the eye—headline, detail, CTA. Use the golden ratio to scale your type and make your layout feel smooth and intentional.

Say more with less.
People scroll fast. Keep your text sharp, your visuals supportive, and don’t crowd the frame. White space is your friend.

Design it so it sounds like you—before they read a word.
Your colors, type, layout—repeat the style until people recognize it instantly. That’s branding doing its job.

Bonus tip: Carousels are your best friend for longer content. One idea per slide. Keep it moving.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and father figures out there - including the ones on our team! You juggle client calls with bedtime stories, team meetings with school pickups, and still somehow find time to answer endless “why” questions (from kids and coworkers).

Today, we’re celebrating all the fathers who bring patience, leadership, humor, and heart into everything they do; at home and at work. Happy Father’s Day! We see you, we appreciate you, and we hope you actually get to sit down today.

Join us in wishing a very happy birthday and 15-year workiversary to Aviva, our incredible COO!

She somehow keeps track of every client, every project, and every person; all while (seemingly) effortlessly balancing family, a dog, and two companies. And she still manages to drop great movie recommendations and sharp one-liners. Wicked smart, really kind, cool under pressure, and just… genuinely fun to work with.

Aviva, we seriously don’t know how you do it — but we’re so glad you do. Happy birthday and happy 15 years at Leverage!

AI and WordPress aren’t quite playing nicely yet—and it’s starting to show. We’re seeing AI reshape how people work across design, development, and content—but WordPress still feels awkward when it comes to real-world AI integration.

From a developer and project lead perspective, here’s the problem:

The current wave of “AI for WordPress” plugins mostly slap a ChatGPT textarea onto the editor and call it a feature. There’s very little real workflow support, no semantic awareness of your site structure, and definitely no native API for AI in core. It's all reactive, not foundational.

Some practical pain points:

- No structured AI assistance in Gutenberg (imagine AI generating custom blocks with real context?)

- No way to train models on your own post types, taxonomies, or content history

- Limited or nonexistent integration with ACF, CPT UI, or actual WP_Query logic

- Server performance becomes an issue when devs try to hack in AI features without offloading to real processing layers

What WordPress needs isn’t just more AI plugins—it needs a framework-level rethink.
Imagine:

- AI hooks and filters baked into core

- A standard schema to let AI understand custom content types

- Built-in AI queues or offloading pipelines

- Developer-first SDKs to let us control prompt flow, context windows, and post-processing

Right now, we’re just duct-taping OpenAI to WordPress—and calling it progress. But if WordPress wants to stay dominant in the CMS space, especially for content-heavy sites, we’ll need a real AI-native approach, not just more UI sugar.

Are you working on anything in this space? Anyone figured out real AI+WP architecture that isn't just a wrapper?

Let’s talk. Genuinely curious who’s agreeing, or who has found a solution for this?



Author: Hanna Partridge

Happy Birthday to our CEO, Meir Bulua!

Today, we celebrate the innovative mind and driving force behind Leverage.IT — a true visionary and a proud coder, designer, and marketer. Your leadership inspires us to think bigger, push boundaries, and keep evolving.

Your passion for AI and future-forward thinking challenges us to stay ahead of the curve and embrace what’s next.

Here’s to a year filled with new milestones, bold ideas, and well-earned success.

Happy Birthday from all of us at Leverage.IT! 🥳

We’re still celebrating Eric Lee! 🎂

His birthday may have been a few days ago, but turning 30 and being promoted to Creative Director? That kind of week deserves some superhero-level recognition. 🦸‍♂️

Eric’s been with us at Leverage.IT for 6 incredible years. It’s been an amazing journey watching his creativity and leadership grow—and now, he’s officially calling the shots (including on those superhero images we made 😉).

Drop some belated birthday love + congrats in the comments!

Each month, we take a moment to celebrate one of the amazing people behind the scenes who help make everything run smoothly. Not an easy task — especially with so many of us working closely across different teams!

This month’s shoutout goes to:
👉 Kim Axford
📍 South Africa
📊 Bookkeeper Extraordinaire

Here’s what someone on the team had to say about Kim:

"Thanks for answering every single one of the 100,000 random questions I send every week. You’re awesome!"

Kim, we’re lucky to have you! 💛

March is Women’s History Month, and on the heels of International Women’s Day, we recognize the women pushing boundaries, shaping industries, and leading with vision—including those we’re proud to call our own.

From developers building innovative solutions to designers bringing ideas to life, from project managers leading the charge to moms balancing it all—the women of Leverage.it inspire, create, and lead in so many ways.

Join us as we celebrate them—and women everywhere.

🎂 February Birthday Squad! 🎉

This month, we’re celebrating 8 amazing team members who are adding another candle to their cake! 🕯️🎂Big shoutout to them—hope your day is filled with cake, fun, and maybe even an early log-off. 😉

Drop a 🎊 in the comments to wish them a happy birthday!