The work that holds a conference together almost never appears on the agenda. Nobody applauds a session page that is easy to scan or a search result that puts the Forum in front of the right person, and that invisible layer is exactly what the Chairman’s Award exists to catch.
This year, it goes to Alx Block, VP of Payment & Risk Operations at Automattic and a director on the PaymentsEd Merchant Board. The choice was an easy one.
What Alx Built
Alx spent the year rebuilding the foundation most people never see. He redesigned the Forum’s website, restructured the online agenda so attendees can find a session without hunting through a PDF, and got the site SEO-ready so the right people find PaymentsEd in the first place. What came out of it is a flexible platform rather than a brochure that gets rebuilt every summer.
Why the Board Picked Him
What stood out was not the technical skill by itself; it was how far past the ask he went. One nomination read: “Alx went way above any of our expectations to help us build out a flexible, dynamic website.” Another put it plainly: his work “has made a material and visible impact on the organization.”
Website work is easy to overlook when it is done well, since the reward for getting it right is that nobody notices. Thank you, Alx, for your expertise, your persistence, and the difference you made this year.
About Alx Block
Alx leads Payment & Risk Operations at Automattic, where he runs fraud prevention, payment operations, and risk strategy across WooCommerce, WordPress.com, Tumblr, and the rest of the portfolio. He has spent more than a decade in digital commerce risk building systems that scale and teams that hold up under pressure, and he treats risk as a competitive advantage rather than a cost center.
Fraudsters test every angle they can find, and a fair number of them end up running into an Alx Block, literally. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, two teenagers, a cat with trust issues, and a dog who thinks risk management means barking at the mail. His view is that good work starts with clarity and ends with impact, and that a well-placed pun never hurts.
How the Chairman’s Award Works
One award is presented each fiscal year to a member of the volunteer Board whose in-year work has served the upcoming Forum. Nominations are due ahead of the May board meeting, the full Board votes, and the winner is announced on stage at the Forum.
The Chairman’s Award was presented to Alx Block at the 2026 PaymentsEd Annual Forum in Boston. Alx is VP, Payment & Risk Operations at Automattic and a director on the PaymentsEd Merchant Board.
Decks from the 2026 Boston sessions are posted now, and the 2027 Forum runs August 9-11 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.