From 2018 to 2020, I led business development and strategic partnerships for Meow Wolf’s Interactive (née Digital Storytelling) division.
Meow Wolf is an artist-driven, immersive experience design company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Their flagship exhibition, The House of Eternal Return, is a fully-interactive, 22,000 sq. ft. installation that seamlessly fuses immersive art, emerging technologies and a vast story-world.
I led business development and strategic partnerships for Meow Wolf’s Interactive division, which looked like a few different things, including:
- Representing the company and driving conversations around art, immersion, and technology at various conferences and symposia around the world.
- Collaborating with technology companies in order to get our creatives access to groundbreaking hardware and software to deploy in exhibitions and special projects.
- Leading interdisciplinary teams that conceptualize, produce and deliver compelling immersive, narrative-driven experiences that showcase emerging technologies to the broader public.
- Leveraging public and private sector partnerships to deliver outreach and public service programs (especially surrounding STEAM education) that give back to communities around the US.
While a lot of the projects I led are related to exhibitions (in Las Vegas, Denver, Washington DC and Phoenix) and are under NDA, I’m really proud of the work our team has done in collaboration with companies like Microsoft (I got to visit Redmond and they were generous enough to host us for a talk, and we worked out some hardware partnerships), and Magic Leap (you might have seen the robots pictured below that I did not make, and you might not have seen the many, many decks I made about those robots!).
There were SO many people who contributed so much to these projects, and of course I would have had nothing to do if it wasn’t for the hard work of my colleagues. I am including these projects in this portfolio because I worked on them in collaboration with my wonderful boss and former EVP of Technology, Aaron Geiser (a department that existed in parallel to XR, before merging), as well as the broader MW Interactive team.
Here’s an attempt to credit the people I worked with (I wish the company itself did a better job of listing this out for me):
Selma Sabera led the XR department before it transitioned to Meow Wolf Interactive
Kara Kittel, truly an unsung hero, I think her title was producer, but she really is a thought leader in the field, and she did everything (brilliantly) and I recommend hiring her if you can ever get her time.
Jeff Fullerton’s role (gosh I can’t remember), Business Strategy Manager (?? Jeff, if you see this, let me know!)
Lauren Cason, Creative Director of XR, truly an AR pro and brilliant artist.
Emily Rankin, absolute-multi-talent, and she’s a very talented artist as well.
Erik Anderson, XR Developer, generous soul
Kevin von Flotow, XR Developer, vehicle enthusiast
…surely so much more! Happy to add in anyone else!!