With a digital shift in how the company interacts with customers, Meow Wolf’s new CEO Jose Tolosa is ready to scale up the Santa Fe arts firm.
The "biggest advancement" of the past 14 years is that "technology has become personalized,” Tolosa said in a Jan. 12 interview with Albuquerque Business First. It is still unclear what exactly that will mean for Meow Wolf.
Tolosa brings 14 years of experience in the media industry at Viacom and ViacomCBS, where he worked as COO before becoming chief transformation officer. He also helped lead the integration process following the Viacom and CBS merger.
He feels that experience, which allowed him to work with creative professionals, makes him ready to expand Meow Wolf’s storytelling capabilities: “Viacom’s whole business is around storytelling.”
Tolosa replaces outgoing co-CEOs Ali Rubinstein, Jim Ward and Carl Christensen, who is returning to his previous role as CFO whereas Rubinstein will return to her former role as chief creative officer. Ward vacated his position in 2021 but is still an adviser for Meow Wolf.
The co-executive roles were created after Vince Kadlubek stepped down from the CEO role in October 2019. The move came after Meow Wolf raised a whopping $158 million for its expansion projects, spurring its transformation from a ragtag startup into a sizable corporate entity.
Today, Meow Wolf has about 1,000 employees with its exhibits in Santa Fe, Denver and Las Vegas. Meow Wolf also announced projects in Washington, D.C., and Phoenix, but they were later shelved.
“The growth that this company is experiencing right now is tremendous,” Tolosa said. “We’re currently growing here and the opportunities that we have [surpass] our ability to staff up.”
Meow Wolf was originally founded in 2008 by a collective of artists who first opened up a mock grocery store called “Omega Mart” before unveiling its flagship House of Eternal Return exhibit in Santa Fe.
The “Omega Mart” concept would later make a return as the theme of its permanent location in Las Vegas, which came in addition to its “Convergence Station” exhibit in Denver that debuted in September. In the case of Denver, Colorado Public Radio reported that more than 300 artists worked on the exhibit.
“I saw a truly unique base of creativity and innovation,” Tolosa said of the company. “There’s extremely unique creativity.”
