Antonio Velasco

Cultural Animals: Museum Leadership Lab

Business EN ↓ 6 episodes

The “Culture Animals: Museum Leadership Lab” podcast is where the business of culture meets the art of leadership. Each episode explores how museum executives, development, marketing, and operational leaders are redefining what it means to lead in today's cultural landscape. From revenue and operations to digital transformation, audience engagement, and organizational culture, we unpack the strategies and stories driving sustainable impact in museums worldwide. Whether you're a museum director, department head, or emerging leader, Culture Animals gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how grea...

Author

Antonio Velasco

Episodes

From Dumpster Diving to $100M: How Vince Kadlubek Built Meow Wolf into an Immersive Art Powerhouse 08.07.2026 1:11:00

What does it take to build one of the world's most innovative immersive art companies from a group of struggling artists with little more than creativity and determination? In this episode of Cultural Animals: Museum Leadership Lab , Antonio Velasco sits down with Vince Kadlubek , co-founder of Meow Wolf, to discuss the remarkable journey from scavenging materials out of dumpsters in Santa Fe...

From Newsroom to Nonprofit: How Storytelling Built a Thriving Children's Museum 14.05.2026 58:38

Jonathan Foerster, CEO of the Golisano Children's Museum of Naples, never planned to run a museum. He started as a journalist chasing stories, then found his way into nonprofits where he discovered that fundraising, leadership, and community building are really just storytelling in disguise. In this episode, Jonathan shares how curiosity became his operating system, why he raised membership p...

From Blueprint to Bloom: How A Landscape Architect Transformed A Botanical Garden 15.04.2026 58:12

What happens when a world-class designer trades global projects for a single desert garden and completely transforms it? In this latest episode of Cultural Animals: Museum Leadership Lab, Jamie Maslyn Larson FASLA, CEO at Tohono Chul, shares her unexpected journey from leading landscape architecture projects across cities like New York and Copenhagen to reimagining a 49-acre botanical garden in Tu...

Running the Numbers on Glass: What 25 Years as a Museum CFO Really Looks Like 19.03.2026 44:11

What does a museum CFO actually do? Far more than manage budgets. In this episode of the Cultural Animals: Museum Leadership Lab, host Antonio Velasco sits down with Dave Togni, Chief Financial Officer of the Corning Museum of Glass , to unpack what 25 years in museum finance really looks like. From navigating maritime insurance for a traveling glassblowing barge to developing flame-free technolog...

Doubling Attendance: Marketing, Mission, and Museum Leadership with Adam Smith 11.12.2025 59:23

In this episode of Cultural Animals: Museum Leadership Lab , we sit down with Adam Smith, President and CEO of Exploration Place, who has led cultural institutions from the National Museums of Scotland to the Comic-Con Museum. Adam shares how he doubled museum attendance while better managing marketing costs and offers practical strategies that any museum leader can use. Learn how to unlock thousa...

The Real Business of Museums: A Conversation with Nik Honeysett 12.11.2025 1:15:01

Welcome to the premiere episode of Culture Animals: Museum Leadership Lab! Are you a museum director, department head, or cultural institution leader struggling with operational efficiency, declining attendance, or board pressure to modernize? This conversation is for you. Antonio Velasco , CEO of Veevart, sits down with Nik Honeysett , CEO of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC), a nonp...