Author: lauren.johnston@atlasobscura.com

As Atlas Obscura rounds out a strong 2025 and builds for the future, the travel community company welcomes two world-class professionals to its board. 

The new Common Directors are Sim Blaustein and Gabor Cselle. 

“We welcome Sim and Gabor, two individuals who understand the culture and promise of Atlas Obscura as well as how to grow and build profitable start-ups,” said Louise Story, the chief executive of Atlas Obscura. “Onward we go.”

Sim Blaustein is a Founding Partner at 1745 Ventures, the manager of the BDMI Continuation Fund, which is a holder of shares of Common Stock of the Company. Previously he was a Partner at Bertelsmann’s BDMI, which he joined in 2012 after co-founding the seed fund High Line Venture Partners. Sim has been in venture capital and startups since the start of his career, with current investments including Antenna, Letterhead, Omaze, Suzy and TVScientific. Notable exits from his time at BDMI include Barkbox (IPO), Pathmatics (acquired by Sensor Tower), Podsights (acquired by Spotify), Jukin Media (acquired by Trusted Media Brands), Food52 (acquired by TCG), StyleHaul (acquired by RTL Group), and Dramafever (acquired by Softbank). Sim holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and an engineering degree from The Cooper Union, where he graduated summa cum laude. A native New Yorker and graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Sim enjoys leading history and food tours of his hometown in Brooklyn.

 

Gabor Cselle is a Member of the Strategy Team at OpenAI, where he works on automation and safety products such as Guardrails and Agent Builder. Previously, as a Director at Google’s Area 120 incubator, he guided the development and launch of new consumer and prosumer products. He is a serial entrepreneur who founded three startups—T2, Namo Media, and reMail—with successful exits to Twitter and Google. After Twitter acquired ads startup Namo Media in 2014, he led work on ad products, trends, and the logged-out homepage. He also founded reMail, a mobile-first email client acquired by Google, and helped integrate its ideas into Inbox by Gmail. Earlier in his career, he served as VP of Engineering at Xobni, a top-ranked Outlook plugin for email search and social analytics. He holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.

Blaustein and Cselle were voted to become the Common Directors of Atlas Obscura, by the holders of the majority of issued and outstanding common shares of the company.

NEW YORK – Atlas Obscura, the leading community-focused travel platform inspiring wonder and curiosity about the world’s most remarkable places, today announced award-winning journalist Emma Patti is joining the company as Executive Editor. 

Patti will lead the operational and strategic deployment of Atlas Obscura’s content, ensuring it is designed to help people reach their travel goals and show off destinations in fresh and inspiring ways. She will keep Atlas Obscura’s communities at the forefront, involving them in content creation and curation. She will report to Chief Product Transformation Officer Lauren Johnston. 

“Emma is an innovative and results-driven leader and her experience in growing audiences and connecting communities will be critical as Atlas Obscura continues its work to build the world’s best travel community app for passionate, frequent travelers,” Johnston said. 

Patti is an award-winning editor with deep experience in audience-focused content, community building, visual storytelling and editorial product management. She was most recently Managing Editor for The Baltimore Banner where she was part of a team of journalists who led a Pulitzer-prize winning project and was instrumental in helping to build the non-profit into Maryland’s top news source in just three years. Prior to joining The Banner, Patti led digital and visual strategy teams at Education Week, The Baltimore Sun and several city and regional magazines. She has a degree in photojournalism and multimedia from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is currently pursuing her MBA, also at UNC. She lives in Baltimore with her partner, son, two dogs, and 57 house plants.

Her favorite off-the-beaten-path travel experience is from the West Fjords in Iceland. “We stumbled upon one of Iceland’s classic, roadside hot pots. Soaking in the geothermal waters in pitch blackness was magical, and a little eerie. But I thoroughly enjoyed just being able to take in the vast landscape, the stars and listen to the sounds of the area.” 

Patti’s appointment comes amid an exciting moment of expansion for the company.

About Atlas Obscura

Atlas Obscura is the leading community-focused travel platform inspiring wonder and curiosity about the world’s most remarkable places. Through its award-winning content, unique experiences, and community-driven platform featuring more than 30,000 wondrous places, Atlas Obscura serves millions of passionate travelers seeking authentic, off-the-beaten-path discoveries. The company publishes bestselling books including the No. 1 New York Times bestseller “Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders,” and operates digital products that help people find amazing things to do when they are traveling.

For more information about Atlas Obscura, visit www.atlasobscura.com.

For questions or interview requests, please contact spokesman John Stoll at john@ridgelywalsh.com 

Atlas Obscura, a leading travel-community platform, is excited to announce that Christopher Fabian, a global technologist and innovator, has joined its board of directors as an independent board member.

 

Fabian joins as Atlas Obscura is embarking on a new phase of platform development to open its capacities to a broader audience around the world.

 

“We’re thrilled to welcome Chris to the team,” said Joshua Foer, chairman of the board and co-founder of Atlas Obscura. “He brings a wealth of experience as a technological innovator, and a global perspective that aligns with Atlas Obscura’s growing international ambitions.”

 

Fabian co-founded and co-leads Giga, a joint initiative of UNICEF and ITU to connect every school in the world to the internet. Since 2023, Giga has used applied machine learning to map 2.5 million schools, structured over $1.7 billion in infrastructure investment, and helped connect more than 20 million children. The initiative is hosted by the Governments of Spain and Switzerland.

 

Previously,Fabian founded UNICEF’s Innovation Unit and created its Venture and Crypto Funds—the first of their kind in the public sector. These funds backed early-stage companies working on drones, data science, machine learning, cryptocurrency, 3D printing, and nanosatellites. The approach combined venture capital and international development, enabling the open-source commercialization of frontier technologies from developing markets.

 

He was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2013 and one of Wired’s “25 People Changing the World” in 2019. In a personal capacity, he supports startups and deep-tech research in AI and cryptography across every continent except the coldest one.

 

In addition to Fabian, Atlas Obscura’s board of directors includes Foer as well as Atlas Obscura co-founder Dylan Thuras, entrepreneur Sam Wick, accounting leader Shane Caiazzo, venture capital leader John Backus, and the company’s chief executive officer Louise Story.