Leading travel community brand Atlas Obscura announces new chief executive officer, Louise Story, and new board member, Sam Wick.

Atlas Obscura, a leading travel content and community destination, is seeing growth in consumer interest in its places map, which has been created over the past decade by the platform’s community members and journalists. The new leadership of the company comes at an inflection point in the media, as the public seeks content other than political news.

Louise Story, a former senior leader from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, is to be Atlas Obscura’s next chief executive, as the company focuses on its product and community growth and brand extensions.

Sam Wick, until recently a partner at the United Talent Agency, who ran the firm’s venture fund and venture studios, is also joining Atlas Obscura’s board, bringing his strong experience in start-ups, digital media, and mergers and acquisitions. 

Originally launched in 2009 as a crowd-sourced mapping project to document off-the-beaten path destinations, Atlas Obscura has grown into a large player among travel platforms and has been called The National Geographic for the next generation. Atlas Obscura has built a community of 2.5  million registered users, who share their knowledge of the world’s most incredible travel and culinary experiences with each other. The company has been expanding in brand advertising with deals with carmakers, airlines, and other travel industry companies, and is a large player in tourism advertising from destination marketing organizations. Engagement in Atlas Obscura’s proprietary map of 30,000 hidden and wondrous places around the world has been growing strongly in recent years, continuing as news consumers today seek out forms of escape.

“Atlas Obscura is a place where you can dream of places to travel and share the stories of where you’ve been,” said Joshua Foer, chairman of the company’s board and co-founder of Atlas Obscura with Dylan Thuras. “As a content and technology leader and adventurous traveler herself, Louise is the right person to lead our team in building out the best travel app in the world.”

Story is the former chief product and technology officer of The Wall Street Journal, where she also served as one of the top four editors on the masthead leading the full newsroom. While at the Journal, she led the content, product, and technology strategy that doubled the Journal’s digital subscriptions, reduced churn, and increased its audience by 250 percent. She also overhauled the Journal’s web and mobile apps, integrated artificial intelligence and advanced data processes into the Journal’s products and internal tools, created financially impactful sponsorship programs, and led the Journal to more highly prioritize community building among its readers. Prior to the Journal, Story worked for 12 years at The New York Times, where she was pivotal to The Times’ shift to digital through her work on strategic reports like The Times’ Innovation Report, which has been called “one of the key documents of this media age.” Story has extensive experience leading prize-winning and audience-engaging coverage in text, audio, and video. In the last few years, she has been advising news and start-up content companies on subscriber growth, content and tech strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and AI deals. Story is also a longtime journalist and also an author and filmmaker. 

“The mission of Atlas Obscura – to inspire wonder and curiosity in the world – deeply resonates with me, and I’m excited to work with the team to help more people find truly mind-blowing, amazing things to do in their free time, both in their daily lives and while on vacation,” Story said. 

Atlas Obscura’s board of directors, which includes Foer and co-founder Dylan Thuras, is also excited to welcome Sam Wick, a  leading media and technology executive and investor. Most recently, Wick was a partner at the United Talent Agency and led UTA Ventures, which includes the flagship UTA.VC venture fund and the UTA Venture Studios, which builds businesses in partnership with leading celebrities and influencers including Seth Rogen, Emma Chamberlain, Issa Rae, Ryan Seacrest and others. Before joining UTA, Wick was a key member of Maker Studios’ management team, which was acquired by Disney. He previously held senior media and technology roles including at MySpace, AOL, Mp3.com and Sony. During this time he was involved in M&A activity including financing and acquisitions of his companies.  In addition, he is active as an investor and advisor in the start-up community. His current portfolio is 50+ investments, including such notable companies as Masterclass, Patreon, Thrive Market, Consensys and Gemini. 

“Atlas Obscura has built a brand that consumers love,” Wick said. “Travel discovery, consumption, and community is incredibly fractured today. I’m excited to be part of the team that will knit this world together – and join the board of a brand I’ve loved since its founding.”