TL;DR: We're looking for a designer-turned-operator to lead the growth of VAWAA's artist supply.

You have a trained eye for global craft and understand materials, making, and creative process.

You can earn the trust of remarkable master artists and craftspeople, guide them with confidence, challenge ideas constructively, and move conversations toward decisions.

And you have the execution muscle to get things launched. You can move between artist conversations, experience development, editing copy, selecting images, and keeping a large pipeline moving forward. You can build the systems, workflows, and AI-enabled processes that let us scale without lowering the quality bar.

If you trained in architecture, interiors, product, furniture, or industrial design and later worked in a creative agency, tech company, or startup, we'd especially love to hear from you.

You'll be taking over a big part of what our founder does today, and help turn it into a function that can scale. You'll start hands-on, build the foundation, and then build the team around it.

We are building VAWAA (http://vawaa.com). The platform for human creativity in an AI world.

It's a global platform where people travel to learn directly from master artists in their studios for multi-day apprenticeships, stepping into the real rhythm of their practice and leaving changed. We are defining a new category at the intersection of travel, creativity, learning, culture, and transformation.

VAWAA artists are extraordinary ceramicists, painters, weavers, chefs, sculptors, shoemakers, woodworkers, designers, and Indigenous makers around the world.

Our guests are curious humans who want to make something with their hands, learn from someone extraordinary, and experience a place through its creative culture.

95% of our guests describe their experience as life-changing. 98% of the VAWAA artists have stayed on the platform. People come to us when they want something more meaningful than another vacation.

Demand is outpacing supply. On the other hand, we have 1,200 artists on the waitlist. Our team is small (just 5) and we're just trying to keep up with the demand. We've built a really good product. Our founder built VAWAA after two decades in design and tech, and a life built around learning and traveling across 65+ countries. Our angel investors are great too, and repeat VAWAA guests.

If you've played the startup game before, you know that nothing in life is certain. That said, we have strong fundamentals, we believe our mission for human creativity is meeting the moment, and our business is working.

We are now growing our artist community across art forms, cultures and geographies.

The role

We're looking for a Creative Lead to own the Growth & Ops for Artist Experiences —from identifying exceptional artists to building the relationship, shaping their VAWAA and getting them successfully launched.

This is not a traditional recruiting, sales, curation, editorial or operations role. It combines elements of all five.

You'll need enough creative judgment to recognize what makes an artist exceptional, enough curiosity to uncover what isn't obvious from an application, enough commercial instinct to shape an experience people will travel for, and enough operational discipline to move dozens of artists through a complex process without losing the human relationship.

Our immediate goal is to build the systems and pipeline to launch approximately 20-30 exceptional artists over four months, without compromising the quality bar that makes VAWAA distinctive.

The role will begin as a 3–4 month consulting engagement. During this period, you'll take ownership of a priority artist pipeline while helping us build and improve the systems for curation, onboarding and launch.

You'll initially own the artist journey end-to-end. As we grow, we'll add specialist support around you. Your role is both to do the work and help build the systems that allow it to scale.

This is a hands-on, computer-based role that does not involve travel. You should enjoy both creative decisions and daily execution: following up, editing copy, selecting images, maintaining the CRM, and meeting launch deadlines.

What we're looking for

Our strongest candidates will likely be designers who became operators.

• Trained in architecture, interior architecture, industrial or product design, or another discipline where you developed a strong understanding of materials, making, creative process and visual quality is essential. You can distinguish between work that is competent, work that is interesting and work that is genuinely distinctive and why it belongs on VAWAA.
• At least 2–3 years of professional experience in a high-pace, high-standards creative environment such as a design or advertising agency, multidisciplinary studio, technology company or creative startup, including experience in a computer-based role requiring responsiveness, self-direction, and reliable delivery.
• Relationship management experience through outreach, partnerships, onboarding, account management, or client support. You can manage multiple relationships at once. You're warm and curious, but can also challenge someone constructively, build trust, establish expectations and move conversations toward decisions.
• Independent creative judgement and an ownership mindset. You form an original point of view, explain your reasoning, make thoughtful decisions, and balance artist needs, guest experience, and business priorities.
• Commercially thoughtful. You can respect an artist's practice while thinking clearly about guest demand, pricing, positioning and what makes an experience compelling.
  
• Strong editor with writing and visual judgment. You can identify the story inside a large amount of messy information and can turn an artist's practice into clear, compelling content.
• Highly organized AI-native operator and systems thinker. You can manage many moving relationships, deadlines and details simultaneously. You have experience maintaining a CRM, setting project timelines and can improve how information and work are organized. You've already used AI and automation to coordinate multiple projects, build workflows, manage information, or increase team capacity.
• Careful execution and effective prioritization. You work efficiently, catch details, manage competing deadlines, and take responsibility for the quality of finished work without repeated reminders.
• Openness to feedback. You advocate for ideas constructively, adapt when another direction is chosen, and remain engaged in making the work successful.
• Cultural sensitivity, curiosity, and mission alignment. You communicate respectfully across backgrounds and traditions and want to build a career helping a creative business grow.
• Comfortable being hands-on. You may negotiate with an established artist in the morning and edit their page copy in the afternoon. This role will become more specialized as the team grows. Initially, you need to be comfortable building while doing.

We expect most successful candidates to have approximately 6+ years of relevant professional experience, although we care more about what you've owned than a specific number of years.

An existing network of artists, designers, makers, or cultural organizations, as well as international or cross-cultural work experience, is a plus.

What you'll own

Find and curate exceptional artists

• Review applications, research artists and build priority shortlists based on creative quality, distinctiveness, geography, art form and guest demand.
• Lead video conversations to assess artistic mastery, communication, teaching ability, studio environment, hospitality, reliability and overall VAWAA fit.

Build relationships and move artists forward

• Be a primary face of VAWAA to prospective artists.
• Build trust, understand motivations and hesitation, answer objections, establish clear next steps and help the right artists confidently decide to join.

Shape VAWAA experiences that people will travel for

• Work with artists to turn their practice into a compelling multi-day experience.
• Think about what makes the artist distinctive, what access a guest could have, what makes the experience worth traveling for, and how to balance artistic integrity with guest desire and business viability.

Develop and launch the story

• Review artist submissions, identify gaps, research missing context, write and edit profiles and experience descriptions, and select images that communicate the artist, process and place.
• Manage contracts, content, approvals, follow-ups and launch deadlines so artists move from interest to live experience without things falling through the cracks.

Build systems as you go

• Improve how we screen, research, prioritize, follow up, onboard and launch artists.
• Use AI and automation thoughtfully to increase your capacity while knowing where human judgment and personal relationships matter.

You'll help build the operating system tat future team members can work within.

What success looks like during the 3-4 month pilot

• Launched 20–30 exceptional new VAWAA artists, while maintaining our quality bar.
• Built a strong forward pipeline of artists already committed, contracted, or moving toward launch.
• Demonstrated that you can independently identify and prioritize strong VAWAA artists and make sound decisions about who should move forward.
• Built trusted relationships with artists and successfully moved the right ones from interest to commitment to launch.
• Strengthened the quality and commercial potential of their VAWAAs through your creative and business judgment.
• Created clear ownership and momentum throughout onboarding, so artists know what's needed and continue moving forward without unnecessary delays.
• Built a repeatable process capable of supporting 8–10+ high-quality launches per month with significantly less Founder involvement.
• Identified the biggest remaining bottleneck and recommended the next hire or system needed to scale.

Other things to know

We are remote, but need New York working hours, with candidates living in US/Canada time zones.

Role begins as a 3-4 month paid consulting engagement ($7-$8K/month), with compensation based on experience.

This is a substantial, hands-on engagement with ambitious goals. You should have sufficient capacity during the 3–4 month pilot to own the scope and deliver the agreed outcomes.

The engagement offers flexibility in how the work is structured, with reasonable overlap with the VAWAA team and artist schedules to keep the pipeline moving.

For an exceptional long-term fit, we expect the role to transition to full-time employment.

Upon conversion to full-time:

• $95,000–$110,000 salary, depending on performance and scope.
• 0.25%–0.5% equity or profit sharing options
• Health insurance
• 1 Free and discounted VAWAA experiences
• Work closely with our founder and community of artists and guests in 50+ countries + a mission that matters

Growth path: In 2–3 years, this role could evolve into Head of Curation / Artist Development & Supply / Artist Success with responsibility for team, strategy, systems, and growth.

Why you shouldn't work at VAWAA

VAWAA is small, global and evolving. We're working toward an ambitious goal. If you're looking for a comfortable, highly structured job, or one that feels exciting simply because it involves travel and art, this is probably not the role for you.

But if you want to build a function, make real decisions, work closely with extraordinary creative people around the world and see the direct impact of your work, you'll have unusual ownership here.

We value people who don't complain, keep commitments, ask clear questions, give direct updates, receive feedback without defensiveness, take responsibility when something slips, and learn quickly from mistakes.We're remote, which requires trust, responsiveness, and strong follow-through.

Apply

We are based in New York, but open to remote applications within the US and Canada.

Tip: You'll stand out if you include a link to a short video telling us why you want to do this and why we should hire you. Let us see your personality.

A quick note from me (founder):

I'll be personally reviewing every application — and as a very small team juggling everything from fundraising to product to growth to support, my bandwidth is limited.

That said, this role is mission-critical. I'm eager to find the right person fast, and will reach out quickly if there's a potential fit.

I may not be able to respond to everyone, but I want to thank you in advance for your time, care, and interest in joining VAWAA. I'm excited to hear from you.