Colorado Springs' Olympic & Paralympic Museum hires Buffalo museum exec as new CEO
Rich Laden, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Updated 5 min read
Apr. 7—The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum in downtown Colorado Springs has hired a Buffalo, N.Y., museum official as its new CEO, who will fill the attraction's nearly 2-year-old vacancy in its top leadership position and take charge of a venue that struggled financially after its opening.
Marisa Wigglesworth, president and CEO of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences, will join the Olympic & Paralympic Museum in July, the museum announced Thursday.
She replaces Christopher Liedel, with whom the Olympic & Paralympic Museum parted ways in June 2021, less than a year after the venue opened in July 2020. Museum officials have never elaborated on the reasons for Liedel's departure.
Wigglesworth "has a proven track record in the museum and attraction industry, specializing in philanthropy, strategic and project planning and operations," Olympic & Paralympic Museum officials said in a news release.
Andie Doyle, the museum's board chair, said Wigglesworth has experience in a wide variety of museum settings, including higher-profile institutions and smaller venues similar to the Springs. Her expertise in operations will complement the museum staff's broad range of skills, she said.
"She's a total museum pro," Doyle said.
Wigglesworth, who joined the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences in 2016, is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the Buffalo Museum of Science and a 264-acre nature preserve, according to the news release. She oversees a $5.4 million annual budget and leads a staff of 70 for venues that attract more than 200,000 visitors a year.
Before Buffalo, Wigglesworth served as a senior vice president and chief philanthropy officer at the National Aquarium, a nonprofit in Baltimore, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also worked as vice president of external affairs for The Franklin Institute, a science and technology museum in Philadelphia, and chief philanthropy officer for Big Brothers Big Sisters International.
The Olympic & Paralympic Museum was envisioned as a tribute to the nation's Olympic and Paralympic movements and their athletes. The $96 million, 60,000-square-foot facility, at Vermijo Avenue and Sierra Madre Street in southwest downtown, includes interactive exhibits and displays, a hall of fame, theater, store, café and outdoor plaza.
But the museum fared poorly when its doors opened.
In July 2021, acting CEO Phil Lane — a Springs businessman and philanthropist — acknowledged the museum was operating in the red, projected a deficit of at least $1 million for that year and needed funds from a federal COVID-19 economic stimulus program to help cover expenses.
Attendance that museum backers originally projected would be 350,000 a year was estimated to total only about 100,000 in 2021, Lane said at that time, though he attributed the shortfall to the upheaval in tourism and travel caused by the pandemic.
Since then, however, attendance remains lower than original projections. Doyle said Thursday attendance was about 100,000 in 2022 and will be about the same this year. She conceded that museum backers "were probably a little overzealous in our initial projections."
The museum ended 2022 in the black, Doyle said; it owes nothing to vendors or for construction costs, though it still has long-term debt, she said.
Financial problems were a main reason museum officials took so long to hire a new CEO, Doyle said. They wanted to "right our own ship" before hiring a new top executive, she said.
"We had a financial strain that we wanted to not burden a leader with ... right at the onset of their hire," Doyle said. "So we chose to really deal with those issues at a board and staff level prior to making any hire."
Wigglesworth emerged from an original group of about 24 CEO candidates, Doyle said. Those candidates came from inside and outside the world of museums, as well as local and state applicants.
An Olympic & Paralympic Museum search committee, which worked initially with an international management consulting firm, whittled the pool of candidates to 12, then halved that number before eventually bringing four finalists to town for interviews, Doyle said.
Wigglesworth said she was approached by the museum's management consultant and was attracted to the job, in part, because of her Olympic fandom.
"As someone who truly always has had a great love for the Olympics, when I saw the opportunity, it caught my attention," Wigglesworth said in a phone interview. "So I took advantage of the chance to learn a little bit more and every time I learned a little bit more about the organization and this opportunity, I became more and more intrigued."
Her immediate goal: improve the museum's bottom line, she said.
"The financial situation ... certainly is something that is a priority, to get the financials really stable and strong," Wigglesworth said.
Beyond that, she wants to elevate the museum's brand nationwide.
"I would love to see the museum itself have recognition well beyond the regional visitor attraction," Wigglesworth said. "I'd like it have a presence across the country for all fans of the Olympics and the Paralympics and those athletes.
"Much like fans of baseball from anywhere in the country know that Cooperstown is the Baseball Hall of Fame," she said, "I believe the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum has the opportunity to have an equal and on par standing to the other major sports hall of fames in the country."
Wigglesworth, 52, is from southern New Jersey, but said she spent most of her adult life in Philadelphia. She received a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University in New Jersey and a master's degree from New York University; she and her husband, Edmund Bayruns, and their two cats, will relocate to Colorado Springs.
