Wes Della Volla is founder of the strategic storytelling and immersive experience innovation collaborative, Meridian Treehouse, an Emmy-award winning multi-platform non-fiction producer, as well as a Webby-award winning immersive experience innovator and designer, and recipient of the National Press Photographers Association’s 2021 Best of Photojournalism “Innovation” 1st Prize Award for his work on the Rolex and National Geographic Perpetual Planet VR series about the 2019 Chomolungma (Mt. Everest) expedition. He’s also a Board Member for the ocean science literacy nonprofit The Hydrous, an adjunct lecturer in Georgetown University’s Environmental Studies Department, and a Resident Immersive Experience Innovator at the Harvard University Innovation Lab.
His company, Meridian Treehouse, which was launched earlier this year, has already partnered with Instagram and Brightest Young Things—an online magazine and event production and marketing agency—to produce a virtual community fundraising festival that showcased over 30 small businesses and creatives. It was responsible for executing the digital experience for Do The WERQ—a non-profit platform for unlocking the potential of the LGBTQIA+ in the advertising and marketing industry. Meridian Treehouse was also recently announced as an official creative partner for the launch of the LenovoEDU Community—a leisure learning platform.
Throughout his career, Wesley has produced over 300 live and virtual learning experiences ranging from the small and intimate to the large and expansive. A hallmark of his career was the conceptualization and implementation of the world’s largest permanent virtual reality theater that transformed the outdated 400-seat Grosvenor Auditorium at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC into an industry-changing technical first, and his “VR Explorations” experience sold out three seasons in a row. Della Volla was also responsible for developing a mobile shared, synchronized immersive reality experience system for National Geographic that made pop-up immersive experiences possible at thought-leader events, like the Vulcan Impact Reality Summit in Seattle, Washington and the Royal Academy in London, England, as well as high-profile public events, like the X Games in Aspen, Colorado.
Della Volla is a graduate of American University in Washington, DC.
If I were a shark: I’d be a Whale Shark, 100%, no question. I mean… I get to chill in the sun underwater all day, travel to remote tropical destinations, and all I have to do to enjoy tasty food is open my mouth and keep swimming. You tell me how that is not the best shark?
My happy place: Ile de Ré, France. Picturesque island off the cost of France in the Atlantic. There’s a slower pace of life, warm sun, great wine, even better pastries and you get everywhere by bike.
When I was a kid: I wanted to be an architect.
