What Juices You with Kelly Harper | Designing Visitor Joy Through Systems and Stories

What does it take to modernize a beloved cultural institution—while protecting what makes it meaningful?

In this episode of the What Juices You Podcast, Brady Wilson sits down with Kelly Harper, VP of Visitor Experience at ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), to unpack what it means to build a truly visitor-centred organization. Kelly shares how ROM is navigating a major shift in expectations: more competition for people’s time and attention, an evolving visitor base, and increasing pressure to grow self-generated revenue—without losing the magic that keeps people coming back.

A central theme in the conversation is the connection between culture and design. Kelly describes how visitor experience isn’t just about the front line—it’s a whole-system effort that includes everything from the environment people enter through, to the language teams use, to the behind-the-scenes decisions that shape how easy (or hard) it is to deliver a great day for a visitor. From rethinking “transactional” interactions to creating more welcoming moments of connection, Kelly explains how small shifts in narrative and systems can unlock big changes in behaviour.

Together, Brady and Kelly explore what leaders can do when transformation is the mandate: clarify the “why,” reduce friction for teams, and build systems that make the right behaviours easier to repeat. The conversation also highlights Kelly’s view of employee experience as a “two-sided coin”—supporting people to do their work well, while also shaping how they feel about the organization they work for.

In this conversation, you’ll learn:

• How ROM is responding to shifting visitor expectations and the “attention economy”
• Why visitor experience is a whole-organization responsibility—not just a front-line function
• How language and narrative shape behaviour (and how small design choices create culture)
• What it looks like to move from transactional service to more meaningful visitor connection
• Why employee experience requires both enablement and belonging to sustain performance

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