She's Behind Memphis' Hottest New Attraction

From preserving history to shaping immersive worlds, Jee Vahn Knight has built a career that harnesses imagination and innovation. Now, she is helping bring an extraordinary new experience to Memphis. As Baron Von Opperbean and the River of Time prepares for its opening later this spring, we sat down with the Chief Executive Officer behind the highly anticipated immersive experience.

Your career path is fascinating! Can you give us a short résumé that hits the highlights?

The throughline of my career is project management — figuring out what needs to get done, creating a plan, and executing it all the way to the finish line.

I started in construction project management and historic preservation, conserving museum artifacts. From there, I moved into IT project management, then product management for websites, which eventually pushed me into marketing and the C-suite at the same time.

Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to work at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, with the Smithsonian, for major Hollywood studios, and backstage at the Emmys. I had a front-row seat to the birth of the immersive industry as Meow Wolf launched in 2016.

What did your experience at NASA teach you?

Two big things: first, there’s no substitute for doing the work. In that environment, you can’t shortcut compliance or precision; you earn trust by respecting the protocols and learning them deeply. Second, there’s something uniquely motivating about being in a place where people are pushing human capability forward. You feel the legacy, know the stakes, and are reminded that excellence is built on rigor.

What first drew you to Meow Wolf, another famous “immersive experience” you worked on?

I don’t think anyone in Santa Fe can say they were “drawn” to immersive, because it was happening in our back yard. It felt like being present at the start of something new: a perfect storm of artists, culture, and experimentation.

What excited me was watching the boundaries between entertainment mediums start to break down. A concert isn’t just a concert anymore. A movie can have interactivity. Television became as cinematically beautiful as film. The lines were dissolving, and that speaks to the way our brains want to experience story and meaning in more dimensional ways.

What distinguishes an immersive experience from one that simply entertains?

Entertainment is passive: someone creates something, and you consume it. You can be fully “in it” — a concert can be a full-body experience — but you’re still not shaping what happens. You can’t go on stage, interact with the band, or change the set list.

Immersive experiences aim to cross that line. They invite participation. They give you agency. You’re not just reacting to the work; you’re inside it, navigating it, and sometimes co-creating the meaning of it.

What lessons have you learned along the way about leadership?

My leadership style shifted tremendously when I had a third child, because once you’re outnumbered, you move into zone defense.

More seriously, humans like to believe we can control everything. And if we control everything, it will go perfectly. That’s not how life works. Leadership is learning what’s truly required to get something done and what’s optional.

There’s a difference between “take the trash out” and “pre-sort the trash before you take it out.” We often mistake extra steps for necessities, especially in a world overloaded with information. The ability to simplify, prioritize, and still move forward — that’s leadership.

When you look back, which role or moment prepared you most for leading Baron Von Opperbean?

It’s bits and pieces of my whole life, but the biggest thing is that I run toward change. Big shifts don’t scare me. I accepted the job that brought me to Memphis while I was literally in the Memphis airport, flying back to Santa Fe.

And if I’m being honest, some of that resilience feels hard-coded. By the time I was a year old, I’d lived with three different families, traveled across the globe from Korea to California, and moved from a Korean-speaking environment into an English-speaking one, before I could even speak. By all accounts, I was an unflappable baby. I think that early experience created a kind of calm in the middle of change that I still carry.

You chose Memphis as home before you joined BVO. What do you love most about living here?

Memphis is the opposite of manufactured. It hasn’t been flattened into something predictable. It’s alive, responsive, and real.

You’re also incredibly close to history, especially music history, and it’s not abstract here. During COVID, when I was living downtown by myself, I struck up a conversation with a security guard in my building who casually mentioned he used to be a session musician at Stax and had played with Albert King. I looked for an album he played on and found it had only been released in Japan. That’s Memphis: people carrying world-class history inside everyday life.

Also, the people here are weird in the best way. Those are my people.

Switching gears a little, what’s inspiring you right now?

We went down the Stranger Things rabbit hole around the holidays, and it was genuinely joyful to go to Malco for the finale with my kids. There’s something special about that kind of shared experience.

On the quirkier side, I started watching a Korean athletic competition series, Physical: Asia. It’s surprisingly cinematic. Challenges aren’t just “carry sandbags,” they’re “climb aboard a broken pirate ship and haul cargo.” If a show gets me yelling at the TV, it’s doing its job because it breaks through passivity and becomes an experience.

What’s your best piece of advice?

Run into fear (other than true, life-safety fear, which exists for a reason). When fear shows up around things that aren’t actually life-threatening, it’s often trying to tell you something, not shut you down. So if something scares you, consider moving toward it: apply for the job, make the cross-country move, try the thing you think you’re not good enough to do. The growth is often on the other side of that fear.

Finally, we always ask: What are three things you can’t live without?

Cheese. Absolutely. My drawing notebook and pens, and if I had to choose one, I’d rather have great drawing pens and bad paper than great paper and crappy pens. And hugs. I spent a long stretch in Memphis during COVID, months without physically touching another human being. FaceTime can’t replace it. Physical touch matters, and I don’t want to live in that kind of isolation again.

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