Miguel McKelvey
Miguel McKelvey is the co-founder and former Chief Culture Officer of WeWork, the global coworking and real estate technology company. A architect by training, he helped shape WeWork's unique community-driven approach to workspace design.
Miguel McKelvey's Bio
Miguel McKelvey is the co-founder and former chief culture officer of WeWork, the shared-workspace company that redefined commercial real estate for a generation of freelancers and startups. Born in 1974 and raised in Eugene, Oregon, he came up through an unusual route — a basketball scholarship at the University of Oregon, where he earned a Bachelor of Architecture in 1999, after working as a busboy and spending two summers at an Alaskan fish processing plant to pay his way.
In 2010, McKelvey and Adam Neumann launched WeWork out of a single location in New York. The idea was simple: turn empty floors into furnished, community-minded office space for small companies and entrepreneurs. It exploded. McKelvey ran design and culture across a global operation spanning dozens of countries, speaking at every all-company meeting and building the brand identity that made WeWork feel like something between a startup incubator and a lifestyle destination.
When the company's valuation collapsed and Neumann departed in 2019-2020, McKelvey left too. He has since kept a low profile — deliberately, by all accounts — while quietly building new ventures, including a sneaker project and a broader initiative called Happiness at Scale, rooted in the culture-design questions he wrestled with inside WeWork.
Career Timeline
1974 — Born in Eugene, Oregon
1992 — Graduated South Eugene High School
1997 — Letterman on Oregon Ducks Basketball Team
1999 — Earned Bachelor of Architecture, University of Oregon
2010 — Co-founded WeWork with Adam Neumann
2019 — Named Chief Culture Officer, WeWork
2020 — Left WeWork following company restructuring
2023 — Launched Happiness at Scale and sneaker venture
Episodes
Advice Line: What’s Your Value?
Guy Raz brings together four legendary founders—Miguel McKelvey (WeWork), Alexa Hirschfeld (Paperless Post), and Chomps co-founders Pete Maldonado and Rashid Ali—for a special mashup tackling one of the hardest challenges in entrepreneurship: communicating your value proposition. Three founders call in with distinct dilemmas: Megan Downey struggles to prove the ROI of time-intensive pop-up demos for her reusable gift wrap, Amanda Ballweg can't make her dog enrichment cards make sense to online shoppers, and Mark Goldfarb needs to hire help without sacrificing the artisanal quality that defines his premium pesto. Each conversation reveals how to translate intangible benefits into clear, compelling messages that customers instantly understand. You'll learn why leading with the problem you solve beats listing product features, how to turn live experiences into scalable content, and why hiring for belief matters more than résumé prestige at the early stage.
Advice Line with Miguel McKelvey of WeWork
WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey dispenses unfiltered advice to three founders at growth plateaus. A high-end pants maker learns to embed her "why" everywhere, a grief care business discovers AI-optimized content could be its new growth engine, and a history merch brand $750K strong realizes polished Instagram is losing to raw storytelling. Miguel's prescription: tell your story so relentlessly that customers can't forget you exist.
