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Charlie Fink | |
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![]() Charlie Fink | |
Alma mater | The Art Institute of Chicago |
Occupation(s) | Author, Executive |
Charlie Fink is a former Disney executive. He was vice president for creative affairs at Disney for six years. [1] He is credited for pitching the story "Bambi in Africa" which later became The Lion King (1994). [2] [3] In 1992, Fink was chief operating officer of the digital media company Virtual World Entertainment in Walnut Creek. [4] He is also the author of two AR-enabled books. [5]
Fink earned his BA Degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. [6] [7]
In 1987, Fink started his career in the Animation Division of Walt Disney Pictures, where he rose to the position of vice-president. In his years with Disney, Fink developed The Lion King (1994), which was based on his idea, "Bambi in Africa". [2] [3]
In 1992, Fink left Disney to join the digital media company Virtual World Entertainment, a software developer and location-based Entertainment Company owned by Tim Disney. [4] [1]
In early 1996, Fink joined AOL as senior vice-president and chief creative officer of Greenhouse Networks, [8] where he created and launched the service Santa's Home Page where kids could e-mail a letter to Santa Claus. [6] [8] [9] [10]
After leaving AOL in 1999, Fink founded eAgents.com, a daily email service, which was sold to American Greetings Interactive (AGI) in 2000. [11] Fink served as President of American Greetings until 2003, and chairman until 2005. During his tenure, American Greetings acquired its two largest competitors, BlueMountain.com and eGreetings.com, and transitioned from a free site to a fee based subscription service with over five million paying subscribers. [12]
Fink is the author of the AR-enabled books Charlie Fink's Metaverse, Convergence, How The World Will Be Painted With Data, [5] and Remote Collaboration & Virtual Conferencing: The Future of Work. He is an adjunct faculty member teaching extended reality at Chapman University in Orange, California. [13]
Charlie Fink is the founder and artistic director of the New Musical Foundation, which produces readings, workshops, and festival productions of new musicals. [14] He was chairman of the board [15] of New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF), [15] from 2007 to 2017. [15] He was honored at the 2017 NYMF gala [15] alongside playwright Marsha Norman for his ten years of leadership.
Fink was previously honored in 2014 by No Rules Theater Company. [16] [14] Fink produced Who's Your Baghdaddy? at the Actor's Temple in New York City in 2015. The show nominated Best Musical by the Off-Broadway Alliance. [17] The New York Times called the production "a cunning, rock-solid musical comedy with a terrible title". [18] The show, its title shortened to Baghdaddy, was revived for a subsequent, limited run at St. Luke's Theater in New York City in March 2017.[ citation needed] It played 46 performances and closed on July 2, 2017. [19]