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]
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]
Theatrical career
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]