Charlie Fink was vice president for creative affairs at Disney. He is credited for pitching the story "Bambi in Africa" which later became The Lion King. In 1992, Fink alongside Tim Disney purchased Virtual World game center in Walnut Creek where he was EVP & COO. He is the author of the AR-enabled books Charlie Fink's Metaverse and Convergence, How The World Will Be Painted With Data. He is an adjunct faculty member teaching XR at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Career
Fink started his career in the Animation Division of Walt Disney Pictures, where he rose to the position of vice-president. In his six years with Disney, Fink developed and produced animated motion pictures, including Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, which was based on his idea, "Bambi in Africa". In 1992, Fink left Disney to become Executive Vice-President, chief operating officer and Director of Virtual World Entertainment, a software developer and location-based Entertainment Company owned by Tim Disney. In early 1996, Fink joined AOL as Senior Vice-President and Chief Creative Officer of Greenhouse Networks, where he created and launched some of the formative Internet's largest content brands, including Love@AOL, Electra, Entertainment Asylum, and Santa's Home Page . After leaving AOL in 1999, Fink founded eAgents.com, a daily email service that provided targeted news and entertainment to over five million Internet users each day. In September 2000, less than eight months after founding the company, with its initial product still in beta, eAgents was sold to American Greetings Interactive. 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. In 2005, Fink founded and operated digital marketing agency, Charlie Company, specializing in integrated lifestyle marketing campaigns for global brands, startups, and non-profits leveraging search engine marketing, search engine optimization, social, content creation, viral, guerrilla and experiential channels; clients included Sprint, eBay, Phoenix Education, Capital One, Moveon.org and others; created & produced YouTube series The Two McCains, 2008; created "The Other 98%" for Moveon.org in 2009,; developed and executed go-to-market strategy for Erodr, a venture backed geo social app for college campuses, driving 300,000 trials, 2012 – 2014. Fink earned his BA Degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Art Institute of Chicago.
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. He was chairman of the board of New York Musical Theatre Festival, from 2007 to 2017. He was honored at the 2017 NYMF gala alongside playwright Marsha Norman for his ten years of leadership. He was previously honored in 2014 by No Rules Theater Company. 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. The New York Times called the production "a cunning, rock-solid musical comedy with a terrible title". 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. It played 46 performances and closed on July 2, 2017.
