Maureen Fan
Maureen Fan is CEO & Co-Founder of the 6 time Emmy award winning Baobab Studios, the world's leading interactive narrative animation studio. Baobab's mission: Bring out your sense of wonder. Inspire you to dream. Make YOU matter. Baobab has won an Emmy for Best Interactive Media for every qualifying project the studio has created. Named Fast Company's 2018 Most Innovative Company, Baobab is creatively led by Eric Darnell, the writer and director of Antz and all 4 Madagascar films. In a 1st, Hollywood is taking Baobab's VR IP to become a feature film: Roth Kirschenbaum Films (Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White and the Huntsman) has signed on to adapt INVASION! into a traditional feature film.
Baobab has won 6 Emmy awards as well as the first-ever Annie award for Best VR Production. Crow: The Legend, both a linear animated short film and an interactive VR experience, won the most awards of any animated program or series, traditional and/or interactive, at the 2019 Emmy Awards. Baobab has released Invasion!, Asteroids!, Jack, Crow: The Legend, and Bonfire to commercial and critical acclaim. Their work (traditional, VR, and AR) has gone viral landing on YouTube's trending category. Their work stars diverse talents such as John Legend, Oprah, Constance Wu, Diego Luna, Liza Koshy, Tye Sheridan, Elizabeth Banks, Ethan Hawke, Lupita Nyong'o, and Ali Wong.
Lauded as the "Pixar of Virtual Reality" (CNet, The Wall Street Journal), Baobab's advisors include Alvy Ray Smith (Pixar co-founder), Glenn Entis (DreamWorks Animation co-founder), legendary Oscar-winning animator Glen Keane, Mireille Soria, Kevin Lin (Twitch co-founder). Investors include: Comcast Ventures, HTC, Shari Redstone and Liz Murdoch's Advancit/Freelands Cap, The Chernin Group, Horizons Ventures, 20th Century Fox, EMP, Shanghai Media Group, Youku Global Media Fund (Alibaba), Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus, and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Maureen has held leadership roles in film, gaming and the consumer web. Fan was most recently vice president of games at Zynga, where she oversaw three game studios including the FarmVille's, which contributed 40% of the company’s revenues. Previously, she worked on Pixar's Toy Story 3 film and at eBay in product management and UI design. Her collaboration, The Dam Keeper, directed by Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo, was nominated for the 2015 Oscar Best Animated Short. Maureen was named one of ‘The Most Creative People of the Year’ by Ad Age, Top 100 Influential Asians by A100, and Variety crowned her as one the execs to watch earning a spot on their ‘Top Digital Creatives’ list. She’s been covered by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, USA Today, Business Insider, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and C|Net.
Maureen’s business insights have been shared on the main stage at both the Web Summit and Tech Crunch Disrupt. She’s been a technology and entertainment convergence champion keynoting Oculus Connect and presenting at F8, South by Southwest, DICE, E3 and Variety Business Insider’s Ignition. As an advocate for diversity in entertainment, Maureen is an active member of many organizations for minority groups and women and she gave the keynote at the Grace Hopper Conference, and was invited to join Fortune's Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit and Fast Co’s Impact Council.