As chief creative officer at Walt Disney Imagineering, Bruce Vaughn ’88 has had a hand in developing some of the parks’ most popular rides and attractions.
Every year, tens of millions of people around the world visit a Disney theme park, where they are swept into immersive experiences populated with beloved characters from their favorite television shows and films. From classic rides like Space Mountain to newer offerings like Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, there is an overwhelming sensation of magic at work in all things Disney.
But peek behind the curtains and you won’t find magicians. Instead, you’ll find the team at Walt Disney Imagineering — the storytellers, engineers, artists, and scientists who are the creative force behind Disney’s most popular rides and attractions. It’s one of the most sophisticated R&D firms in the world, and it’s been guided by the imaginative vision of its Chief Creative Officer Bruce Vaughn ’88.
Vaughn is the first to admit that his path to helming the creative output of Disney Imagineering was unconventional — and, in many respects, unlikely. Hailing from a family of lawyers with a strong Colgate legacy, Vaughn seemed destined for a legal career when he graduated with a degree in English literature. But this meant turning his back on his true passion — filmmaking — which he had cultivated as a child growing up on a steady diet of Indiana Jones and Star Wars films.
“These films blew my mind, but I wasn’t obsessed with the characters like my friends were,” Vaughn says. “I was obsessed with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. So I got an American Cinematographer magazine and started reading everything I could about these people who were making movies.”
After graduation, Vaughn spent a summer cleaning pools near his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., biding his time until he could apply to law school, when he learned that a film crew was shooting Star Trek V at a set nearby. Vaughn’s father had a client who knew Bran Ferren, a renowned creative technologist who was running special effects for the production, and Vaughn’s dad arranged for his son to tour the set with the production’s general manager. It was only two weeks later — when Vaughn received a phone call telling him he was hired — that he realized that his visit hadn’t been a tour, but a job interview. “That was the only job interview I’ve ever done in my life and I didn’t even know it,” Vaughn recalls with a laugh.
Vaughn’s first job in filmmaking wasn’t glamorous — he was a truck driver for the Star Trek production — but during the long nights on set he befriended one of the cameramen who taught him how to operate a camera after his shifts. It turned out to be a serendipitous apprenticeship. When another cameraman on the production had to make an emergency flight out to California, Vaughn’s mentor roped him in as a stand-in cameraman. Overnight, Vaughn found himself working side by side with the film’s director of photography.
After the film wrapped, Vaughn briefly attended law school before realizing the legal profession wasn’t for him. He dropped out and contacted Ferren about getting back into the film business. Ferren took Vaughn under his wing at his firm.
“Bran is a true Renaissance man and he made me his righthand person, so I jumped into career development instantly,” says Vaughn.
Ferren’s talents and Vaughn’s hunger to learn the film business paid off, and before long the firm was hired as a consultant at Imagineering. At Disney Vaughn had the chance to flex both his imagination and project management skills, starting as a writer and climbing the ranks until he was the director of the R&D group, overseeing a team of engineers pioneering robotics and other technology used in attractions. His leadership skills propelled him to chief creative officer, succeeding the legendary Marty Sklar, who had helmed Imagineering for decades (a role he inherited from Walt Disney himself).
During his tenure as chief creative officer, Vaughn has helped craft several of Disney’s immersive experiences such as Zootopia at Shanghai Disney Resort and the World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland.
After more than 25 years at Imagineering, Vaughn says he’s still impressed by the creativity and raw intellectual horsepower of his colleagues. He compares his job to that of a jazz musician, which calls for constant improvisation and collaboration. “This is truly a collaborative business; there’s no going solo,” Vaughn says. “We’re very dynamic, and we’re open 24/7, 365 days a year, around the world. I find myself wired for that.”