Biography | Bob Chapek — Named Disney CEO on This Burbank Lot

People treat the Disney chief executive's office as a job that changes on a stage.

This one changed on a Tuesday press release.

On 25 February 2020 the Walt Disney Company board named Bob Chapek chief executive, effective immediately.

Bob Iger moved to executive chairman and kept creative oversight through the end of his contract on 31 December 2021.

Chapek had joined the company in 1993 as a marketing director in Buena Vista Home Entertainment, when the product was still VHS tape.

He later ran home entertainment, studio distribution, and consumer products.

From 2015 he chaired Parks and Resorts.

In 2018 that brief expanded to Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, the chair he held when the board voted.

The announcement came from 500 South Buena Vista Street in Burbank, the lot Walt and Roy opened in 1940.

The Team Disney building, later named for Michael Eisner, is where the chief executive's office sits.

He was the seventh person to hold the title in the company's history.

Iger told investors the same day that the succession had not been accelerated for any particular reason.

Within weeks the parks Chapek knew best were shut by the pandemic.

The job accepted on this lot would last two years and nine months.

Photo: Junkyardsparkle, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (original entrance gate on Buena Vista Street)