Follini grew up in Westchester County and New York City where he attended the Jesuit high school – Fordham Preparatory School. He also competed in collegiate ice hockey while in Boston. Follini received a General Course Degree in Econometrics from the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom. While in London he played rugby for LSE. He also studied in the Executive Masters program at Harvard Business School. From the age of 12, he worked at entry level construction jobs learning the building trade from his father, Charles Follini Sr., a highly decorated former fireman with the FDNY and the CEO of the building conglomerate responsible for Idlewild Airport and the Whitestone Bridge – the Edenwald Group. Follini has been a successful developer and investor in alternative real estate such as: industrial; waterfront land development; brownfields re-development; film studios; and most recently, medical office and senior housing. The following are a few career real estate milestones:
Developed a re-claimed brownfield located on the waterfront in Queens, New York. Purchased for $9,000,000 out of bankruptcy, Follini sold the property three years later to the Bayrock Group, Donald Trump's partner in Trump SoHo for $27,500,000.
Formed Noyack Medical Partners, LLC to develop and acquire health care real estate. Since 2003, Follini has accumulated a $100MM+ portfolio.
Formed North Street Community to develop former St. Agnes Hospital Campus in White Plains, New York purchased at a foreclosure auction for $22,000,000. Recently announced the largest active adult housing development in North America.
As a Senior Executive of Shooting Gallery and as Founder and CEO of Gun For Hire Production Centers, the largest independent film studio and digital media centers in the United States, he conceived, designed and renovated 400,000+ square feet of digital media studios in New York, Miami, Vancouver, Toronto and Los Angeles. Known as the Gun For Hire Production Centers, his New York site won the Crain's Small Business Award in 1998. They were the predecessor that WeWork was based upon.
Producer credits
In 2011, CJ Follini created and directed Art/Trek NYC and its broadcast on cable by NYC Media and Ovation Network. Art/Trek is a docu-series that explores NYC's five boroughs in a quest to showcase new and emerging artists. Traveling in the show's signature mobile art gallery – a converted recreational vehicle, nicknamed the ArtV – host CJ Follini joins a different borough-specific co-host in each episode to meet a rising artist who's on the verge of breaking into New York City's competitive art scene. Each artist puts together an impromptu art show in the ArtV and invites residents from their neighborhood to view the work and share their opinions about the art on camera. One of the five artists will be selected to have their own gallery show, which will be featured in a future episode. In 2008, CJ Follini was the Executive Producer for the documentary ' story of mountaintop removal mining and its disastrous effects on the environment. In 2000, Follini produced the short film Bullet in the Brain, winner of ten festival awards including the first Million Dollar Hypnotic/Universal Short Film Award whose cast included writer/director Lorene Scafaria; and Dean Winters; and George Plimpton. He also produced Someday, a music video for Irish pop band "Tellulah Crash," and a public service announcement for the R.E.A.C.H. Foundation, an organization that helps children with life-threatening diseases and children in low-income school districts. Recently, the U.S. EPA objected to three more federal permits for mountaintop-removal coal mining citing its disastrous effects on the environment and local water quality as alerted in ' Additional production credits for CJ Follini include:
