Christian Patrick Brink

Christian Patrick Brink, of Brooklyn, New York, beloved husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend, passed away on November 11, 2020. He was 37. The son of Patrice Pimentel Brink and Robert Charles Brink, Christian was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 28, 1983. He was the eldest of three children. Raised in Minnesota and then Oklahoma, Christian moved to New York City for college and never left. In his sophomore year, he met Ana Lise Feliciano Hansen, and the two were inseparable from 2005 to the present. After graduating Columbia University in 2007, Christian found his way into the startup world as the first hire for a company called Urgent Career. He went on to teach himself to code while Ana Lise attended law school, and worked on various projects and startups, both in the capacity of software developer and founder. In 2015, Christian and his friend Ryan Wegner cofounded a company called Audm which was acquired by the New York Times earlier this year.

Ana Lise and Christian were married on May 8, 2009, and had one beautiful daughter, Solveig Elena, born June 10, 2018. Ana Lise and Solveig were the light and love of Christian’s life. Christian is survived by Ana Lise and Solveig, and by his parents, Patrice and Bob, his siblings, Laura and Jon, niece Windy, his parents-in-law, Elena Feliciano and Peter Hansen, sister-in-law, Lena Feliciano Hansen, and numerous loving aunts, uncles, cousins, extended family and friends.

Christian was a fierce and unique personality, with a quirky sense of humor, a complex and beautiful intellect, and an even more beautiful heart. He cared deeply about the state of the world and was consumed with the persistent poverty and racial injustice found within the United States and elsewhere.

Christian’s faith in the saving death and resurrection of Jesus was central to his identity and the way he lived his life. He lived by Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Christian delighted in music, and this is his favorite verse of a much-loved hymn:

O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wand’ring heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.

A memorial celebration of Christian’s life will be held at a later date when Covid-19 restrictions are lifted. Memorial contributions can be made in his memory to homelessness, poverty, and social and racial justice organizations.  For example, most recently Christian and Ana Lise gave together to The Bowery Mission in New York City.