Meet Barbara Fedida
Founder, Casablanca Strategy Group
Barbara Fedida is a television executive, media consultant and award-winning journalist. She is the founder and principal of Casablanca Strategy Group (CSG), an advisory firm serving media and business clients.
Her decades-long career in the media business at ABC/Disney and CBS Inc – as well as her work at The Markle Foundation – give her a depth and breadth of expertise in business strategy, content creation, talent management, branding, e-commerce, fintech, as well as team building and leadership in the c-suite.
Barbara Fedida is renowned for her strategic vision. She reinvigorated ABC News and is credited with changing the face of the organization by hiring and promoting women and people of color at a pace never seen before in television news. She was a founder of Fusion, the Univision and Disney joint venture cable channel that was built to serve a young, diverse audience.
Barbara Fedida is uniquely skilled at finding great talent and supporting talent to do great work. Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Strahan, Byron Pitts, Jon Karl, Cecilia Vega, Tom Llamas, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, Will Reeve and many others have all acknowledged the importance of Barbara’s support in their careers. ABC News special contributor Tory Johnson wrote that Barbara’s support was “life altering” and would “propel her on a different course.”
At ABC News, she tapped Michael Strahan to join the Good Morning America cast, transitioned Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight brand under the news umbrella and helped monetize Steals and Deals, an e-commerce segment on GMA that expanded across the network and became one of the most talked about e-commerce plays in network television. She partnered with Disney Parks and ESPN often to amplify each divisions’ work across the company.
When Barbara Fedida was on the leadership team overseeing The View, that program became the #1 show in daytime television and was named the most important political show on TV by the New York Times Magazine. Thanks to Barbara Fedida's diligent and meticulous efforts in crafting the ABC News talent lineup, the news division was recognized with three consecutive Edward R MurrowAwards for overall excellence.
Barbara Fedida spent her early career as Peter Jennings’ producer, traveling the globe and covering stories from the drug trade in Latin America to the Pope’s visit to Cuba. She produced the groundbreaking 26-Hour Millennium broadcast, which aired from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000 and was hosted by Peter Jennings. On September 11, 2001, Barbara Fedida was an integral part of ABC’s coverage of the terrorist attacks on the US and produced the award-winning Answering Childrens' Questions Special in the ensuing days.
Barbara Fedida’s parents and siblings immigrated from Casablanca, Morocco to Ellis Island in 1959. She is the first American-born member of her family and in the first generation of her family to attend college. In 1988, she was graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. While at NYU, she interned at Late Night with David Letterman and The Alan Colmes Show. As a student senator, she was selected to deliver the commencement address at NYU's 1988 graduation ceremony.
Barbara Fedida has been on the Hollywood Reporter’s list of most powerful people in New York media and Variety’s Power of Women lists. She has won the Peabody, DuPont, Emmy, and Murrow awards.
