Women in Entertainment 2010 - Power 100 List

Barak started as an associate at O’Melveny & Myers in the litigation department before she yearned to find a “different life, balancing career and family.” She joined CBS in 1985 in the broadcast department and during the next 25 years has moved her way up the chain of command, with stints supervising in-house productions, serving as associate general counsel and head of the business affairs department. Today, Barak supervises the negotiation of talent and producer deals and license fees; recent accomplishments include bringing back all three CSI series as well as negotiating extensions for David Letterman and Craig Ferguson. Barak has worked on innovative contracts including these used on Survivor, which make contestants pay millions of dollars if they blab secrets. “It’s intellectually challenging to rethink how deals are made,” she says.