SVP, Business & Legal Affairs
Discovery Communications
Lisa A. Williams-Fauntroy is Senior Vice President for Business & Legal Affairs at Discovery Communications, LLC. Discovery is a global media company that owns and operates many cable networks including Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel and Investigation Discovery.
At Discovery, Lisa manages and handles business and legal affairs matters for the company’s largest television network, Discovery Channel, as well as Science Channel and Velocity. When Lisa joined Discovery in March of 1997, she began her career in the legal department focusing on transactional work for network productions, talent deals and pre-broadcast review of legal issues for the company’s programming. Since starting at Discovery, Lisa has worked for nearly every network in the company and has had the opportunity to contribute her legal and business skills to many content and corporate deals for the company’s joint ventures and new businesses.
Currently, as a senior business and legal affairs executive, Lisa manages a bi-coastal team and she serves as a collaborative and strategic partner to the development, production, programming and operations teams at Discovery Channel and for other networks. Her practice area includes complex deal negotiations and transactional work and she advises internal clients on content liability matters related to defamation, publicity, privacy and copyright issues.
Prior to joining Discovery, Lisa was an associate at the Washington, D.C. law firm formerly known as Roberts & Eckard, P.C. (now Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP). She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she received a dual degree in Broadcast Journalism and Sociology, and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, where she received her law degree.
Lisa is a board member for the national board of NAMIC (National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications), the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., and she serves as a co-chair and executive sponsor of Discovery’s employee resource group, the Black Cultural Alliance. She has been recognized as one of Cable Fax’s Most Influential Minorities in Cable and regularly mentors professional women both inside and outside of her company. Lisa is also a frequent annual contributor to the Practicing Law Institute’s Faculty on Counseling Clients in the Entertainment Industry.
