General Counsel and Corporate Secretary

Bridget Barrett is KQED’s General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Bridget is responsible for managing KQED’s diverse legal affairs, which range from FCC regulatory issues to content licensing and distribution, intellectual property matters, contract negotiation and litigation management. She is also responsible for counseling the board of directors on corporate governance and compliance issues, and advising the CEO and others on a variety of matters.

Bridget joined KQED in 2023 after over twenty years as a virtual general counsel and in-house attorney. Over the course of an almost three-decade career that began with a clerkship at the National Association of Broadcasters, she has gained extensive experience in managing all legal aspects of various businesses.

While studying for her undergraduate degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Bridget became interested in media law. She went on to earn her J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center in 1995. Shortly after graduation she moved to San Francisco, where she worked in business litigation for several years. Her career path then took a turn toward Silicon Valley, where she became chief in-house counsel for a SaaS (Software as a Service) company until creating her private practice to provide general counsel and legal advocacy to companies in various industries, including media. Over the following two decades, she advised many boards of directors and served as a director of multiple nonprofits.

Bridget has a passion for lifelong learning and personal development work, which led her to earn a master’s degree in spiritual psychology in 2014. She has combined her skills and passions by serving as a leader on the local, regional and international levels of her nonprofit singing organization, where she has focused a significant portion of her leadership efforts on evolving its consciousness about diversity, equity and inclusion.