Khadijah Sharif-Drinkard
Khadijah Sharif-Drinkard serves as Senior Vice President of Business Affairs for ABC News, where she oversees deal strategy across the network. In her role, she oversees three departments - Business Affairs, Rights & Clearances and VideoSource. She is an Executive Champion of the Muslim Employee Resource Group, Salaam, at The Walt Disney Company. She also serves in a leadership role for the Disney Lawyers of Color (DLOC+). Prior to joining The Walt Disney Company, Khadijah was Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Paramount Global, where she oversaw deal making for unscripted programming, tent-poles, award shows and news across BET Networks. In that role, Khadijah was integral to bringing high-profile, ratings-shattering projects to the screen that highlighted Black stories, including The New Edition Story, The Bobby Brown Story and the Black Girls Rock! franchise. Prior to her ground-breaking work at BET Networks, Khadijah served as Vice President, Senior Counsel at Nickelodeon where she helped to launch shows celebrating children of color including Dora the Explorer, Diego and The Backyardigans.
Khadijah sued the New York State Department of Education for its unequal scholarship distribution practices – and won. In college, she served as a deputized peacekeeper following the 1991 Crown Heights riot and subsequently traveled to South Africa as part of Mayor Dinkins’ delegation. Nelson Mandela himself welcomed Khadijah home when she stepped off the plane on African soil. She has traveled and served on delegations to South Africa, Rome, Russia, China and the United Kingdom, and has worked with the United Nations to help aspiring businesswomen from Iraq.
Khadijah is a 2024 graduate of Harvard-CTAM (Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Program for high performing media, entertainment and tech executives) and a graduate of Class XXII of the Women in Cable Telecommunications’ (WICT) Betsy Magness Leadership Institute, a premier leadership program for women in the media industry. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. and uses her spare time to work in the fields of philanthropy and human development. In addition to her professional responsibilities, Khadijah holds a host of leadership positions - she is the Immediate Past Chairwoman of the Board of Directors for the Black Entertainment & Sports Lawyers Association (BESLA), Chair Emerita of the Board for Columbia College Women (CCW) and serves on the Executive Board of Directors for the Columbia College Alumni Association. Khadijah also previously served as Global Co-Chair of Paramount’s Law Department’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.
In 2024, Khadijah was named the National Bar Association’s Entertainment Attorney of the Year and accepted this honor at their 99th annual conference. She also received the Ruth Whitehead Whaley Award from Fordham Law School’s Black Law Students Association (BLSA) for being an outstanding alumna and the New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association (NJMLA) Medal of Honor for her exemplary leadership as a Muslim American attorney. She was also awarded the inaugural Corporate Counsel of the Year Award from the Muslim Bar Association of New York (MuBANY). Khadijah is a recipient of the National Association of Multi-Ethnicity in Communications (NAMIC) Luminary Award for her business acumen and her commitment to diversity and inclusion and she also received a NAACP Image Award for her work on the children’s animated program “Kasha and the Zulu King”. Khadijah has been featured in The New York Times and contributed to a book entitled Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak (Beacon Press), where she writes about her journey as an activist and a Muslim American. Her new book entitled Power Reimagined will be released in 2026 by Harvard Business Review Press. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Columbia University in the City of New York and her Juris Doctor from Fordham University School of Law. Khadijah lives with her husband and two daughters in New Jersey.
Khadijah is also the proud recipient of the 1989 DDC Elizabeth Piper Scholarship top prize. Although a proud member of TRIO Talent Search Program, she also spent much of her of time at the DDC with her fellow TRIO Upward Bound Program students.