A member of the Ontario Bar, Karla Bobadilla represents clients in the areas of entertainment and media law, practicing primarily in film, television and new media rights acquisition, production and distribution/exploitation.

Karla has acted for film and television producers, distributors, broadcasters and film festivals. Karla is also the Sr. Vice-President, Business & Legal Affairs at Behind the Scenes Services Inc. which provides a full range of business administration services to Canadian producers. Previously, Karla worked at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (now the Canadian Media Production Association) providing policy, government relations, strategic planning, advocacy and lobby work on behalf of a number of its genre and regional committees. While at the CFTPA, Karla also gained experience in the regulatory arena by assisting on a number of the CRTC filings on behalf of its membership. She was also active on a number of industry advisory committees and consulted regularly with various government ministries, ministry agencies and other industry organizations. Before the CFTPA, Karla spent much of her industry career as in-house legal counsel and corporate secretary at Astral Media’s Harold Greenberg Fund where she gained an appreciation of the complexities of feature film financing, from development to production to exploitation. While at a Toronto-based production and new media company, also as in-house legal counsel, Karla was not only responsible for all the legal aspects of their slate of productions, but she oversaw the business and legal aspects of the creation of an online film school.

Karla is also active in the not-for-profit cultural sector. She is the former Chair of the Board of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival where she oversaw all corporate governance and corporate matters for the organization. In addition, Karla is a former member on the Board of Cultural Careers Council Ontario (WorkInCulture), which supports the human resource and development needs of Ontario’s arts and cultural community. Karla has also been a speaker at various conferences and film festivals, including NSI, Reel Asian, Reel World, WIFT-T and the Worldwide Short Film Festival.

Speaking on: Meet an Expert: Lawyers - Stohn Hay Cafazzo Dembroski Richmond LLP, Lewis Birnberg Hanet, Dentons