WAM Entertainment Law is proud to announce that Founder, CEO & Managing Partner Alexa M. Whiteside has been named to the 2026 class of 50 Most Influential Women in North Carolina, presented by North Carolina Lawyers Weekly and The Mecklenburg Times. The honorees were celebrated at a recognition event in Charlotte on October 29.
The program honors women across the state for leadership, business acumen, mentoring and community involvement. This year’s class includes leaders from the legal profession, health care, finance, construction and other industries.
A transactional attorney and the firm’s founder, Alexa focuses her practice on development, clearance and rights opinions, fair use analysis, talent and production agreements, production financing, corporate formation and equity structuring, distribution and licensing, catalogue management, and copyright and trademark prosecution and maintenance, serving filmmakers, producers, content creators, distributors, and media companies in North Carolina, California, and New York.
Since relocating to North Carolina from California in 2019, Whiteside has held continuous leadership roles within the North Carolina Bar Association and North Carolina Bar Foundation where she currently serves as a board member for the Board of Governors for the NCBA (2026-2029 term) and Pro Bono Awards Subcommittee Co-Chair. She has also previously served as Co-Chair of the NCBF Pro Bono Committee (2024-26) and Section Chair for the NCBA Sports & Entertainment Law Section (2023-2024), of which she has also been a member of since 2019.
Prior to launching the firm, Whiteside served as Vice President of Business Affairs at the broadcast television producer and distributor Hearst Media Production Group, where she oversaw the company’s business affairs, clearances, standards and practices, and programming teams for original broadcast and digital content. She previously spent over seven years at a mid-sized entertainment boutique in Beverly Hills, advancing through law clerk, associate, and senior associate roles, where her credits include such titles as Sony’s A Man Called Otto, Netflix’s Voir, and Amazon’s Something From Tiffany’s.
Whiteside earned her Juris Doctorate magna cum laude from Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, California and her B.F.A. with Honors from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is admitted to practice before the bars of North Carolina, California, and New York. Her work has been recognized by Super Lawyers Rising Stars (2020, 2022, 2023, 2026-2027), Lawdragon 500 X: The Next Generation (2026), Chambers Spotlight North Carolina for Media & Entertainment (2026), and the Variety Legal Impact Report Up Next list (2022). She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a board member of the Board of Governors for the North Carolina Bar Foundation. and a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Television Executives Peer Group. Whiteside also volunteers regularly as a pro bono attorney for programs such as NCBA’s Wills for Heroes, North Carolina Lawyers on Call (4ALL), California Lawyers for the Arts, and New York Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. A frequent industry speaker, she has presented at the Sundance Film Festival, Comic Con International, RiverRun International Film Festival, NewFilmmakers LA, the Alliance of Women Directors, and her alma mater NYU Tisch.
More information on Ms. Whiteside is available HERE.
More information on the ceremony which took place on October 29th is available HERE.
About WAM Entertainment Law
WAM Entertainment Law is a nationally recognized boutique entertainment law firm providing production, distribution, IP & related legal services for film, television, literary, and digital media creators across CA, NY & NC.