Betsy West Email and Phone Number

After many years as a network television news producer and executive, and then a journalism professor, I am in my third career as a documentary filmmaker. My directing partner Julie Cohen and I were nominated for an Oscar for RBG in 2019 and have since directed three other documentaries: My Name is Pauli Murray, winner of the Peabody and duPont Columbia Awards; JULIA, about cooking icon Julia Child, shortlisted for an Oscar in 2022, and Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down, released theatrically in 2022. We work with my talented, Oscar-nominated husband Oren Jacoby at his longtime production company Storyville Films. My discovery of untold women’s stories began In 2007, I when I joined with producer Dyllan McGee to work on the MAKERS project about the modern women's movement. In February 2013, PBS aired Barak Goodman's documentary MAKERS: Women Who Make America, for which I served as executive producer.I am the proud Fred W Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School. From 2007-2020, I taught video and documentary to a gang of impressive graduate students, and created the FilmFridays series featuring first-run documentaries and interviews with their directors. I spent the first part of my career at ABC News, where I traveled the world as senior producer for overseas coverage for Nightline, and was co-creator and executive producer of the documentary program Turning Point. I won 21 Emmy Awards and two duPont-Columbia Award for my work at ABC. As senior vice president at CBS News from 1998-2005, I oversaw 60 Minutes and 48 Hours, and was executive-in-charge of 9/11, winner of a Primetime Emmy Award.