Journalist & Filmmaker

Betsy West

As a seasoned journalist and filmmaker whose legendary list of accomplishments keeps rolling, Betsy West just recently wrapped up RBG (Mountainfilm 2018), a theatrical documentary she co-directed starring Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A graduate of Brown University with a master’s from Syracuse, this New York native joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2009 after nearly three decades in network news. Her most notable work includes producing MAKERS: Women Who Make America (2013), a documentary film about the struggle for women’s equality in the United States during the last five decades of the 20th century. The project is narrated by Meryl Streep and features other noteworthy characters such as Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey. Other work includes the documentary The Lavender Scare (2017), and the short doc 4%: Film’s Gender Problem (2016).  Along with her husband, filmmaker Oren Jacoby, she is a principal at Storyville Films where she co-produced Constantine’s Sword (2007).