Since foolishly jumping with no life experience right from undergrad at Stanford University into earning her MFA in film production at NYU, Betsy has made her living on sets and in edit rooms while finding a voice in her own projects. Her most recent documentary is the 2021 short The Halloween House, about how one man’s obsession with scariness brings together his Brooklyn neighborhood. Her producing and directing credits include interviews with activists working for progressive change for the Mobilize Podcast; videos for the campaign of New York State Senate candidate Alessandra Biaggi, and for the websites of the Cobble Hill Health Center, the Code Liberation Foundation and the Working Families Party; and video letters for the popular Nickelodeon television show, Blue’s Clues. Her documentary feature Flat Daddy, which looks at the impact of the war in Iraq on four military families from around the United States, premiered at DOC NYC in 2011. The film screened at the Maine International, Atlanta, and Montclair Film Festivals, was awarded Best Educational Film at the 2012 Las Vegas Film Festival, was broadcast on PBS America and now streams on demand.
Betsy’s work as a screenwriter has received accolades from a number of contests and organizations in recent years. Her thriller pilot, PRICELESS, was selected for The Writers Lab and the Stowe Narrative Lab in 2023 and the Nostos Screenwriting Retreats in 2024. Its placements in other contests, including writersXwriters (finalist), the Atlanta Film Festival Screenwriting Competition (semifinalist), and the Cinestory Retreats and Fellowship, Creative Screenwriting Fellowship, LA International Screenplay Awards Diversity Initiative, WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Fellowship, the ISA FastTrack Fellowship, and Moonshot Pilot Accelerator (quarterfinalist), has it consistently ranked in the top 1-2% of projects on Coverfly. Her newest script is a feature comedy thriller called SHE DONE IT, about how when an aspiring screenwriter facing middle age is told she’ll never be successful until she writes a bestselling novel, she finds inspiration in a talent she never knew she had: murder.
Betsy’s experience on set also includes her 25+ years miking everyone from Carrie Bradshaw to Elmo as a location sound person on series that include Pose, The Blacklist, The Good Wife, The Sopranos, Jessica Jones, Elementary, Girls, Power, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Her personal essays on her work in the business have been published on the literary sites Fresh Yarn and Revolving Floor, and she continues to blog about that and her never-ending midlife crisis on her Substack, Smartypants. Her work as a digital video editor includes social media pieces for Brick Education, APIA-Vote Michigan, Family Equality, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, The Dodo, Swing Left, the New York Women’s Foundation, and Carnegie Hall’s LinkUP! Series, and fundraising trailers for documentaries on the crash of TWA Flight 800, the gubernatorial campaign of Zephyr Teachout, and the Epic Theater Company, an NYC-based organization that works with performers on the autism spectrum.