Betsy Borns, a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Economics.
After college, she moved to New York where she was hired as an intern, then as Assistant to the Executive Producer of Saturday Night Live.
From there, Betsy moved to Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, where she was a writer and editor (and remained a Contributing Editor for many years.)
Following this, Comic Lives (Betsy’s book on the art and business of stand-up comedy) was published by Simon & Schuster.
After the book’s release, Betsy became a freelance writer for magazines such as Glamour, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Self, Us, Food and Wine and Vanity Fair.
Next, Betsy was hired to produce a new late night talk show, NBC’s “Later with Bob Costas”.
From here, Betsy moved to HBO’s new Comedy Channel (later renamed Comedy Central) to be the Executive Producer of Special Programming.
Betsy was then moved to Los Angeles by the Fox network to be their Director of Current Programs. In this job she covering such shows as “In Living Color”, “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons”.
Tired of supervising writers, Betsy decided to become one.
After a year of writing spec scripts, she was hired as a staff writer on ABC’s then #1 sit-com, “Roseanne”.
Three years later, Betsy left “Roseanne” as a Co-Producer for a job as Writer/Producer on NBC’s “Friends”.
After this, Betsy was signed to an overall production deal with the Walt Disney Co.
This was followed by work as a Consulting Producer on shows such as ABC’s “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”, CBS’s “George & Leo” and NBC’s “Three Sisters”.
Next, Betsy teamed up with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith to create and executive produce the hit CW show, “All of Us,” which ran for four seasons.
Since then, Betsy has written various comedy pilots for different networks, including “Romy & Julian” for ABC, “The Book Club” for Lifetime network, “A Different Beat” for the Disney Channel and, this year, co-wrote her first drama pilot, ABC’s “The Law of Attraction”.
Currently, Betsy lives in Beverly Hills with her three children, 16-year-old twins, Abraham and Sarah, and 13-year-old Zeke and her husband of 18 years, lawyer/writer Jonathan Shapiro – check him out at ArtofTellingStories.com
Her hat collection continues to grow.