Meet the Team
DR. TWILA LIGGETT was the Founder and Executive Producer of the award winning PBS Children’s TV series, Reading Rainbow, which aired on PBS 1983-2009 and is now streaming on Netflix. Under her leadership, the series won over 160 awards including a Peabody and 26 national Emmys of which ten are in the Outstanding Children’s Series category. Dr. Liggett is also a former Professor of Education specializing in literacy and the arts at Manhattan Marymount College.
LAURIE PINCUS is the creator of The Storybook Cook and Betty & Eddie’s Flying Food Adventure Show. She is a multimedia visual artist, writer, illustrator, and teacher. Her work has appeared internationally in galleries, on TV, film and print: Scooby Doo, HR Puffinstuff, Fuji TV Japan.
Click here to see more of Laurie’s work.
ERIC HAESSLER spent 12 years as an actor, producer and director in Chicago. He was a staff member of Evening/PM Magazine program, WBZ-TV, Boston and former Program Director of Diabetic Youth Foundation in San Francisco. He completed chef’s training at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and currently teaches cooking there as well as working for America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Magazine.
HAMILTON CLOUD II was the Vice President of Programming at NBC under Brandon Tartikoff, 14 years Executive Producer of the NAACP Image Awards and Children’s Programming Producer at KABC-LA. He is currently Director of Special Projects for Congresswoman Maxine Waters.
TONY ASKINS is a musician, animator and an organic farmer with a love of photography, film, and music. He studied classical violin as a child, expanding his studies into folk, rock and jazz as well as studying East Indian music at the Ali Akbar College of Music. His playing may be heard on the soundtrack to the PBS documentary DzCowgirlsdz. His background as a recording engineer on his own original music projects formed the basis for the stop motion animation that he created for Betty and Eddie’s Flying Food Adventure Show.
PAUL WESTMACOTT is the owner of Paradigm Pictures. He was an editor on the very first Survivor television series. After Survivor, Paul worked for Sony Pictures, MGM, CBS television, Chance Films with Mark Wahlberg, and Buena Vista Television Company before founding Paradigm Pictures in 2003. Paradigm Pictures filmed, produced and edited the award-winning films “Juvies” and “Unlikely Friends”, which were purchased by HBO and The Discovery Channel. Paradigm Pictures is currently producing projects for Hulu, Netflix, FX, ESPN and the NFL Network. Paul is extremely excited about being a part of the Betty and Eddie show team.
BETTY is the star of the show. She is 10 years old and in the fourth grade. She gardens organically with her friends and has been cooking with her family since she was three years old.
EDDIE, Betty’s uncle, used to run the Spaghetti Family restaurant with his father Freddy until he decided to get a food truck of his own. Now he can take his food truck on flying food adventures since it is not a typical food truck.
ALI FRESCO has a master’s degree in horticulture. She joined the team after meeting Betty and Eddie on one of their flying food adventures. She knows absolutely everything about the garden, especially the one on the truck’s roof.