Tippy Fortune
The convergence of a college film appreciation course and the second season of Sesame Street introduced Tippy Fortune to the world of educational and children’s television. Tippy was admitted into the writer’s training program conducted by the producers of that award-winning children’s series and her TV production career commenced.
Upon completion of the training program, Tippy was retained by the Children’s Television Workshop, as it was known then, as a production assistant producing the computer animation for the newly created The Electric Company, a reading series designed for Sesame Street “graduates.”
A welcoming place, CTW allowed Tippy opportunities to expand her production acumen both at the company and outside. Eager to learn, Tippy participated in film production training programs at WNET and the Directors Guild of America.
Openings abounded, presenting positions of increased responsibilities and leading her to become an associate producer for Vegetable Soup, a series produced by New York State, Executive Producer of Pinwheel, the nationwide series that launched Nickelodeon, and an Executive Producer of international versions of Sesame Street and The Electric Company. In that capacity, she worked with local producers in France, Spain, Germany, the Philippines and the Middle East. Her international credentials caught the attention of UNESCO for whom she consulted with producers on India’s INSAT project, creating educational programs to be used throughout the sub-continent.
In the 1990’s Tippy’s production expertise culminated in three educational series, language arts and science, that connected Galaxy Classroom elementary schools nationwide with the state-of the-art technology available at the time.
Currently, Tippy applies her child development knowledge to writing children’s literature which builds upon her experiences as a technical writer for Crystal Stairs, a family service center in Los Angeles.
![](https://voices.uchicago.edu/sojourner/files/2022/12/tippy-fortune.jpg)