Julie Cohen is a veteran television news and documentary director and producer, and the founder of BetterThanFiction Productions, Inc. She has directed, produced, and written seven documentaries for WNET, NY and other PBS stations around the country; more than 20 hour-long and two-hour programs for Dateline NBC; and three webisode series for Lifetime Television; as well as segments for the national PBS series Need to Know. She also produces documentary-style films for non-profit and educational organizations. During her nine years as a staff producer at Dateline, she specialized in reporting on crime and justice issues, hard news and pop culture. In her final two years at NBC, she also served as a senior development producer, generating Dateline stories and innovative show ideas.

Julie has received a DuPont Columbia award,
2 New York Emmy Awards, 4 national Emmy nominations, as well as the Individual Achievement Award for Best TV News Producer from American Women in Radio and Television (Gracie Award) in 2005 and a second Gracie Award in 2011. She holds Master's degrees from Yale Law School and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor's degree from Colgate University. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband Paul M. Barrett — an editor at Bloomberg Businessweek and the author of three non-fiction books — and their dachshund, Beau.