Corporate Profile
 

About Sirius Thinking, Ltd.
 

Based in New York City, Sirius Thinking, Ltd. is a company specializing in the creation
of character-based, mission-driven children's educational entertainment media properties.

The company employs a "multiple media" strategy, focusing on television, the Internet,
software, home video, audio, and print, combining core educational content with appealing
characters in a humorous context.

The creative team is made up of key talent from such top-tier children's educational/
entertainment companies as the Children's Television Workshop, Jim Henson Productions,
Nickelodeon, and Apple Computer. Among them, they have won Emmy Awards,
Grammy Awards, Parent's Choice Awards, and a host of other honors indicative of their
ability to create popular and enduring children's characters and content.

Currently, Sirius Thinking's primary project is the creation and production of Between the Lions,
a children's literacy initiative that includes a daily television show (which premiered, to rave
reviews, on April 3, 2000 on PBS), a ground-breaking children's and parents' Web site,
print and multimedia components, and additional educational products. This project is a joint
venture with WGBH, Boston, arguably the most acclaimed public broadcasting station in the
nation, and the producers of such stellar children's television programs as Arthur and the
recently-launched Zoom. Also participating in Between the Lions is a board of educational advisors
that includes several of the country's top reading experts.

Sirius Thinking offers partners and clients an unparalleled ability to create successful puppet
and animated characters as well as world-class creative content for use in educationally-driven
multiple media. It also offers access to some of the most talented writers, artists, composers,
producers, directors, puppet builders, and animators in the business.
 
 
 

The Founders

Sirius Thinking, Ltd., began in October 1995 when John Sculley, Christopher Cerf, Norman Stiles,
and Michael Frith joined together to found a creative company based in New York City.

Their intention was to employ a small permanent staff organized around a core set of highly
leveragable skills, outsourcing other business, marketing, and production functions to contractors,
agents, consultants, freelancers, and alliance partners.

The core team has extensive experience in every aspect of the development and production of
education/entertainment media properties, including character creation; curriculum development;
business development; writing, editing, design, and illustration; project management; licensing;
and marketing.

John Sculley (Chairman and CEO) is the former CEO of Apple Computer, where he oversaw
the creation of the Macintosh computer, Apple desktop publishing, and the Apple PowerBook.
Mr. Sculley built his reputation as the President and CEO of PepsiCo, helping Pepsi surpass
Coca-Cola as the No. 1 soft drink in America. In 1987, he was chosen by Mikhail Gorbachev
to serve on the Board of the international Foundation for the Survival and Development of
Humanity, an East-West Cooperative effort on human rights, education, arms reduction, energy,
and the environment.

Christopher Cerf, in addition to his multiple Grammy and Emmy-award-winning music and
lyric contributions to Sesame Street and The Electric Company, was the founding director and
editor-in-chief of the Children's Television Workshop's Educational Books, Records, Games,
and Toys Division. A former Random House senior editor and the author of several best-selling
books, including The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook (with Henry Beard) and
the recently revised The Experts Speak (with Victor Navasky). Cerf won an Emmy for executive
producing Marlo Thomas's classic Free to Be a Family. Cerf has also played a major role in
the advance of digital technology as a tool for educating young children, co-designing Muppet
Learning Keys, a computer keyboard for preschoolers which was hailed by InfoWorld Magazine
as one of its "Products of the Year"; and Kermit's Electronic Storymaker, an early reading
program which won Family Computing Magazine's "Critic's Choice" Award.  Cerf is a member
 of the Board of Directors of Reading Is Fundamental and First Book, and is a former National
Trustee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Norman Stiles has, for nearly twenty years, been the head writer of Sesame Street, a role that
brought him eleven Emmy awards. His other writing credits include Merv Griffin's Late Night
talk show, Norman Lear's Fernwood 2-Night and America 2-Night, the hit Disney/ABC family
series The Bad News Bears, Mel Brooks's situation comedy When Things Were Rotten, and Marlo
Thomas's Emmy-winning special, Free to Be a Family.

Michael Frith is the former Executive Vice President and Creative Director for Jim Henson
Productions, where, among many other achievements, he conceived and/or designed some
of the most famous puppets ever seen on television, created the internationally renowned
Muppet 3-D movie theater at Walt Disney World, and served as Executive Producer of such
acclaimed productions as the award-winning Fraggle Rock and Jim Henson's Muppet Babies,
and the Henson/Nickelodeon series, The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss. Before joining Henson,
Frith was Editor-in-Chief of Beginner Books, on which he collaborated closely with the series
co-founders, Dr. Seuss and Phyllis Cerf Wagner, and with the preeminent literacy specialist,
the late Dr. Jeanne Chall.
 
 
 

Other key members of the Sirius team are:

Louise Gikow (Senior Vice President, Creative Operations), is the former Vice-President
and Editor-in-Chief of Nickelodeon's Publishing/Multimedia division, which she founded.
Prior to that, she was the Editorial Director of Jim Henson Production's publishing group,
where she also contributed to the television and multimedia development and licensing
areas of the company. Ms. Gikow brings to the company extensive experience in business
development and in the licensing, brand management, and marketing of popular children's
media properties, as well as award-winning talents as a composer and writer of songs,
books, and scripts. She is a board member of the Jim Henson Legacy.

Sharon Lerner (Senior Vice-President, Creative/Curriculum) was most recently a division
vice-president and publisher of Random House's Children's Media Development, where
she developed an audio/video trade department that featured such classic Random House
authors and characters as Dr. Seuss, Sesame Street, Leo Lionni, Richard Scarry, P.D. Eastman,
the Berenstain Bears, and Arthur. In 1994, Lerner changed the name of her department to
Random House Children's Media, to reflect the addition of multimedia product to the
department. Among Lerner's credits is a line of entertaining curriculum-based CD-ROMs
with Brøderbund Software, Inc., which feature the Dr. Seuss characters. In addition, she
developed the Seussville.com Web site, and played a key role in the redesign of Kids at
Random, the Random House Children's Web site. Lerner was one of the first ten people
hired by the Children's Television Workshop to develop Sesame Street, helping to design
the program's curriculum and to build the Sesame Street licensing program, and
eventually becoming Vice President/Creative Director of the CTW Products Group.
She is also co-author of three children's videos, several children's songs, and best-selling
children's books.

Dr. Gerald S. Lesser (Chairman of the Educational Advisory Board) is the Bigelow
Professor of Education and Developmental Psychology at the Harvard University School
of Education, and heads the curriculum development of "Between the Lions." Dr. Lesser
joined the Children's Television Workshop when it was formed in 1968 as Chairman of
its Educational Advisory Board. In that role, he oversaw the creation of the curriculum
for a number of PBS series, including Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and
Ghostwriter, and played a key role in the invention of the unique collaborative model --
in which writers, performers, educators, researchers, producers, and outreach and
marketing specialists all interact to build and distribute the best possible entertainment-
educational vehicle -- that led to the creation of those singularly successful programs.

Erica Lindberg Gourd (Senior Vice President, Marketing and Promotion) is also
President of Lindberg Licensing and Promotion, Inc., a small agency that has specialized
in managing literary properties since 1989. She has an extensive and varied licensing
background, having worked on television and movie licensing for Jim Henson
Productions' projects, including The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies,
Labyrinth, and The Dark Crystal. She also worked for a toy manufacturing company,
Eden, where she developed a licensing program for Paddington Bear, before she moved
to television network licensing, where she established the first licensing programs and
departments for MTV, VH-1, and Nickelodeon. Gourd has orchestrated programs that
include licensing and marketing components for such successful projects as "Where's Waldo,"
Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, Eric Carle's Spot, and Marc Brown's Arthur.
 
 
 

To Sample the Exciting Learning Activities Available This Week on the
Between the Lions Web Site, Click on the Baseball Card Below....