
Hilary was born and raised in Ashland, Oregon. She spent a year studying at the Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico before studying Spanish and government at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. In 2005, Hilary was a Thomas J. Watson Research Fellow, conducting a study on cooperative organization and development among coffee farmers in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Tanzania, Rwanda and Ethiopia. This experience formed the foundation for her Fulbright year, in which she is examining how to apply anthropological theory to the design of community development initiatives.