Hillary was born and raised near Columbia, South Carolina, by a loving family in the Southern Baptist expression of Christianity. She attended the College of Charleston where she received a B.A. in English and a B.S. in Secondary Education. She taught high school English language and literature for three years before entering seminary at McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta. After one year, when her spouse’s naval career took them to Washington state, she transferred to The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, where she graduated with her M.Div in 2017.

During her time in graduate school, Hillary explored different expressions of Christianity, eventually deciding to make her home in The Episcopal Church. She was confirmed in 2015, and not long after, entered discernment for holy orders. She was ordained a transitional deacon in December 2019 and ordained into the priesthood in June of 2020. Her first call was to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Seattle as a curate then an assisting priest, from July 2020 until September 2023. She was subsequently called to be full-time vicar of St. Antony’s Episcopal church in Silverdale, Washington in October 2023, where she continues to serve today.

An early experience with grief and loss shifted the direction of Hillary’s life. When a dear friend was diagnosed with leukemia when they were both 18 years old, Hillary began to explore the relationship between God’s love and human suffering. She explored this relationship through her writing and study in seminary, and in the last weeks of her friend Lee’s life, spent hours with him at the hospital bedside.

This experience led to Hillary pursuing a career in hospital chaplaincy. She completed her first CPE internship at Palmetto (now Prisma) Heath in Columbia South Carolina in summer of 2014, then a one year, three unit CPE residency at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington from August 2017 through August of 2018. She was later hired as a staff chaplain at Providence Swedish, a multi-campus hospital system in Seattle, Washington. She worked as a critical care chaplain at Swedish from March of 2019 through September of 2023.

Seattle was the first epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and Hillary worked on the front lines, providing spiritual and emotional support to patients, families, and health care workers. She has contracted with Tehom Center Publishing to release a memoir about her years as a pandemic hospital chaplain and the process of healing from the relentless vicarious trauma. The Well is Deep: COVID through a Chaplain’s Eyes will be released in summer 2026.