Gay Hill, Former JPL Media Specialist

Mission events at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), from rover landings on Mars to outer planetary encounters, attract worldwide attention and demand a first-rate media team to narrate the science and engineering in real time. Gay Hill, who came to be known affectionately as the "Voice of JPL," spent the second half of her career conveying the wonders of space exploration and science from JPL, which Caltech manages for NASA, to a global audience.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Hill's career ascent in broadcasting was not intuitive relative to her personality. As she reflects, she never liked being the object of attention, and yet her focus and skills in communication led to a successful media career in California and New York. She remembers her time at JPL as exhilarating, and she feels doubly fortunate to have worked with so many excellent colleagues and for an organization that understands the value of work-life balance. As the saying goes, "your science is only as good as you are able to communicate it." With that in mind, JPL's achievements over the past decades were greatly enhanced by media professionals like Hill who are so effective in sharing discovery.

DAVID ZIERLER: OK. This is David Zierler, Director of the Caltech Heritage Project. It's Friday, May 20th, 2022. I'm delighted to be here with Gay Hill. Gay, it's great to be with you. Thanks so much for joining me.

GAY HILL: Well, I'm excited to be here too.

ZIERLER: Gay, to start would you please tell me your most recent title and institutional affiliation?

HILL: I was with the media relations office and a commentator for the Jet Propulsion Lab, but also a media relations representative as well.

ZIERLER: Would that have been the official title, media relations representative?

HILL: I think we were called media relations specialists. That is how I started my career at JPL and as time went by my job duties gravitated towards my strengths, which were in video and television production. I morphed into more of a producer role. By the end of my career there, I was a senior producer and a senior media relations rep. I worked in both areas, but my focus was the video production.

ZIERLER: I'll have to state for the historical record—you're going to be humble—your unofficial title is "The Voice of JPL." That's what your fans and your colleagues know you as, so that's what we're going to have to get in the transcript as well—"The Voice of JPL."

HILL: I never saw myself as "The Voice of JPL" because I made an effort to be a conduit for the real voices of JPL. I came from broadcasting and was a news reporter. I did video packages through my eyes. I would cover the story. I would write the script through my voice. At JPL, I felt that it should not be my voice and my take but should be the voices of the scientists and engineers. Today most of the packages are really through the voices of the scientists and engineers and very rarely a commentator, except when it was a live mission event. The video stories, more and more, were told through the eyes of real people, in my opinion.

ZIERLER: I once again must have to cite your colleagues because you use the word conduit. As the voice, as a nonscientist yourself, so much of the ways in which you're appreciated is your ability to translate the science to the legions of fans of JPL that are out there, right? Who are not scientists, but love the science and the engineering and want to be brought in to appreciate just how incredible the work at JPL is.

HILL: It is funny because when I first started at JPL I was very intimidated because I didn't have a broad background in physics or astronomy or geophysics. I was honestly very intimidated. Then I realized that my questions are probably everyone's questions who don't have that background and that in news reporting and journalism you know there really isn't a stupid question.

ZIERLER: That's right. [laugh]

HILL: You can ask anything! And that really helped me to know that my questions are pretty much the layperson's question—how does that work? Bringing it to everyone's level. If you're always working with your peers and everybody knows all the acronyms. Sure, they get it, but nobody else would get it. What is an EDL? It really helped having that knowledge. That what I saw and what I couldn't understand – there was a good chance there were a whole lot of other people that didn't understand as well. I remember my boss. This was Blaine Baggett. One time we were breaking down the scripts that I was working on. Part of my job was producing the program – so producing a breakdown or rundown of the show. I was explaining things to Blaine and Blaine just stopped and looked at me and he said, "You're going native."

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: It basically meant I started to talk like everybody else at JPL. That was not a good thing. I had to kind of rock it back and remember what it was like when I didn't know those terminologies and didn't know what an EDL was, or a gravity assist, or all those things. I think that's very important not to lose that.

ZIERLER: Gay, currently do you have any official or unofficial connections at JPL or in planetary science?

HILL: Not really. I have been called back. As a retiree, you still can be brought in when you're needed. I was brought back to help with a Discovery Mission site visit. It was a presentation for the NASA selection committee. The Trident mission was hoping to be selected. Six different missions were pitching for two spots that would get NASA funding. Normally, the selection committee would be brought to JPL. The presentations and question and answer sessions would be done in the auditorium before all these officials in person. But because of the pandemic, people couldn't travel and not many people were allowed to the lab. So what ultimately happened was we turned the 300 cafeteria into a virtual studio. We brought in a production crew that could light, shoot and stream the presentations and the Q&A directly to the decision-makers in their homes. All the participants were in a big conference call, a big WebEx call. People were able to chime in and ask questions.

It was produced like a show with cameras and microphones and a switcher. There was a video village inside the cafeteria. I was called out of retirement to produce this Site Visit program because all the JPL producers were tied up with the upcoming landing of Perseverance rover on Mars. I told JPL that I'm available if they ever needed me, but I didn't want to come back entirely. I feel that they have new voices for JPL now and they have their own ways of doing it. I just wouldn't want to interfere.

ZIERLER: Gay, let's go all the way back to the beginning. Let's start with your parents. Tell me a little bit about them and where they are from.

HILL: My parents are both from China. My father came over during the Depression. He had two older brothers who had a Chinese laundry in Pittsburgh. He came over when he was about 19 years old. My father was an exceptional student. His dream was to come here, get a college education and then go back to China and teach at a university level. He actually majored in English literature, and he went to Duquesne University. As kids growing up it was my dad who corrected all our English papers and our essays and stuff like that. [laugh]

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: Here's this immigrant Chinese guy, worked here through the Depression, and he had a very challenging life. It was very hard for him, but ultimately, he did OK. He was married prior to marrying my mom and had four children. His first wife died of cancer. The kids were very young, and he still had to support them somehow. He had to put them in a home. They were toddlers. I don't think any of my brothers and sisters were older than maybe nine or ten. The youngest, my sister May, was only like two or maybe even younger. This was really difficult for him and he really struggled.

Then he met my mom who came over in like 1949-1950. She was a doctor in China, and she was educated by the American missionaries. At the time of the Communist takeover, the missionaries said, "You have to leave China with us because you are associated with the Americans." My dad had a sort of pen pal relationship with my mom and knew that she was coming over and really wanted to sweep her off her feet. The old family story goes he bought a car to impress her to meet the boat. It was the Herbert Hoover Ocean liner. It arrived in San Francisco and my dad was there with this car with a friend driving, so it looked like they were being chauffeured. The truth of the matter was my dad didn't know how to drive. [laugh]

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: But he did sweep her off her feet and she married my dad into a ready-made family of four kids and then the two of them had three more kids, so I grew up in a family of seven kids. With my dad being the English major, he wanted all the kids' names to rhyme. So my brothers are Robert, Shubert, and Herbert and all the sisters are Fay, May, Kay, and Gay. And I'm Gay. I was supposed to Bert, but I turned out to be a girl so my dad named me Gay. [laugh]

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: That's the family.

ZIERLER: Gay, where did you grow up?

HILL: San Francisco.

ZIERLER: What neighborhood?

HILL: We grew up on Russian Hill. It's right next to Nob Hill above Ghirardelli Square. It was a great place to live in San Francisco. It was gorgeous.

ZIERLER: Gay, what aspects of your childhood were really Americanized and what aspects had Chinese cultural traditions?

HILL: My parents didn't want me to lose my Chinese heritage so growing up all of us, my brothers and sisters, had to go to Chinese school as well as American school. Every day we went to American school, got out at two or three o'clock and then we would have to catch the cable car and go down to Chinatown and go to Chinese school. It was St. Mary's Chinese School in Chinatown. It was on Stockton Street. We'd go for two more hours of school every day, Monday through Friday, and learn how to read and write Chinese. Our parents were probably stricter than most. A lot of folks had weekend Chinese school, but we had Monday through Friday Chinese school.

ZIERLER: What about religiously? Were your parents Christian? Did they have a Buddhist faith?

HILL: No. In fact, I grew up in a very active Presbyterian church in Chinatown. I don't know if you may have heard of Cameron House.

ZIERLER: Sure.

HILL: You have heard of Cameron House?

ZIERLER: Yes.

HILL: I am a product of Cameron House.

ZIERLER: Oh, wow.

HILL: In San Francisco. I grew up in the Cameron House youth program run by the Church. There was a lot of leadership opportunities for a kid. I was a day camp leader for the younger kids over my summers. It was a program to help inner city kids experience stuff nature and camping in the middle of Golden Gate Park. We would ride the bus from Chinatown out to the Panhandle and parts of Golden Gate Park and then take the bus back to Chinatown at the end of the day. A lot of the kids were from Chinatown. Their parents worked all day, so they spent their summers camped out in front of the TV set. The parents couldn't entertain them. They were working. By having that summer program, it enabled the kids to have something to do and allowed the parents to work too. Some of those parents worked two jobs.

ZIERLER: Sure. Gay, in middle school and high school to foreshadow to what career you pursued, did you gravitate towards reading and writing, news reports, that kind of thing?

HILL: OK. People don't believe this unless you really know me, but I am actually very camera shy, and I do not like to be the center of attention. I hate to have "Happy Birthday" sung to me.

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: I was always terrible at public speaking, and I remember in grammar school my class voted me to run for vice president of the student body. They did the same thing again to be the student body president for the sixth grade. In both cases I stood up in front of the entire student body and quivered and shook and broke up, couldn't get through my speech, and then would turn around and go back to sit at my seat and burst out crying. I'd lose the election! They gave me a second chance for sixth grade, and I lost again! I always had a real issue about public speaking. I remember in the Presbyterian Church and having to read the verses and not being able to read a verse without breaking or stumbling.

When I got to college I thought, "I'm going to major in communications." [laugh] I wanted to be a speech therapist. But the program at San Francisco State was so impacted that it would be another two years to get all my courses, the undergraduate work. Then I went, "Well, maybe I'll major in another part of communications." I ended up majoring in broadcast communications. I always had a real love of radio. I would never consider ever being on camera. I became an intern at KQED-FM and really loved working with the radio folks. I did some production with them.

A Start in Broadcasting

ZIERLER: What kind of reporting did KQED do?

HILL: At KQED. I did edit, production work. I edited some stuff and that was back in the day when you had two pieces of tape and you spliced it.

ZIERLER: Real editing…

HILL: I finished my degree at San Diego State which had a strong broadcast department. I got an announcer job at the KPBS-FM while I was in school. I also got an internship at TV station in San Diego. It was the McGraw-Hill station KGTV. I split my internship to be in production and management I got to know the station vice president. He had said, "You know, one of our other McGraw-Hill stations in Bakersfield has an opening. You should go ahead and give it a try." He sent my resume up to the Bakersfield station and I got the job as a TV reporter. It wasn't anything that I would've considered naturally. It was one of those things where somebody else said, "You know, we think you have potential." And you're sitting there going, "I don't think so, but if you think so…maybe."

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: What's that terminology that people have…imposter syndrome. I always was like, "I really don't belong in this job. They'll see through me."

ZIERLER: Gay, were there any news stories or moments of career transition where you remember specifically learning how to not be camera shy, not to be the center of attention?

HILL: I think you eventually learn to do that if you're a news reporter you have another objective. You have this job to get this information across. The focus is not on you; it's on the content. I think that helped me tremendously. I mean in the back of my head I'm always thinking, "They don't think I have a very nice face." Instead, you focus on what you're doing. I loved being a reporter. You meet people with passion for what they do, learn about very compelling situations and tell those stories so somebody would understand. That was the way that I was ever able to get over me. The focus was no longer on me, it was the situation and information that needed to get across.

ZIERLER: What were some of the news stories you're most proud of during your time at KOVR?

HILL: At KOVR, I was a medical reporter and a weekend anchor. There were a couple of stories. There was a story about a cancer patient. It was a little boy by the name of Petrovich and we covered him quite a bit. I was doing a lot of the medical stories that were big. Another story was another child that was severely burned over 90% of his body and we followed him to the Galveston Burn Center, the Shriners Burn Center in Galveston, and covered that. I was more a specialist reporter, but also did general news. Probably the biggest stories for me were the ones that were with the medical field. From Sacramento I went on to WWOR-TV and that's the New York market. There were a couple of stories that were…I was the reporter on the Central Park jogger case. There was another story in upstate New York where there was a tornado wind that collapsed and came down on a little elementary school and there were a lot of kids that perished in that. It's been so long. [laugh] I don't remember quite as many of the big stories. When I came back to L.A. after New York I worked at KCAL-TV and we did some of the Rodney King stuff. Those were big stories. I've done a little bit of everything.

ZIERLER: Was it exciting being in New York during your time at WWOR?

From New York to JPL

HILL: I think both my husband and I really did enjoy it. Jim, my husband, was a CNN correspondent based out of New York. Then he was a CNN correspondent in the L.A. bureau. We enjoyed it a lot, but our main reason for coming back…I actually turned down a job with a NBC owned and operated station to come to L.A. because we just couldn't see having a family in New York. I mean it happens and we see it.

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: It was like you couldn't imagine how people could have to deal with strollers in New York. You just couldn't see how they could have a natural family life in New York. We came back here so that we could start a family and that was important to us. I think we both felt like we accomplished a lot being in L.A. and working in L.A. was a good broadcast market, so we wanted to come back.

ZIERLER: Gay, being in Los Angeles, did that get you closer to JPL? Did that sort of come on your radar more just by virtue of being in L.A.?

HILL: It's funny because Jim was the CNN reporter that covered Sojourner.

ZIERLER: Oh, wow!

HILL: Sojourner was when our kids were still babies.…Jim brought home the little LEGO Sojourner. "These are going to be collector's items!" [laugh] I knew JPL was here and then I was a reporter myself. I would come and cover stories at JPL I had moved over from KCAL to KCET, so I was working for PBS. Our son had just reached school age and he was in kindergarten, and he had been assessed with ADHD. Suddenly, I felt like I needed to be present. When you're a reporter or in broadcasting you don't know any given day where you will be.

ZIERLER: Right.

HILL: Certainly, you wouldn't be able to be called to the school and be able to be there if something happened to your child or was sick. I knew JPL was basically a mile and a half from our house. I approached the media relations department and basically said, "If there were ever an opportunity, I'm just a mile and a half from JPL and I would love that opportunity." I sought out JPL.

ZIERLER: Do you have a sense…does a media relation, is there a public outreach component to JPL that goes all the way back to its origins? Was that always part of the mission of JPL to have a dedicated team that would communicate the science or was that a more recent development?

HILL: I think it probably goes far back. But let's face it. JPL is doing things that the public is interested in and the press is interested in, so you need someone to be able to help with that, to be able to help coordinate it, scheduling things to be able to make things happen. I think it's been there for a long time for sure.

ZIERLER: What year was it when you initially reached out to JPL? Would that have been like 2001, 2002?

HILL: It was 2003. That was just before the landings of Spirit and Opportunity.

ZIERLER: Right.

HILL: The Mars Explorations Rovers. They hired me right around that time. I was hired to be the Spitzer Space Telescope media relations person. I dealt solely with Spitzer pretty much, but as we got closer and closer to the Mars landings, I was asked to help with the future television coverage.

ZIERLER: This is just great insight already you're providing. That's to say at JPL in media relations all of the flagship missions have their own dedicated media relations person. Or was Spitzer a unique case?

HILL: Yes and no. The media reps had theme areas they were responsible for, such as an Earth media rep, inner solar system rep, outer solar system rep, Mars rep. , that would take care of missions in their particular areas. But on occasion there would be a big mission that would get a huge amount of media attention and the entire department would be called upon to support it. It is fluid depending on what is necessary. There were focused areas, but times when one area needed more hands then all of us would jump in and help out with those particular events.

ZIERLER: Gay, some administrative questions as they relate to the media relations outfit at JPL. First, how big is it and who is in charge of that program?

HILL: It's changed now. I would say to learn more about this you should really go to the media relations department now. At the time there was a news chief and then there was the manager of media relations. Now she's the manager of media relations and social media. There's a lot more to it today than there was when I first started.

ZIERLER: So, it's bigger now. That's for sure.

HILL: It's much bigger, but it has also morphed in the time that I've been gone. I can't really tell you exactly how it's structured because just as I was leaving there was a restructuring taking place. I can't exactly tell you for certain. There's a lot more there and it's much more complicated than I know for sure. I would be afraid to tell you something and it's no longer the case.

ZIERLER: No, no. But from a historical perspective. Gay, is the sense that when you were hired did that represent a professionalization of the program at all? Were there other professional television and radio hosts and anchors that had that career come to JPL? Had that happened before?

HILL: Many in the department came from strong professional backgrounds in media. In management, Blaine Baggett worked at KCET and is a primetime Emmy winner for a documentary he did for PBS. He's a national Emmy winner. I believe he may have a DuPont or a Peabody too. Veronica McGregor, the news chief and then later manager of the entire media relations department, came from CNN. When they hired me, I think they knew that having my broadcasting skills would be helpful because JPL was producing more video. They knew that that would be a good skill set. The department is full of professionals from journalism.

ZIERLER: In talking about the beats—so the reporting structure—who determines what media relations people are going to focus on what story? How high up the chain are those kinds of decisions being made?

HILL: It really wasn't something that I was involved in. It was more of an upper management decision depending on the needs of the department at the given time. We all had separate beats and so different people had different missions. For instance, If you were the Outer Solar System rep that meant you took care of the Saturn missions such as Cassini. But since there was so much news for Earth and Mars, there was a rep assigned to each of the planet themes. Then whatever missions fell in your theme area was on your plate.

ZIERLER: I see. Your initial assignment, your initial beat as you said was Spitzer.

HILL: Right.

ZIERLER: What was your interface with the scientists and engineers? Would you talk with them? How would you develop content for the stories?

HILL: Usually quite often there are papers that are about to be written. If it was coming out in Nature or Science it's usually the scientists that give us a heads up and they are aware of a particular publication date. You worked towards getting things ready for that release date at that time. And If they had a really big finding coordinating some kind of news conference.

ZIERLER: Gay, of course this is all happening before social media, before we can create instantaneous buzz, right?

HILL: Right.

ZIERLER: How in talking with the scientists and engineers and reading the papers and getting ready to share this story, how would you convey the information? What were the media channels that you had to get the story out there?

HILL: At JPL we had social media reps that dealt with that. Veronica McGregor is the Media Relations/Social Media manager. I think she saw way back at the very early stages how that was going to be the way information would be going out. She was very much involved with Twitter early on and held one of the very first Tweetups (as in Meet-ups) at JPL. The media relations department opened up an opportunity for space fans, you would call them influencers today, to sign up for a chance to come to JPL for a tour. They were people that loved space exploration and they also had many followers. Having them come to one of our events or giving them a tour meant that there would be a much farther reach. JPL did some of the very first tweetups—even before NASA.

Since then, it's a very big part of the department. It's very critical. There are media days when reporters and social media people sign up to take a tour and learn about a particular mission. For instance, prior to Perseverance launching there would be a media day for them to come to the lab. They would get a behind the scenes tour of the clean room and things like that. It was something that kind of happened very organically because these people really had a passion for the information, and it just exploded. In the early days before social media, with Spirit and Opportunity, there were museum get togethers. On the landing nights, some museums would stay open because the Spirit and Opportunity landings happened at two o'clock in the morning or one o'clock in the morning. Museum alliances all over the country held campouts in their exhibit areas so people could watch the landings together. I thought that was wonderful.

By the time Curiosity happened there were thousands of people hanging out in Times Square watching Curiosity land on the Jumbotron. That was due in part to social media. People found out when it was happening, and they wanted a gathering spot to share that experience together. I think that was cool.

Voicing JPL During Mission Events

ZIERLER: Gay, did you join the beat for Opportunity and Spirit before launch date in July 2003?

HILL: Right. I joined JPL in March of 2003. That was within plenty of time for preparation. I did the commentary for Cassini's orbit insertion in early 2004 too. It was much different at that time. NASA commentary was just not produced. It was very simple. Sort of golf commentary sort of thing where—

ZIERLER: You mean real time commentary, as it's happening?

HILL: As it's happening. Early on it was just being there at a key time, not filling a program with video packages and interviews. Most of it was just having that camera on the mission support area where all the engineers were watching their screens. Then having Al Hibbs, who was the original voice of JPL commentating and explaining. I used to see it as a lot like golf commentary. Translating the calls given over the P.A. and explaining what the mission events were. That was much more like being a fly on the wall watching and letting folks know what was going on. There would be long periods of silence and then you would hear the VOCA call, the communications between the engineers. Then you'd have Al Hibbs or the commentator come and say, "You just heard the team responding to the go-no-go call." It was much more removed, and you were an observer.

When I started producing the commentary, I tried to make it more of a tv show program. For example, the Cassini orbit insertion. I produced it too much like a TV program. I tried to fill every minute with content. That turned out to be a big mistake. I conducted a live interview over a critical mission event.

A seasoned science reporter was watching in the JPL newsroom, and he absolutely went bananas. He was convinced I was conducting that interview to cover up something that had gone wrong with the spacecraft.

ZIERLER: Whoa…

HILL: I didn't realize how important it was to listen to the room and standby for critical mission events. I was conducting an interview over a crucial event and this reporter was convinced something had gone wrong with the spacecraft and he thought JPL was trying to cover it up with the interview.

I learned from that experience that commentary was not a TV show where you fill every minute with content. This was a live event happening in real time. People were sitting on the edge of their seats during key moments wondering, "Did it happen? Did it make it?" That taught me that commentary coverage had to be a marriage between those two worlds. A tv show and live coverage.

As I produced more of these commentaries, I learned to work with the mission and say, "Can I get your procedure and see where the critical events are?" That's when the cameras and the mics need to be trained on the team. When there's nothing going on and the team is just waiting – that's the time to throw in a video or an interview. I learned to produce commentary by having made that first mistake.

ZIERLER: What was the next production you did that put to use all the things that you learned?

HILL: Thank goodness we did the Cassini orbit insertion before Spirit landed. I learned that the reporter had a very legitimate reason for getting angry. After that I started to work closely with the teams. I ended up shadowing the team, sitting in on their meetings. I would meet with their project managers to get a real understanding of the mission and the event we were covering. They educated me so that I fully understood. I had to completely understand step by step what was going on.

I would start anywhere from a year to six months prior to the event. I would request things like the mission procedure to know the timings of spacecraft events. The procedure had a spacecraft timeline that I worked off of so I'd know when I could get away with doing an interview or rolling a video.

ZIERLER: Gay, the obvious improved integration with your work and what was happening with the scientists and the engineers, was that happening more broadly for the media relations team? In other words was JPL moving in a direction where just like you were doing individually, were most of the reporters and producers getting more involved with understanding the mission in real time so that the production, the reporting would be more accurate?

HILL: I think we did that on an ongoing basis anyway. I remember when we were getting close to any major event, say a Mars landing or an orbit insertion, I remember that the entire department would get presentations from the project manager. The more the media reps understood the better we could help reporters. Many of the reporters covering our stories were general assignment reporters. They didn't have a background in space and needed help understanding how things worked and which events were significant. As we got closer to the big event, all the media reps would have to get up to speed to support the newsroom, even if it wasn't part of their normal beat. Everyone would be fielding telephone calls from reporters so everyone would need a working knowledge to help. The better media reps are informed the better we could help the media.

ZIERLER: Gay, for the Spirit launch in June of 2003 and the Opportunity launch in July of 2003, what was that like for you? What were you doing on those days?

HILL: JPL television is less involved with the launches and more involved with the spacecraft arrivals. I remember to prepare for the landing coverage, I came in on my weekends and would sit in my office playing back interviews to learn about the mission. When Spirit landed, I remember thinking to myself, "Wow. I was just a part of history." It really was a lightbulb moment. As a reporter you're removed, you're strictly an observer. But I was in the control room experiencing it with the team. It was completely different.

Then the next landing, Opportunity, was really stressful. The sister rover, Spirit, was having trouble so the team was worried Opportunity might have a problem too. So, the team had one rover on Mars in trouble and another one barreling in. Opportunity landed safely and I remember Rob Manning, the chief engineer, burst into tears of relief. I remember thinking how human he was. He's sitting in the front row of the Mission Support Area and just erupts. Folks are pounding him on his back, so happy, and he's crying tears of relief. I was sitting in the other room, watching through the glass window and I was bawling too. So relieved that the cameras were not on me. I knew what those people in that room were going through. I knew how important it was. Their hearts were on that spacecraft. It was an incredible moment. I wasn't a reporter or journalist removed, observing. I felt a part of it too.

ZIERLER: Gay, looking back it's so obvious how the Mars mission captured the American, the world's attention. Did you feel that in real time? Did you sense the eyes of the world focused on JPL in this moment?

HILL: There's a picture of people in Times Square watching the Curiosity landing. It's nighttime and people are on the street, holding their cell phones to their ears and watching the Jumbotron in Times Square. These people were enthralled. People all over the world were watching. It was a wonderful moment. All of us are experiencing this wonderful success. It was a unifying, positive moment for the country and I felt very proud of our country.

ZIERLER: Gay, I wonder. Charles Elachi, being so personable, being so charismatic, being almost Hollywood, right? Like he was so comfortable with the cameras, he was so good at politics—did that translate to the media relations office, his comfort with the camera? Did he set a tone that was palpable at your level?

HILL: That was just Charles Elachi. He was so approachable. I would be up all night working on a script and at five o'clock in the morning, I'd email Dr. Elachi. Dr. Elachi responded to everyone's email at JPL. Anybody! The five thousand employees at that time. I send Dr. Elachi an email at five in the morning and BING! [laugh] He would give me an answer. I think yes, he did understand the importance of communication. He knew that the more people understood about our space missions, the more they cared. Yes, he saw the value of that.

ZIERLER: I wonder when you got to the launch for Spitzer in August—given the significance and the drama with Opportunity and Spirit—if you already felt like a veteran at JPL even though you'd only been there a few months.

HILL: I don't think you ever feel like a veteran truly because there's always something new and it's always different and it's so off the wall different. Dr. Elechi's favorite saying was, "Dare mighty things' and that really did ring true. That's what JPL did - things that had never been done before and doing it fearlessly.

I grew up in a Chinese family and am a bit of a perfectionist. I like to do things that I'm good at and are safe. But you don't learn that way. At JPL if you don't push the envelope enough you won't get enough information, you won't learn as much. That acceptance, that the ability to embrace things going wrong really impressed me. It's okay if it goes wrong because if it didn't you wouldn't have learned what you needed to know.

ZIERLER: Gay, I'm not sure where to orient this in the chronological narrative, but over the course of Charles Elechi's directorship JPL because more involved in climate change science. Putting up satellites that would focus on the Earth, global warming, and things like that. From a media relations perspective did you feel like at a certain point JPL became more involved in the climate change conversation?

HILL: Climate change was controversial. I know folks who were involved in it. There was a lot of frustration at times for some scientists. It was not my beat but I know there were a lot of earth missions to study carbon, methane, the sea surface and other things to get concrete data on what was happening on our planet.

ZIERLER: Another general question with the few years under your belt at this point. The special relationship, the triangle between NASA and Caltech and JPL, what portions of your career or your day to day felt more on the NASA side of things? And when did you really feel that connection to campus?

HILL: I didn't deal with campus very much. Although Caltech manages JPL, JPL works for NASA. It is funded by NASA. There was the prime contract, and we were conscious of the fact that the work was paid for by taxpayer dollars.

ZIERLER: Now in the way that NASA has NASA employees embedded in JPL, was that true in media relations as well? Did you have colleagues at JPL who were NASA media people?

HILL: Everybody in our department were JPL-ers. Since JPL is a NASA center, the media reps worked closely with NASA headquarters daily.

ZIERLER: You mentioned Dawn. Let's talk a little bit more generally. What was so fascinating to you about Dawn? What did you like so much about it?

HILL: One, it dealt with ion propulsion which is something straight out of Star Trek.

ZIERLER: Right. [laugh]

HILL: It went to two bodies in the far reaches of the solar system, the Oort Cloud. Most missions only carry enough fuel to go to one place and be done. Dawn used ion propulsion, which enabled it to go to two destinations and study two bodies, Vesta and Ceres. It was a twofer. It was so well designed and so cost effective. It was always a favorite of mine.

ZIERLER: Gay, did you ever travel for work? Did you ever go on site to Cape Canaveral? Did you ever have meetings in headquarters in Washington?

HILL: I didn't do as much as many of my co-workers. If I didn't like to travel because of leaving my family. I was lucky to have a partner on Spitzer who liked to travel. You know her; it's Whitney Clavin.

ZIERLER: Of course. Whitney.

HILL: Whitney and I were both the media reps for Spitzer. Whitney would travel and I stayed behind.

ZIERLER: Gay, I wonder what missions gave you insight into the way that JPL was really involved in fundamental discovery about the biggest questions out there. For example, Kepler and the search for exoplanets. Did you cover the exoplanet beat at all?

HILL: Whitney took over that beat, and I moved into doing more of the television production work.

ZIERLER: Tell me about at this portion of your career, this stage, what were some of the television productions that you were doing? What did they look like? How did you originate ideas?

HILL: As we had more missions and programs under our belts, we'd get more creative. Spirit and Opportunity were simple shows. They were probably about an hour or two long. Towards the end for me I think Curiosity ended up being a three-hour program.

ZIERLER: Yeah.

HILL: Part of it was because NASA wanted us to do more. It was like the Super Bowl and you do the preshow, the main event and then you do the post show. There was a lot more production involved. The more intricate and more technological we got. I'm sure you know that JPL won two national Emmys.

ZIERLER: Yes!

HILL: Part of it was because JPL did different stuff. Pushed the envelope too. For Cassini's Grand Finale, we had a 360 camera inside the control room. It was a live 360 view that someone online could use their mouse to pan around the room. Viewers could see members of the team, live in person, doing their jobs. We also embedded my commentary in a window at the top of the screen so viewers could listen to the commentary while monitoring the room. There was also a big campaign that involved the education department and the outreach departments. It was a group effort that won the Primetime Emmy. It was the entire multi-group effort. A year later, JPL won its second Primetime Emmy for the InSight mission coverage.

ZIERLER: Gay, as the productions got more involved, more elaborate, did the budget to do them increase as well? Or was it more a matter of increasing sophistication with the resources you had?

HILL: It's a little bit of both. The big missions had bigger budgets but were tiny compared to broadcast budgets. For example, the 360 camera was rented and relatively inexpensive. It was very simple, it was very small, right in the middle of the room. It was unobtrusive. The engineers didn't really notice it. But it made the on-line audience feel like they were really there.

ZIERLER: Were you involved at all in covering Juno, all of the interest and excitement around Jupiter?

HILL: I did the Juno launch and orbit insertion. We did the same sort of thing and produced the same sort of show only the drama was whether the spacecraft would get captured into orbit around Jupiter.

ZIERLER: What was that like covering Juno?

HILL: It was the same sort of thing. We had to be able to keep on the procedure and the schedule. Orbit insertions are much less dramatic than landings. With landings things can crash.

ZIERLER: I'm curious. I'm thinking specifically, the public's fascination with the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, right? Would you take cues from public interest, the kinds of things that the public was clamoring to know? Would that ever serve as a guide for the way you produced content?

HILL: I think yes. You know that everyone's interested in the Red Spot but so are the scientists. But there were other nail-biting movements involved with Juno. It was on a very dangerous planet. The radiation could've been a mission killer.

ZIERLER: Right.

HILL: There was drama there. I don't think it was difficult to instinctively know what people were interested in because everyone was interested in it.

ZIERLER: Was there ever any audience interactivity? Nowadays we have a Zoom webinar so people can type in the chat box questions they have. For any programs you were doing was there ever an opportunity to engage in real time with the JPL audience?

HILL: We did a lot of that. We would ask the audience to email or tweet questions to #askNASA and we would try to address those questions during the interview segments. I would leave time in each interview segment to address viewer questions. I think with Curiosity landing people sent photographs of themselves watching. We had screen grabs of kids in classrooms and parents with their children watching.

Communicating the Science

ZIERLER: When questions would come in, Gay, I'm curious at a certain point did you feel enough confidence in your own mastery of the information where you could answer questions yourself or was there always a technical person nearby that you could bounce these questions off of?

HILL: It was important to have a senior member of the mission or an expert with me on set. I had to have a good understanding of the mission too, but I always left the important questions to the experts. One time I was doing a show on asteroids. We had people from different organizations including NASA Headquarters and I had to ping pong questions to the different experts. It was important that I had a grasp of the information myself to send the question to the appropriate person on the panel.

ZIERLER: To go back to this idea of all hands-on deck. Obviously for the Curiosity rover that must've been the case. Did you sense that this was coming? Did you have years in advance to prepare for how big an event this was going to be? When did you get involved?

HILL: The entire department got involved. Preparations began at least a year in advance. For the Curiosity landing on Mars, I believe we had 400 members of the media show up. All those people had to have clearances before even setting foot on JPL. Reporters had to be credentialed and info had to be sent months in advance. It was a huge task. They needed to bring in trailers for the media. The museum was turned into a newsroom where reporters could prepare their stories. WiFi needed to be put in. That took at least a year—probably more—of coordination. So, yes. It definitely is a big deal.

ZIERLER: What was some of the preparation work you did in terms of content before launch day?

HILL: Really getting an understanding of the mission. I would read the mission press kits from one side to the other for a basic understanding of the spacecraft, how much it cost, and the timetable. Preparations for launch and the different stages of the mission. The cruise stage is when the spacecraft is headed to the planet. There are…TCMs – trajectory correction maneuvers— to put the spacecraft on the right path. I needed to know all of that.

All that would build up my own knowledge base. As it got closer and closer, then I would have to get deeper into the weeds and understand the spacecraft procedure, which was knowing what was happening and when on the spacecraft.

I had to know the maneuvers that could cause a mission ending event. The team would identify those times so I could be prepared and listen. If something went wrong, I would have to be able to react quickly. All the calls were made over the team's communication line called the VOCA. If you didn't have an educated ear, you wouldn't understand what you were hearing. The engineers were always willing to help bring me up to speed. The engineers were so patient with me. I think they respected me for it too because they knew that I was learning to comprehend what was going on.

ZIERLER: Gay, in retrospect there's such a narrative arc to all the Mars rovers, so if you situate yourself in 2011, Curiosity…obviously it's building on Spirit and Opportunity. It's also setting the path for what can be achieved with Perseverance, right? In producing the content and conveying these ideas to the audience, is there a way that you learn to convey that narrative about what came before and what's possible now and how what we're doing now is going to literally pave the way for what's happening in a future mission?

HILL: It was one of my questions that I always asked. Dr. Elachi always said missions set down the footsteps for the missions that follow. Sojourner paved the way for Spirit and Opportunity. Spirit and Opportunity had 90 days as the warranties because that's how long Sojourner lasted. They built the MER rovers to last longer. They operated for years, and Opportunity lasted over a decade. Curiosity had problems with its wheels, so they made darn sure Perseverance had different wheels. They learned from every mission to do things better on the next mission.

ZIERLER: What was launch day like for you for Curiosity? November 2011.

HILL: Launch day…I'm not as involved with launches because they were happening…at the Cape.

ZIERLER: You were not on site for Curiosity's launch?

HILL: Kennedy Space Center television took care of launch coverage and JPL handled the landings of its missions. There was one exception for me, the GRACE Follow-On mission. It was a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on a Space X rocket. It was the only launch commentary and show that I ever produced. I was so out of my element. [laugh] Launches have lots more variables. It's like, "It's windy today, so we're scrubbing it. We're going to come back and do it again a day later, but the timings would have to change." It's just much different.

ZIERLER: The landing…how did you convey the drama, being there in the moment? How could you share that drama of what was happening to all of the people who wanted to experience this in real time?

HILL: It's so funny because we learned that the best way to convey the drama was to back off and let the drama happen in real time. I usually stopped talking about 15 minutes prior to the big moment and let the drama play out live on its own. The spacecraft enters into the atmosphere. It's getting closer and closer to the planet and things are heating up in the atmosphere. Those critical moments were when I stepped aside, and you heard the voices from the room. I kind of saw myself as the glue that held the program together, but it was the landing that took center stage. I introduced you to the team and helped you understand science and engineering. The focus was on the team.

ZIERLER: That just reminds me earlier in our conversation when your natural inclination is not to be the center of attention. Obviously that personality trait served you so well in such a dramatic moment.

HILL: I think so. I think that's the way it should be. Sure, coming from broadcasting I knew a lot of prima donnas. But the people are really the focus. The people that really were doing the work.

ZIERLER: Gay, did Curiosity change the trajectory of your career at all?

HILL: I mean I had done everything I wanted to in broadcasting, so I kind of think I had my career. When I came to JPL my focus was on my family.

ZIERLER: That's interesting. Your time at JPL was sort of your post-career in a sense.

HILL: I saw it as that. But what's funny is that my post career landed the biggest awards, two national Emmys. I have two Emmys from covering news in New York City and L.A. But the two primetime national Emmys happened when I was no longer a broadcaster. I think I was a better anchor for NASA than I was in broadcasting because I knew the information. When you're a news anchor you're reading 50 different stories and you often don't have a deep knowledge of what you're reading. Being at JPL and working at JPL I was much closer and had a deeper understanding of the subject matter. I understood what the team was doing. It was my beat.

ZIERLER: I wonder how much this can be explained by one, just the timescale. With the daily reporting being an anchor it's just new stories day after day after day. Is there more opportunity at JPL that you can get more immersed, more deeply immersed in the story because it's not necessarily a new story every single day?

HILL: Absolutely. For sure.

ZIERLER: Then the other aspect of that question is how much of it is because intrinsically you didn't have the scientific training, but there was something about what JPL did that just spoke to you on a deep level. You believed in it and that helped you just be a sponge for all the information.

HILL: I think that's true. How could you not? You understand what's going on. I remember with the Mars helicopter and how difficult it was and all the tests in the chamber. "Will it fly?" Being a part of that and witnessing what a struggle it was. It's hard to not be swept up by it. Bottomline: it's a people story. You know the people behind it. You know how hard they work. You know what they're trying to achieve. You see their passion. It's hard not to be swept up by that passion.

ZIERLER: Gay, if I can reframe the original question. I asked about how Curiosity changed the course of your career. Within JPL, your secondary or your post-career, with your time at JPL did Curiosity change what you were doing or put new opportunities in front of you?

HILL: No, because taking care of those things was my job. It was just moving on to the next one.

ZIERLER: What was the next one? What happened after Curiosity?

HILL: I'm trying to remember. Curiosity was so long ago. Didn't Juno happen after Curiosity?

ZIERLER: Juno was I think slightly before Curiosity. Let's see…yes. Juno is a launch date of August 2011. I mean it depends how you feel. Is it the encounter that you remember or is it the landing on Mars that you remember? What sticks out chronologically for you?

HILL: We moved from mission to mission. I'm doing the prep work and the pre-work and the pre-videos. There is a lot of post work. After Curiosity landed, I was producing Curiosity reports. I think about once a week. As things sort of settled down, I was doing one a month or whenever there was something new or outstanding. NASA would also request that we produce programs for NASA TV too. I had to do a one hour special on asteroids and comets. There were always different missions that I was working on.

ZIERLER: Another question I asked about the tone that Charles Elachi set. In that transition period—2015-2016 when Mike Watkins took over—obviously a very different style of leadership. Is that the kind of thing that filters down to the media relations office? Would you feel the difference in terms of a change in director?

HILL: For the most part the critical things that we needed to get done, both would help out. The only difference was my communication with Dr. Elachi was much more direct because that was just how Dr. Elachi was.

ZIERLER: He answered his own emails.

HILL: Yes. And who does that? Mike Watkins did too but not as quickly.

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: I can't fault Mike for not being able to do that. I certainly wouldn't have been able to. I don't know how Dr. Elachi ever did it.

ZIERLER: Post Curiosity there's obviously so many missions; it's one after the other. What sticks out in your memory in the last 10 years?

HILL: Gosh. InSight landing. The end of Cassini. Both of those were huge and took a lot of preparation. It was Cassini's grand finale. Cassini was such an incredible mission and had so many findings. The public loved the images of all the moons and the rings—people truly loved that mission. I think we started preparing for the end of the mission more than a year before it was over. InSight's landing, again we did the same thing. We had to be able to prepare with pre-stories and explain every instrument and the goals of the mission. All of that was something we did on a normal basis too.

ZIERLER: Gay, when did you start thinking about retiring?

HILL: It was around 2018. My husband was already retired, and I wanted to spend more time with him. I could've stayed another year and a half for the landing of Perseverance, but it wouldn't have been anything I hadn't done before? It wasn't anything new. My family life was why I transitioned to JPL and how I made my decisions.

ZIERLER: Yes. I was just going to say you came there based on family decisions. Gay, an overall question on that basis. Was JPL good from the work-life balance perspective particularly as a mom, as a woman?

HILL: It was glorious. [laugh] Coming broadcasting where you never got days off. You didn't get holidays off. You didn't get Christmas off. You never got Veterans Day and Fourth of July. You just didn't have time off and you didn't have the schedule that your family had. You never knew where you were going to be one day to the next. You didn't know where your assignment was. It was life changing to be able to work in an office where I would get the same holidays as the kids. I never had that. I guess an average person wouldn't have appreciated it as much as me, but I really appreciated that.

In broadcasting if I called in sick, I would be fearful about what I missed. You're only as good as your last live shot. It was life changing to be able to have a schedule that would accommodate my family. To be able to call in sick when my kids were sick and not feel guilty or fearful was different.

ZIERLER: Gay, to bring the story right up to the present. Laurie Leshin, of course she just became the new JPL director—first woman JPL director. As a woman is that particularly meaningful to you or are you more on the side of—

HILL: Oh yeah!

ZIERLER: It is.

HILL: I was so excited to see that. I was so intensely proud of JPL.

ZIERLER: Yeah.

HILL: I was so proud.

ZIERLER: Tell me what is the significance of this for you?

HILL: JPL was willing to take that risk, JPL and Caltech. To be willing to do that. To do something that was different. To have faith that this person had the capability and the strength to be able to run a place like JPL. To give her a chance, in fact. I think there are a lot of places that wouldn't have done that quite frankly.

ZIERLER: If I can ask if it's…the idea that it's a risk. If we were to blind the resumes, right? You just look at the experience. Laurie…the qualifications…as strong a candidate as you could ever want in the whole world, right? Where is the risk, if not in the experience? Where do you see the risk?

HILL: I think the same applies for scientific positions and funding. Different institutions have started to judge grants and positions blindly and not look at the credentials but on the merit of the proposal. I think the scientific community is moving in that direction. I was with the Caltech Women's Club and listened to their stories. Women were let go when they were pregnant back in the 60's because it was assumed they couldn't work after having kids. Caltech established the Child Education Center to provide childcare for employees. The Caltech Women's Club spearheaded that. That's progressive. I'm just immensely proud of both Caltech and JPL.

ZIERLER: What are you most excited about for JPL looking to the future?

HILL: I just look forward to all the things that they are working on. The Europa missions are definitely very exciting to me. Water worlds…to realize there are so many places that have oceans like ours and if there are oceans there's the potential of life. Finding exoplanets. In my short tenure at JPL, the number of exoplanets have exploded. To think "Yeah! We'll probably find life." [laugh] It's amazing.

ZIERLER: Gay, you mentioned before working—it's taxpayer funded work. In what ways did it really feel strong that you were a public servant, that you were doing something for the national interest.

HILL: Even simple things like pictures. Visuals are so important to me and they tell you so much. They are so compelling and draw in your imagination. JPL has always understood the value of putting a camera on many of their missions. It's the one thing that everyone can relate to. It was always such a pleasure to tell people this wealth of imagery was free. I remember back in the day they used to have lithographs and people used to call in and request lithographs for their classrooms. Now we can say, "No. You can just go on the website. You can download the picture. You paid for it." Being able to say that and to say that "You're responsible for this. It's not for us. It's all of us." It makes you very proud. I went on a trip last week to see some of my husband's high school friends, and they remarked, "You sound like you just had the best job!"

ZIERLER: [laugh]

HILL: I had to say, "Yeah. It was." I feel so incredibly blessed and incredibly fortunate to have had the careers that I have. Being a reporter was wonderful. I learned every day. I wasn't doing the same thing. I was around people. Then to go to JPL and be a part of all those amazing things. I can't complain. People complain about their jobs all the time and I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I think I really was the luckiest kid on the block.

ZIERLER: Gay, two last questions to wrap it all up. For you personally in your sense of feeling so privileged and blessed to be able to have done this, in the sense of your own curiosity about the universe what front row seat did you have to learning about our solar system, about the universe that was so special for you, that gave you such a sense of wonder in asking the big questions?

HILL: Gosh. That is such a good question. Exoplanets for sure. The Spitzer Space Telescope was a good example. Spitzer was done with its cold mission and could've been mothballed. Instead, it was repurposed into a warm mission that was good at searching for exoplanets. Kepler also spotted so many exoplanets. Earth-like planets. It's unbelievable. And the idea of one day digging into water worlds. Those two things seemed inconceivable not long ago. I think it's amazing.

ZIERLER: Finally, Gay, last question. Because the nature of the work was as you say a conduit to the public to spark that imagination, to get them involved, what were some of the feedback mechanisms that you got either from an individual or an organization where it was just so satisfying—your ability to be able to make those connections.

HILL: Gosh. I remember right after the InSight landing and looking at our YouTube page of the coverage and there were three million viewers that watched that landing. Three million people understood the importance of that moment. That was satisfying. That they wanted to be involved. They wanted to witness this. And I'll always remember that one image of folks in Times Square watching Curiosity land. The wonder on their faces. That felt good.

ZIERLER: Gay, this has been a marvelous conversation. Thank you for letting me convince you to do this.

HILL: I hope so! [laugh]

ZIERLER: I'd like to thank you so much.

[END]