After receiving her doctorate in English from Princeton and teaching in that department for three years, Hilary served from 2000 until 2003 as the Dean of Rockefeller College, and from 2003 until 2010 as Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students at Princeton. She then embarked upon a second career as psychotherapist, earning a master’s degree in social work from NYU in 2011. She worked as a therapist in private practice before returning in 2015 to Princeton University as a counselor at Counseling and Psychological Services, where she sees graduate and undergraduate students and serves as Urgent Care Coordinator. She has four children between the ages of eighteen and and thirty-six.