G. Robert Hillman, ’72 MEDIA
Senior Editor at POLITICO
Bob Hillman is a senior editor at POLITICO. He was a national and White House correspondent for The Dallas Morning News in Washington from 1997 to 2006 and deputy chief of the Washington bureau from 1988 to 1997. Earlier, he was chief of the state capital bureau in Austin, Texas. He reported on seven presidential campaigns, his first for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1980 and six later for The Morning News. In 1997, he covered the Oklahoma City bombing trials in Denver. Hillman was born in Peoria, Ill., and grew up on a farm near Flanagan. A 1972 graduate of the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he worked briefly at the now-defunct Chicago Today newspaper, then moved to the Sun-Times. At the Sun-Times, Hillman was a general assignment and investigative reporter, then chief of the capital bureau in Springfield, Ill., and later a national correspondent. He joined The Morning News in 1984.At the Sun-Times, Hillman was awarded a Stick-O-Type by the Chicago Newspaper Guild for feature writing. And he was a member of The Morning News team that was awarded a Katie by the Dallas Press Club for coverage the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh. An alumnus of The Daily Illini and WPGU Radio at the University of Illinois, Hillman was inducted into the Illini Media Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2002, he received a 4-H Alumni Award from the university’s Cooperative Extension Service.

Robert G. Kennedy, ’78 ENG
President and co-CEO of C-SPAN
Rob Kennedy was named C-SPAN’s President and co-CEO in April 2012, a position he shares with his colleague Susan Swain. Together, they are responsible for strategy and operations at the nation’s only public affairs cable television network. Prior to that, he served as C-SPAN’s President and co-COO, and has been C-SPAN’s top financial officer since 1987. Rob has worked in the cable television industry his entire career. He brought to C-SPAN experience at both the corporate and system levels of cable television operations. In Rochester, NY, which was a Time, Inc. company, Rob was Vice President of Marketing and Programming. Earlier, he worked at the corporate offices of the Chicago-based Centel Cable Television Company. Rob had an important role to play in C-SPAN’s earliest days, when Jack Frazee, the CEO of Centel Cable tasked Rob with writing the first business plan for the start-up cable network. At the time, Mr. Frazee was serving as board chairman for C-SPAN, which is a public service created by the nation’s cable television operating companies. Rob is a native of Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln’s hometown and the state capital, which gave Rob a lifelong interest in politics and history. He earned a B.S in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017. He has served on several university advisory boards and is currently a director of the University of Illinois Alumni Alliance. Rob is active in the cable industry. He’s a board member and Governance Committee Chair for the Emma Bowen Foundation, which creates mentoring opportunities for minority college students in cable, broadcast, and technology companies. He also serves as Chair of the CTAM Education Foundation, sponsor of the highly-regarded Cable Executive Management Program at Harvard University. In 2004, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) selected Rob and Susan Swain as winners of the Vanguard Award for Programmers, the industry’s highest honor. They were inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame in 2017, and the Cable Hall of Fame in 2019.

Laura Miller, ’11 MEDIA
Digital Director for Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming
Laura is an experienced digital strategist and storyteller previously leading social media in the Obama White House’s Office of Digital Strategy. Currently, she is serving as the digital director for Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming, and just completed a 34-stop tour. In the past year, she successfully led digital for campaigns including March for Our Lives, the United State of Women Summit, and When We All Vote. Laura has also spent time serving in the U.S. Senate as a senior comms advisor and at the Department of Labor under Secretary Tom Perez, where she built and led a digital communications team to promote critical workplace issues including paid leave, equal pay, and the future of work. Before that, she helped lead key fundraising projects for the 2012 Obama for America reelection campaign in both Chicago and Denver. She is a 2011 graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and hails from Woodstock, Illinois.