A Macon Native’s Place in an American Story
Cate Hill is difficult to reach these days.
By phone. By text. By carrier pigeon.
As the Deputy Director of Donor Campus Engagement for the Obama Foundation, Cate was especially busy at the epicenter of the grand opening ceremony of the foundation’s new Obama Presidential Centerheld June 18th on Chicago’s south side, an area where former U.S. President Barack Obama got his start as a community organizer and where he met his future wife.
The celebrity-filled opening event was lived-streamed as an NBC News Special Report, and in person, drew thousands of friends, family and others including city, state, and federal government leaders. Four former U.S. presidents and first ladies attended and stood side-by-side on the stage.
For several Maconites and others across the state who know her, Cate Hill might easily be their celebrity of choice these days as a native Georgian proudly attached to the globally prominent project.
A graduate of Georgia State University, she attended public schools in Macon (Rosa Taylor Elementary, Miller Middle School, and Central High) and volunteered at every opportunity for local arts entities before beginning a successful career in communications.
“I wouldn’t have enjoyed the career and life I have without the Bibb County Public Schools. My parents, Roland and Judy Hill, moved our family to Macon when I was eight. My mother taught for more than three decades at Rosa Taylor, and all of my other teachers fed my curiosities about world travel, the arts, and writing. Teachers I remember as especially impactful are Randy Harshbarger, (the late) James Caldwell, and (the late) Elizabeth Hinesley who fostered curiosity, encouraged teamwork, and modeled inclusion. I made friends in public schools from various cultures and walks of life, each with their own story. These experiences have shaped me.”
Hill’s resume is impressive, listing high-profile positions beginning with marketing and programming for Mercer University’s burgeoning arts holdings that include the Tattnall Square Center for the Arts, the Piedmont Grand Opera House, and the McDuffie Center for Strings, among several others.
Also in Macon, Cate worked as Senior Marketing Producer at Macon’s 13WMAZ-TV from 2001-2008 and as Director of the Macon Arts Alliance for two years before moving to Savannah to join Georgia Public Broadcasting as station manager. Starting in 2017, she hosted the statewide broadcast of GPB’s popular All Things Considered.
“At an intersection in my career in late 2018, I applied to what is now the 10-year-old Obama Foundation, and was thrilled to be hired. I moved to Chicago and began working with a team finalizing the design and preparation to build the Obama Presidential Center.
Last July, I joined the Foundation’s development team, which stewards relationships with donors and potential donors funding the campus and the center’s domestic and global programs.
Today I serve as the Deputy Director of Donor Campus Engagement, managing a full roster of welcome tours for these donors and other special guests to the Center.”
Hill was asked to take the Obama family on its first construction site tour.
“The Obamas are genuinely lovely…gracious and kind, just as they appear to be in the public eye. They are a loving family, and were excited to see the site becoming a reality and even more excited about the people who will visit and the programs and events that will take place at the Center.”
Cate says the project work leading up to the opening has been thrillingly non-stop, and the days are still sometimes long, but satisfying.
The successful June 18 opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center was immediately followed the next day by a full-scale Juneteenth celebration, and on July 4th, and after, an entertainment-filled five-hour public event to celebrate “250 Years of American Spirit.” Staged outdoors on the center’s 19-acre campus, celebrity musicians and well-known guest speakers held forth on stage at the plaza named for civil rights activist and U.S. House of Representatives John R. Lewis who served in Georgia’s 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.
The Obama Center’s Chicago campus itself has ties to Macon. The 19-acre landscape was originally designed by the renowned NYC architectural firm founded by Calvert Vaux & Frederick Law Olmstead, who worked on projects that included NYC’s Central Park and Prospect Park. In 1887, Vaux himself, working solo, designed Macon’s historic Riverside Cemetery, one of the few documented Vaux landscape projects in the Southeast.
Cate is eager to see the new center unfold and develop new connections, programs, activities and opportunities for guests from around the world. It has been a heady, wild ride to get there and she has played a role in its existence. Her hometown and its people played a part in her appreciation of all of it.
“Macon’s Washington Park, the Ocmulgee River and the wetland behind my childhood home on Thornwood Drive were the first green spaces I loved. Macon’s historic architecture was the first to capture my imagination and it shapes how I relate to the natural and structural environment today and how I speak about this dynamic, new Presidential Center – great history, nature and architecture!”
“When I returned to Macon after a decade working in film in Atlanta and Los Angeles, I better understood the impact of community leaders like Jim Crisp, Charles Richardson, Miriam Paris, Chris Sheridan, Karla Redding Andrews, Tony Long and many others, including the founders of Macon Magazine, Joni Woolf and Lynn Cass. It’s moving for me to see the thoughtful, often untold, work they’ve done to preserve and lay a foundation for the beloved, modern city I see today.”
Said Cate: “The Obama Presidential Center is much more than any of us could have imagined!
It’s providing a great ‘go-to’ place for civic participation – birthdays, picnics, family reunions and other celebrations. Creative endeavors, lectures, children’s programming, and educational activities will provide lots of options for Chicago natives and visitors.
It has been meaningful for me to be a part of this tremendous project.”
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