Joseph Hilyard

Joe Hilyard holds degrees in both engineering (WPI) and journalism (UW-Madison) and brought both to bear in a career that emphasized energy and its interplay with society and the environment.

From 1981 to 2004, with Gas Research Institute and its successor, GTI (both near Chicago), he had two distinct ten-year tours of duty. In the first, he helped decide which natural-gas-related research projects were worthy of funding. Then, he directed corporate communications programs to publicize research results, explain their value to key audiences, and support new business development.

His association with PennWell Publishing Co. led to creation of several books about the oil and gas industry from 2004 to 2012. But other freelance projects from 2005 to 2019 were also influenced by pre-Chicago work experience that ranged from third-shift factory work (in hometown Worcester, MA), to spacesuit testing for the Apollo program (Houston), to automotive crash-testing (Ann Arbor) and trade-press magazine writing (Boston and Milwaukee).

Hilyard retired in late 2019 to focus on sharpening his grand-parenting skills.