About
An Emmy Award-nominated, 20-year veteran of the film industry, Jennifer Hile has produced media in more than 25 countries on all 7 continents. Her work’s appeared on the BBC, National Geographic, PBS, and A&E; in ad campaigns for Google, Microsoft, Macy’s, and HSBC; and in exhibition films for the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Jennifer helped build the OceanX Media production company from scratch, overseeing all productions aboard the remarkable OceanX research vessel as Head of Production, as well as shaping the company’s overall production strategy. This included developing and producing the six-part OceanXplorers series now streaming on Disney+, narrated and executive produced by James Cameron, featuring young explorers plumbing the depths from the equator to the arctic. She also spent months at sea for the landmark BBC TV series “Blue Planet II” in locations ranging from the equatorial waters off Costa Rica to a month in the icy beauty of Antarctica to capture some of that series’ most iconic moments. Jennifer is also an Executive Producer of Our Blue Planet, a digital partnership with BBC Earth to amplify and expand the conversation started by the television series, as well as executive producing the 3D film Imax film “Oceans: Our Blue Planet,” narrated by Kate Winslet.
Goop profiled Jennifer and explored some of the behind-the-scenes adventures (a school of dolphins 5,000 strong in a remote stretch of the Pacific, iceberg-hopping by helicopter in Antarctica) here.
Jennifer worked with Leonardo DiCaprio and Fisher Stevens in the Bahamas for their remarkable climate change film, Before the Flood. She led a partnership with Airbnb for their “Night At” experience, bringing an astronaut and marine biology student out to explore the deep ocean. And for a PBS/BBC program on the Amazon River, Jennifer became the first woman to explore the basin of the Amazon by submarine, descending into dark underwater canyons carved over thousands of years to document life no one had seen before.
Prior to OceanX, Jennifer’s production career had already taken her around the globe several times over. She’s filmed Galapagos sharks off the remote Socorro Islands in the Pacific Ocean and elephants in the jungles of Burma and Thailand; lived among orangutans for nine months in Borneo and among the Asmat in the remote jungles of Papua; worked with stunt drivers crashing trucks in fiery explosions in Los Angeles and tracked rhinos in the jungles of Nepal; and traced the migrations of hippos once owned by Pablo Escobar in Colombia for National Geographic, which she also discussed on Fox Radio’s “Outkick the Coverage with Clay Travis,” for their Animal Thunderdome series.
It began at age 25, when left her job as a researcher for National Geographic Magazine and sold everything she owned in order to explore the world she’d been reading about at work. She co-captained a 25-foot sloop from Singapore through Southeast Asia, across the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, along the north coast of Africa and into the Mediterranean Sea. Ever since that fateful decision, Jennifer has brought the same passion and curiosity to her work.
Writing and Photography
Jen’s articles and photographs have appeared in: National Geographic Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Salon, New York Times News Syndicate, National Geographic Kids, National Geographic’s website, Wildlife Conservation Magazine, Grist, Sport Diver, and others. She also co-authored “End of the Line,” a report from the wildlife advocacy organization WildAid on the global shark crisis.
Her photographs have also been featured in the book, “Elephants and Ethics: Towards a Morality of Co-existence,” published by John Hopkins University, and exhibited at the Half King in New York City.
Public Speaking
Always up to talk about the things she is passionate about, Jennifer has given talks at the Soho House and the Explorer’s Club in New York City; the National Geographic Society in Washington D.C; the Jacob Burns Film Center in New York; Oceanic Global’s “Films for Thought” series; the International Society for Tech and Education in Chicago; the Bryant Park Hotel in New York City; the Fovea Photo Gallery in Hudson, New York; The Half King in New York City; and the International Wildlife Festival in Missoula, Montana.