Erica Hill

Adding her feminine point of view, good looks and sense of humour to the news every week day night on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Erica Hill has become almost as much a part the silver haired Anderson Cooper show as the man himself.

Erica Hill was born on July 20^th 1976 in Connecticut. Her university education saw her graduating from Boston University with the highest honours in a BA in Journalism .

Using her degree in journalism Erica began her career at PC Week where she was a production assistant for PC Week Radio, the online news radio station for the magazine. She was also a conference coordinator for the Software Publishers Association Europe in Paris which gave her the chance to use her fluency in French.

Later Erica became a reporter for Tech TV News where she covered a wide variety of technology stories. She also anchored and co-produced specials on a number of topics including the debate surrounding embryonic stem cell research, the technology behind the 2002 Winter Olympics and the 2001 Oscars.

It was while working for Tech TV in 1999 that Erica met her husband to be David Yount, who at the time was a student and later became a lawyer. The two married on October 15^th 2005 in the historic Trolley Barn in Atlanta’s Inman Park.

Hill was on the air live when the September 11th 2001terrorist attacks took place in New York City and at the Pentagon and continued to anchor the show throughout the day as events continued to unfold.

Following her time at Tech TV Erica joined CNN in 2003 and was based at the network’s world headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Among her best know reports is Hill’s coverage from Mississippi of Hurricane Katrina. She also anchored coverage of the war in Iraq, including the discovery of American contractor Thomas Hamill after he escaped his captors there and the Northeast U.S. blackout in 2003 which left New York City plunged into darkness for more than 24 hours. She has also served as a national correspondent for CNN Newsource in the Washington, D.C., bureau.

Now a days Erica can be seen every weekday night at 5.00 pm where she hosts Prime News with Erica Hill as part of the network's Headline Prime primetime lineup after which she contributes news updates to Anderson Cooper 360°. Together Cooper and Hill can frequently be seen playing ‘verbal volleyball’ in an adlib situation which often leaves one or the other of the players with more than a ‘blush’ to their cheeks!

Erica also supplies the section known as Straight to the Hill in the Glenn Beck weekday nightly show. Last May, Hill was subjected to a number of come-ons from Beck including comments that Hill was "looking hot in leather" which she went on to handle in her own professional manner.

Erica took a period of absence from the show in 2006 when she gave birth to her first child, Weston Robert, born on November 25^th 2006. She returned to work in February 2007 after which she was voted 35^th in the list of People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People issue, beaten only by Hollywood stars such as Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry and Scarlett Johansson.