Marquita K. Hill holds a Ph.D. in comparative biochemistry from the University of California, Davis. She was assistant and then associate professor in the biochemistry department at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg. Later, at the University of Maine's Department of Chemical Engineering, she conducted research funded by the US Department of Energy and the US Environmental Protection Agency. Then, after educating herself as an environmental scientist, she taught courses in environmental pollution, which led to the text Understanding Environmental Pollution. She was co-founder of the Green Campus Consortium of Maine, an organization working toward sustainable environmental management in Maine's higher-education institutions. For nine years she served on an advisory committee for International Paper's mill in Skowhegan, Maine. During those same years she was a visiting scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health.
