RETHA HILL is on the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University where she is the executive director of the New Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab. The Lab’s journalism and computer science majors create innovative products, including mixed reality apps and content; Web applications; news game tools; social media tools, and mobile apps for media clients. On the entrepreneurship side of the Lab, students create their own media companies and products. Hill, an award-winning journalist, is the founder of AncestoriesXR, a database-driven mixed reality platform that uses VR, AI, and interactivity to recreate the neighborhoods and experiences of end user’s ancestors as a way for individuals and the larger community to understand the complexities of the immigrant and migrant histories of the U.S. Think Ken Burns meets video game technology. Hill joined the ASU faculty in 2007 after eight years at BET, where she was vice president for content for BET Interactive. Before joining BET, Hill was an executive producer at washingtonpost.com. She was a reporter for The Washingon Post and the Charlotte Observer before she jumped into the world of online in1995.