Emily MacKay is a nurse manager for pediatrics at the University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center by day, and a musical theater actress by night. After taking a long hiatus to raise her children, she recently started acting again as part of the Maryland Theatre Collective, appearing as the female lead in its production of “Falsettos.”
A former student at Krieger Schechter Day School and a member of Chizuk Amuno Congregation, MacKay, 32, credits a lot of her development as a person to the many Jewish educators who taught her as a child.
MacKay lives in Towson with her fiancé and two children.
Did you have any teachers at KSDS who made a significant impact on your life?
I still keep in touch with my former music teacher and choir director, Erika Schon. She was the person who really got me into music. She’s also the director of HaZamir Baltimore, which I was in for all of high school and a little bit of college. I sort of struggled with how I wanted to express my Judaism growing up. I had gone through Jewish day school but was still looking for a way that I could connect to it, and music tended to be that way for me. So, I really enjoyed being in the choir with her, and what she taught me has really stuck with me.
How did you get involved in musical theater?
My grandparents really instilled a love for classical standards in me, my grandmother would always play Broadway albums in the car, and I picked up very quickly on the music. Then from there, I did theater camp in the summer and I also did theater in school. Krieger Schechter does an eighth grade play all in Hebrew, so I got to do that as one of the lead roles. Doing that in eighth grade was challenging, not just because it was all in Hebrew, but because putting yourself out there in eighth grade is hard. But having the support of Erika and some of my other teachers in school, I think really helped with that.
Growing up having music and having theater and having teachers and people who supported me to do that really helped with what could have been a much more challenging time growing up. And after high school, when I went to college, I bounced around. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to do health care but wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to do that. Then [I] started getting involved in community theater in and around Baltimore, and had done quite a few productions prior to having children, but I took a hiatus until they were a little bit older. The last few shows I was in were really my first time back performing in about six or seven years.
Do you have a favorite role you’ve played?
It has to be my most recent role, Trina from “Falsettos.” Being a Jewish mother who has also recently gone through a divorce, I felt I had a lot to bring to that role, and the music of “Falsettos” is really great and fun. Having a fairly small group of people put on a show like that is a big task, but it’s great to get to work with the other members of Maryland Theatre Collective.
What made you want to pursue health care as a career?
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I spent a lot of time in the nurse’s office at KSDS. I still keep in touch with one of the nurses there, Donna Friedman, and we joke that I spent more time in her office than in class. My grandmother is also a retired nurse, and my grandfather worked in Medicaid and Medicare, so that’s always been in my family. Having spent so much time at the nurse’s office, seeing the nurses help other children led me to that.
When I finished nursing school, I took a job at Washington Medical Center, which is a part of the University of Maryland Medical System, in the emergency department. I really loved it there and very quickly became a clinical educator with a primary focus on pediatrics.
I’m currently the nurse manager for pediatrics there. They have a great group of nurses and staff, and I hope to inspire them to help change the future of nursing, which has been ever-changing since the COVID-19 pandemic. I think a lot of my drive to do that did come from Krieger Schechter, which taught me a lot of things about the value of being a good person.
Has working with children professionally affected your parenting style?
I definitely appreciate my children a lot more, and also can look at myself and say that I’m doing a good job as a mom. I think for a lot of moms, it’s easy to get lost and think that we’re not doing enough or that we’re not doing the right thing. That our kids are going to grow up without us teaching them what they need to know.
I grew up primarily raised by my grandparents. My mom was here, but she had a lot of issues. I had a lot of struggles. My teachers knew that, and they took me under their wing. In my work, when we have kids who have somewhat of a difficult home life or family life, I definitely feel more empathetic towards them. And it also makes me appreciate myself more, and I feel very lucky that I’ve been able to have those experiences, even the challenging ones, because they have made me a better parent.
Because of my work, I also know all of the fun, crazy things kids get themselves into, all the terrible things that could possibly happen. And I definitely don’t take that for granted.
