Monique Hall ’14 tried to be practical, but her dream wouldn’t let her go. Growing up in New Jersey, she loved getting lost in narratives on TV — everything from Sesame Street to 30 Rock. Watching the credits roll as a teenager, she realized that writing those episodes was someone’s job. Eventually, she’d win an Emmy for doing just that, but back then, for the child of immigrants from Jamaica, a creative career felt unrealistic.

Instead, Hall decided to be sensible and become a doctor. She chose to attend Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, intrigued by the human development major. “I’ve always been fascinated by people — how we interact and how we become who we are as we grow,” she said.

Yet even before freshman year, during a summer chemistry class, Hall realized that the pre-med track would make her miserable. As a compromise, she decided to become a clinical psychologist.

A turning point came during Hall’s sophomore year, in a class on dramatic writing. One of her early scripts was about a little boy in orchestra camp whose parents wanted him to play a serious instrument, while he preferred the triangle. “Now, I can see the parallels,” she said. Hall was captivated when classmates performed her script. “It was a really special feeling, and I thought, ‘Oh, I want to keep doing this.’”

Hall decided to minor in creative writing and film, and after graduating in 2014, told her family to give her five years to make her dream of writing kids’ television programs work.

Even though her parents were supportive, Hall started by trying on more stable careers in adjacent fields. “I thought maybe these lower-hanging fruit would taste good enough,” she said, “but I still wanted to be writing kids’ TV.”

In 2016, Hall decided to hedge her bets by enrolling at the Harvard School of Education for a master’s in technology innovation and education. While there, she learned that the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces "Sesame Street," was hosting its first-ever Writers’ Room Fellowship to nurture emerging talent. Hall applied and, to her surprise, was selected.

The summer after earning her master’s degree, Hall interned part-time at a content strategy firm while gaining hands-on experience through evening fellowship sessions. After six weeks, she was one of two participants offered a development deal with Sesame Workshop. Her show, about an adoptee who could talk to animals in his parents’ veterinary practice, didn’t get made, but soon after the fellowship ended, a writer she met at a networking event offered her a gig writing an episode of "Butterbean’s Cafe," an animated series on Nickelodeon.

That kicked off years of balancing full-time jobs that paid the bills with freelance writing for shows like "Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood" and "Alma’s Way," as well as Sesame Street’s YouTube channel. In 2019, Hall visited two friends who had moved to Los Angeles and forged careers in kids’ television. While she didn’t want to leave the East Coast, preferring to remain near family, their example gave her courage to quit her day job in market research.

“Seeing that they’d taken risks and landed on their feet, I was like, ‘Maybe if I let go of this job I’m unhappy in, there will be room for something else to show up,’” Hall said.

Soon after, a writer she knew offered Hall her first full-time staff job as a TV writer, on the Nickelodeon show "Bubble Guppies." When that ended a few months later, Hall couldn’t find another full-time gig, so she took a job as associate editor for a children’s magazine at Scholastic. The position proved a lifesaver as the pandemic upended the TV industry.

Since leaving that role in 2021, Hall has finally been able to dedicate herself completely to the career of her dreams, serving as a story editor for the animated PBS Kids series Lyla in the Loop and a writer on Sesame Street, among other projects.

Last December, Hall and her team at "Sesame Street" (pictured above) won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Preschool or Children’s Live Action Program, for an episode she wrote inspired by childhood memories of her aunt washing and styling her hair. It was Hall’s fifth Emmy nomination, and she had agreed to give the acceptance speech but hadn’t written one.

“Winning was very unexpected but also very special — little Monique would be very happy,” she said. “It was a sweet experience because it was a personal story and a celebration of Black hair.”

Now, Hall is working on a podcast based on Lyla in the Loop and eventually hopes to create her own show and write programs for older children. On LinkedIn, where her profile photo features a beaming Hall clutching her Emmy, she purposefully lists her more than 30 professional experiences.

“I want people to see that it’s not a straightforward path,” she said. “A lot happened between me saying I wanted to be a writer and that picture.”

Hall credits Cornell and the College of Human Ecology with setting her on her path, which is why she spent two years giving back as a member-at-large on the CHE Young Alumni Council.

“It was where I found not just what I wanted to do, but the feeling that I really could do it,” she said.