When Emily Monfort (C ’26) finally got through “General Chemistry I,” she prayed to God about it. She’d wanted to be a doctor since kindergarten, but Penn’s pre–med “weed out” courses were proving to be a slight hindrance to that plan.
“I really had to sit and think, ‘Okay, is pre–med what I want to do? Am I willing to go through the strenuous studying process?’ … So I definitely prayed about it, asked God for guidance,” Emily remembers. Ultimately, after consulting those around (and above) her, she decided to stick with it. “I felt led to just continue with that path.”
It’s lucky she did, because her excitement is tangible when she talks about her experiences shadowing pediatricians and working with patients at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. As a patient navigator and family services assistant, Emily works directly with both surgeons and patients to ensure communication between the two and provide comfort in stressful situations. She loves being front–of–house, letting families know what’s going on and leading them to recovery rooms, just as much as she loves the people working behind the scenes.
“I just get to meet different families, and be that front of the line communication, and also get to know some of the surgeons,” she says. “It’s like you see in the movies, where you have different surgeon personalities. It’s just so fun.” She speaks especially fondly of her nursing coworkers, who show her pictures of their kids and throw parties for each other. “It just feels kind of like a family. We’re all working together, we’re in this together, we’re all supporting each other.” As a theatre arts major, Emily knows all about communication and navigating different personalities. A self–described “High School Musical kid,” she grew up involved in both athletics and the arts, from community theater to the AG Youth Fine Arts Competition, which she describes as “America’s Got Talent, but the church version.” Though she came to Penn thinking about a more typical pre–med major like biology or health and societies, she took a few introductory theater courses too, and began seeing unexpected links between theater and her medical interests. She specifically remembers being moved by Angels in America, a play by Tony Kushner about the AIDS crisis in 1980s New York.
“The point of the play really brings awareness to HIV. You get to watch an actor who’s suffering through this, and see how it’s impacting him,” she says. “This is literally public health. This is bringing awareness.”
On a broader level, Emily sees connections between the way she thinks about her characters and the way doctors should think about their patients.
“In theater, we do a lot of character work and analyzing who they are,” she says. “What are their circumstances? What are their backgrounds? And I’ve noticed in shadowing physicians, that’s a lot of what they do already. They’re asking the patient, ‘Who are you?’ They’re looking at your medical history. They’re asking difficult questions. They’re asking these questions to help them make a better decision about their patient.”
Medicine is a field built on compassion, but it’s too often infiltrated by the kinds of apathy rampant in the wider world: racism, misogyny, and an unwillingness to look beyond what can be seen by the naked eye. Through her work with the Invisible Illness Awareness Network—which she helped found—and the National Society of Black Women in Medicine, Emily pushes against these tendencies. The IIAN raises awareness about diseases that often go unnoticed or underdiagnosed in patients.
“The hope is that pre–health students, or even nursing students or teachers, they’re hearing about this and being educated about these illnesses that may not be as common and may not be as visible to the eye,” Emily says. “They’re like, ‘Okay, I heard about this at one of our meetings,’ and it’s better able to help them in medical school. So when they become physicians one day, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve heard about this before.’”
Emily also serves as the treasurer for Penn’s chapter of the Society of Black Women in Medicine, a role she says working at a Dollar Tree in her hometown helped prepare her for. Though she had many “crazy experiences” at that job, she specifically recalls one situation with a mentally ill community member she had to deescalate—it’s clear that she brings compassion into every realm of her life, including customer service.
Human connection is the beginning and end of medicine for Emily. The biology is important, but so are holistic patient–doctor relationships and health advocacy. That’s why she’s returning to Penn next year for her master’s in public health.
“I realized that my mind tend[s] to be more interested in focusing on public health and thinking about those systems in place rather than, you know, wet lab biology,” she says. “That is definitely important, but I think I noticed that my interest may be more towards … social and economic conditions, and thinking about all those things, and how that can influence a patient’s care.”
Despite being taken aback that Philadelphians don’t eat their cheesesteaks with lettuce and tomato like she did growing up, Emily’s grown to love the City of Brotherly Love. She has a sister at Temple University she visits regularly, and she talks about how homey the city feels compared to New York. She’s also had the opportunity to travel internationally with Penn’s Theatre Arts Department, serving as a stage manager for the play Athena at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
After graduating, Emily plans to continue her involvement with theater, whether that’s through community theater productions or volunteering with her church. Her main focuses now, however, are pediatrics and public health. She emphasizes that it’s the human side of medicine that draws her in the most, citing in specific her experiences shadowing pediatricians.
“Getting to walk alongside a physician and seeing how [they], one, navigate with the parent, to take better care of the child, but also address the child and their needs. That excited me so much,” Emily says. “I saw that other physicians were like, ‘Oh, I didn’t want to be a pediatrician just because of that. I didn't want to deal with the parents.’ But I think in seeing that and being able to shadow, I was like, ‘This is exactly what I want to deal with.’ This is where my heart and passion is.”
