Mo McBride '27 Has a Lot of Stops On Her Career Map

When Mo McBride ’27 talks about her future, she doesn't give you a straight line. She gives you a map with a lot of stops on it.

There's graduating from Elmira College. There’s a gap year she’s planning to take before pursuing a physician’s assistant degree. There's the EMT certification she's completing this summer. There are the two summers she's already logged as a phlebotomist at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital, drawing blood and building the patient care hours she'll need to move forward. And then—almost as an aside—there's the food truck.

"Mo's Off the Grid," she calls it. It’s solar-powered and soul-crafted from a box trailer that she and her dad renovated over several years. The menu: pizza. The website: already purchased.

"I'm definitely interested in being a business owner at some point in my life," she said. "My dad is a business owner. My brother is a business owner. Knowing how to own a business is something I really want to pursue."

That's what brought McBride, a Biology major and Business Administration minor, to her Email Marketing course. Given that she has a food truck waiting at home and a career in patient care on the horizon, it’s a practical course for teaching her how to target her audience.

"Email marketing is such a growing, popular thing right now," she shared. "I think it's really important to know how to send out the right email, especially if you have a business."

The course is part of the Digital Marketing program offered in a hybrid format developed in partnership with Rize Education, a consortium of 100+ private colleges where students take online courses with peers from across the country.

For McBride, a member of the EC Women’s Ice Hockey team, the fact that the course is online turned out to matter in ways she didn't expect. After the first round of the NCAA tournament, the team got stranded in Augsburg, Minnesota, for over a week due to inclement weather. Flights were canceled. While McBride’s in-person classes fell behind, her Rize course didn't.

"I had all the resources I needed to do it online and not have to worry too much about that," she said. "That was one less thing."

For a student balancing three-hour Biology labs, hockey, hospital shifts, and what she cheerfully describes as “a lifelong habit of dipping her toes into everything,” that kind of flexibility sustains her momentum.

Her team finished eighth in the country this season, and she didn’t have to miss a beat.

McBride chose Elmira because it felt like the high school she loved: small, close-knit, the kind of place where you know everyone and everyone knows you. She came for a hockey recruitment visit, met the team, heard about the traditions, and knew.

"I just felt like I was at home," she said, "and that I belonged here."

Next year is her last, and she's already signed up for another Rize course. She has a PA school application to build, an EMT course to finish, and somewhere back in Vermont, a solar-powered food truck with her name on it.

There are a lot of stops ahead. For McBride, that’s all part of the plan.