After receiving her degree, McConnell headed back to Wisconsin and to Madison and the lure of its rich community center culture.

“I discovered a job at Neighborhood House Community Center,” McConnell said. “I started as the youth program coordinator under Linda Weyenberg. I had my teaching degree and my teaching experience helped me run the youth programs. I used to partner with Wil-Mar and other centers including East Madison. I used to think that East Madison was a big dream center on this side of town. We would partner on projects. I worked at Neighborhood House for three years and then I took some time off for graduate school.”

McConnell then took time off to travel to Europe and work there, but again came back to Madison and landed a job in EMCC’s youth program.

“It wasn’t enough challenge for me,” McConnell said. “I was just finding my footing. I hadn’t found a teaching job. And Tom Solis approached me from Bridge-Lake Point. They were looking for a center manager. I went there for a couple of years. I was just waiting to see if other opportunities emerged. I did a lot at Bridge-Lake Point. It was still a very small center that I knew that I could grow. And then the assistant director position opened at EMCC in 2007. I worked here for three years under Tom Moen. It was a great job, but then I got married.”

McConnell’s husband worked for Colony Brands and so they moved to Albany in Green County. McConnell fit taking care of children when they were born with work.

“I worked for Second Harvest for four years in Green, Rock, Lafayette, Iowa and Grant Counties,” McConnell said. I drove 2-4 hours per day. I’ve hit three deer over the years. So the hour commute here is a piece of cake. I’ve worked in food pantries in every single community center. I know that inside out as well. I think all of those jobs groomed me for the center director position.

McConnell also worked for the Y in Green County and volunteered with the PTO while raising her kids. And then EMCC came calling once more.

“I got a call that they needed someone in the interim in January 2020,” McConnell said. “They asked me to come back and fill in a gap year in the assistant director position. I came in very part-time, but I could go right in and do reporting and grant writing and running programs, so I slid right back in. And then my 20 hours became 30 hours and it became more and more hours. I finally said, ‘Okay I need to step away. I can’t give the center what it needs. It needs a full-time person running all of the programs.’ This must have been in 2021. That’s when they brought someone in for a limited time. I’ve been here for a long time, but in different capacities.”

By mid-2023, McConnell wanted something more, the chance to run her own center. And in a way, the stars aligned.

“it was spring of 2023,” McConnel recalled. “He asked, ‘Do you want this job?’ And I said no. We started going through the process of hiring. And then all of a sudden, he asked, ‘What would it take for you to stay?’ The funny thing was literally that Sunday night, my husband and I were like, ‘Someday, I can go for a director’s position. We’ll just see when Tom retires.’ My husband wanted to retire. And he was like, ‘Let’s just figure out who could stay home with the kids. Just go in tomorrow and ask Tom what his plan is.’ We literally walked in and I was asking him that and he was asking me what it would take for me to stay. It was really bizarre because I said, ‘I can’t believe I just had this conversation with my husband thinking about succession planning here and his retirement.’ I didn’t want to be assistant director anymore. I didn’t want to be slinging boxes in the food pantry anymore. I didn’t want to be cleaning the bathrooms. I wanted Tom’s job. I told Tom that. He said, ‘Okay, let me think about when I am going to retire.’ He thought about a year. All of a sudden, he said a year. I think it only ended up 10 months. He said, ‘No, I want my summer.’ And he left July 1.”

EMCC is a vibrant center that has an operating budget of $800,000 and employs 121-14 people, four of them full-time. There is a lot going on at EMCC. It serves northeast Madison with a combination of center-directed youth programming and groups utilizing the center for their programming. On the day we met, the city of Madison was using it as a voting center.

“We serve about 3,000 unduplicated people throughout the year,” McConnell said. “We have so many community groups coming to the center on the weekends. We have graduation parties. We have a group that hosts programs for children who have a sibling with a disability. The parents have trainings. We have a new recovery group coming here two days per week. We are home-base for two major table tennis groups in town. UW-Madison OT students come in and play table tennis as a form of therapy. They do juggling exercise music. We have the community garden, which has 45 plots. We have the only outdoor hand ball courts in the state of Wisconsin. People from Milwaukee regularly come to play on our court. There are a couple of retired guys who come in very frequently. We have a basketball league that comes. We have our after school and teen programs. The Literacy Network was here for the last year. The rooms get used by residents who meet with social workers, teachers or case workers privately. We’ve ramped up our adult programming. We received a small grant from the Madison Community Foundation to ramp that up. We have a big focus on health and wellness. We partnered with Associated Bank for financial literacy classes. The Madison Sewing Project has been doing sewing classes and you get a free sewing machine. The principal of Hawthorne came over this summer and did Popsicles with the Principal. It’s busy all the time.”

It has also helped bring the community together to address community issues.

“There is a tunnel that goes under E. Washington Ave. that is really bad,” McConnell said. “A parent came in with pictures of the tunnel and there were needles, blood, urine and beer cans. We sent them to the city. We called the alder. The next thing we knew, in three weeks, we had a community meeting with the Hawthorne Neighborhood Association, Hawthorne School, a parent from the Truax Neighborhood Association and EMCC. We had 30 people in there all talking about that issue. It was incredible. Our alder came to. The group that is putting up that new apartment complex was represented. They were all talking about what they were going to do about the problem. Now we are forming a committee to keep the momentum going because it isn’t safe for the kids.”

McConnell had always looked up to Moen as a mentor and was used to helping someone else get the work of a center done. Now it’s her turn. While she was nervous to take the reins, the work of EMCC continues on uninterrupted without a hitch. McConnell and the dedicated staff of EMCC would have it no other way.