Morgan Marcell is a force.

You might know that from hearing her on the Hamilton cast album, seeing her on Broadway, or maybe you saw her on TV that time she performed at The Grammys. (If you’re a super Hamilton fan like me you definitely saw her perform “My Shot” as Alexander Hamilton outside The Richard Rogers theater for their social media promo, or caught a glimpse of her singing a compilation from Hamilton at The White House in 2016.)

I know it because I met her backstage at Hamilton when I was there profiling someone. I only met her briefly, but of everyone I met, it was her smile that changed the electricity in the room.

Shortly after meeting Morgan, so enamored with the brief impression, the energy that radiated,  I followed her on Instagram. And what I saw there over the next few years is what I wanted to write about.

Every day it seemed like Morgan was doing something new and cool and exciting: rocking a new Broadway stage, leading others as a dance captain on one hit show after another, or directing a documentary for the Smithsonian.

Her life seemed more than just “Instagram good.” It seemed professional artist good. And it was obvious she was putting in the work.

I wondered: What led her to this dynamic life as a professional working artist? How does someone get a dream job like Hamilton? How does she keep getting so many amazing jobs and opportunities, one after the other? And how did she go from Broadway debut to directorial debut in just a few short years?

The first spark of a potential artist’s life happened to Morgan when she was twelve. She wanted to be a movie director like Steven Spielberg.

But as school became the dominant force in her life, she was drawn towards academia: a place where the path to success was clear and hard work rewarded. “I was actually kind of a nerd,” she says. Morgan was a Hard Worker on The School Path, so she made The School Plan:

Step 1:  Major in political science.

Step 2: Go to law school.

A very fine plan for those who want to be lawyers. Morgan went to college. “A year in,” she says, “I was bored.  I was getting all A’s. I was doing the assignments. But I didn’t feel like I was growing.”

Then Britney Spears changed all that.

Morgan saw a Britney Spears music video for the first time, and then started noticing and studying the choreography in all the music videos she saw after that: pausing, rewinding, dancing. For her, these videos were proof that dance could be a job.

She’d grown up taking dance classes like ballet and jazz like many girls around her, but it was only seen as a hobby, something to do outside of school. The music videos were the first time it occurred to her that maybe she could pursue a job that she didn’t find boring. As she watched, five little words popped into her head that often change everything if one decides to listen:

“Maybe I could do that.”

It slowly transformed into a dream that tugged on her in the middle of political science class. She kept getting straight A’s, but she knew deep down she wasn’t moving towards what she really wanted. And she couldn’t help but wonder if what she really wanted was possible; she knew she would never know if she didn’t try.

She talked to her mom about leaving college to pursue a career in dance.

It was a declaration of sorts: that she wanted to be a professional artist, and that she believed it was a viable option.

Morgan left college and moved to Los Angeles.

She didn’t go to LA to Become a Star. She went to study hip-hop and commercial dance as seriously as she studied political science. “I studied for a year and a half,” she says, “10 hours a day, six days a week.”

The studying seemed to be paying off. She was hired as the dance captain for the first national tour of In The Heights (Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first Tony-award-winning musical).

Then she signed up for vocal lessons and moved to New York City with a new dream: to perform on Broadway.

Morgan kept up her training in New York, and went to as many Broadway shows as she could, including the new off-Broadway production everyone seemed to be talking about: Hamilton. After the show,  the associate choreographer of Hamilton, Stephanie Klemons (whom Morgan knew from In The Heights), pulled Morgan aside and said, “I’d love for you to be in this.”

Morgan’s first thought was,“I’m sure she says that to everybody.” But Stephanie told Morgan there would be auditions in a few weeks to grow the cast for their move to Broadway, and Morgan auditioned, even though deep down she didn’t think anything would come of it.

But she got the job and made her Broadway debut in Hamilton in the summer of 2015.

She got the job, and she would make her Broadway debut as an original cast member of Hamilton.

I ask Morgan what it actually felt like to make her Broadway debut. “When the lights go down and the curtain closed,” she says, “all I could think was, ‘Thank God I didn’t kill someone!”

Morgan wasn’t thinking about herself or her dream; she was thinking about her team. She was thinking about doing a good job. “I was so relieved that I did it correctly that I couldn’t even process what was happening.”

The realization came later, when she saw her parents. After the show, Morgan walked her mom backstage and through the narrow corridor that leads to the spinning stage itself, where cast members talk with friends, family, and celebrities after each show.

Morgan’s mom could barely walk onto the stage because she was crying so hard. And that was when Morgan processed her dream come true, through her mom’s eyes.