For Emily Scott James (’14), nothing about her second pregnancy was easy. Expecting twins, the Wake Forest Dance Company alum and former standout contestant on the TV show “So You Think You Can Dance” found herself, for the first time, unable to dance and exercise as she always had.
James struggled to walk and breathe and, for the first 4 1/2 months, was plagued by extreme nausea that led to repeated hospital visits for dehydration. Even playing with her toddler son became difficult. Throughout the pregnancy, she worked out only twice.
But that cloud lifted as soon as she gave birth to twin girls in August. She could finally breathe, and she vowed to never take movement for granted again. “It was wild,” James says now. “I felt this immediate urge to dance again. I’ve never felt so excited and motivated and inspired to move my body again.”
For the young mom of three under 3, that experience — and transformation — became a turning point. James began sharing her journey more openly on social media. Then the algorithm did its thing: It found an audience.
Today, with more than 450,000 followers on Instagram and more than 40,600 on TikTok, James says she has landed brand partnerships with Athleta, Shiseido, Victoria’s Secret and Dunkin’, among others. Earlier this year, she left a career in medical device marketing and sales education at Johnson & Johnson’s surgical spine division to focus on her kids and her rapidly growing online career.
With every post, her message to moms is simple: Motherhood is hard. It can feel like you’re losing yourself sometimes. But it also offers a chance to rediscover who you are. Be silly. Let loose. And find ways to move — whatever that looks like for you.
That’s exactly what James is doing. “For the first time ever,” she says, “I feel like what I’m doing is what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Always up for a challenge
James took her first dance class at age 2 and really never left the dance studio. She loved expressing herself artistically but also learning. She always signed up to attend dance conventions to take classes with top teachers and choreographers. “I loved to be challenged,” she says.
James considered pursuing a professional dance career after high school and was offered prestigious dance scholarships at Fordham University’s The Ailey School and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Though thrilled with the offers, she realized something didn’t feel right. By that point in her dance journey, she was burning out. But there was another opportunity in the offing — Wake Forest.
She traveled from her Rhode Island hometown to Winston-Salem to audition for Wake Forest’s Presidential Scholarship. She stayed with a friend from the competitive dance world who was a freshman. The scholarship didn’t come through, but it didn’t matter.
“I fell in love with the school,” James says. “I fell in love with the campus. I fell in love with the small class size. I fell in love with North Carolina. I came home and said, ‘I really want to go to Wake Forest.’”
James quickly immersed herself in campus life, becoming an integral member of the Wake Forest Dance Company, joining Chi Omega sorority and majoring in business with a marketing concentration. A brand-new sprawling dance studio inside Scales Fine Arts Center became a second home. “It was such a state-of-the-art, beautiful facility that I wanted to be in it all the time,” James says.
More than a decade after James’ graduation, Nina Maria Lucas Rice, professor and director of dance at Wake Forest, still has a framed photo of the two of them in her office. She remembers James as a warm and loving person. Her jazz and modern dance techniques, she says, were “exquisite.” But James had something else too — a performance quality that can’t be taught.
“Emily, technically, was quite proficient and extremely strong in her ability to turn and jump,” Lucas Rice says. “She also has a specific quality about the way she moves, which is lyrical and kind of sensuous. I don’t mean sexy. I mean sensuous, and she just kind of draws you in as a performer.”
So, she can dance
At Wake Forest, James hadn’t entirely given up on her professional dance aspirations. During her freshman and sophomore years, she tried out for “So You Think You Can Dance.” She did well each time, but didn’t make it to the live competition.
During her senior year, her mom called to tell her she’d booked her a flight to Chicago to try out one more time. While James was growing up, the two often watched the show together, and James would predict that she’d be on it one day. “I said, ‘You have to go, and I’ll meet you there,’” says Betsy James (P ’14), her mom. “This was her old passion calling her.”
During one of her last final exams at Wake Forest, James got the call that she had earned a spot on the show’s 11th season. She finished in the top 14 and joined the show’s national tour, traveling to more than 70 cities across North America. Afterwards, she moved to Los Angeles to dance professionally — but not for long.
“I think I knew always in the back of my head that I didn’t want dance to be my forever career,” she says. “But I knew it would be a part of my life forever. I just wasn’t sure how at that point yet.”
Falling back on her business degree, James started working for Johnson & Johnson and eventually moved back to New York City, joining her high school sweetheart, whom she later married. To make friends, she started teaching fitness classes.
Through her exposure on “So You Think You Can Dance” and her side gigs in fitness, James had built an engaged following on Instagram and started connecting with brands online. Creating posts for social media was a way to stay connected to her creative side, she says. Her involvement ebbed and flowed with life and opportunities.
Doing it all
Three years ago in June, social media once again became a creative outlet for James — this time after the birth of her son. On maternity leave, she began posting workouts to help pass the time. Brand deals trickled in, but it was still just for fun.
Then came her difficult second pregnancy, the birth of her twin girls and another round of maternity leave. This time, James started leaning in more to her Instagram acccount.
“It was more for myself, mentally, getting through the early days of having two newborns at home with a toddler,” she says. “I know myself, and for my mental health I have to keep moving. I started using dance as a way to keep myself up during those days.”
Followers quickly found her — and reached out. A favorite part of the work isn’t visible on her public feed. It’s the direct messages from followers who feel seen, uplifted or inspired by what she shares.
“I always had people in my corner telling me to do this years ago,” James says. “I was always afraid. I had a lot of fear in doing it for many different reasons. It took a big step in my life, personally with my kids, that made me reevaluate everything in my life, that gave me the courage to make the change.”
Now, she often posts several times a day — a consistency she credits with her page’s rapid growth. She creates all the content herself: upbeat videos of dancing while pushing a double-wide stroller or sitting in her car, freeform workouts inspired by old dance routines and snapshots of family life in Rhode Island.
Her captions tell the full story — not just the curated moments: Easter brunch at home instead of the fancy restaurant as planned, off-key songs sung to giggling babies or playful dances while attempting mostly unsuccessfully to coax her twins to nap in their stroller.
She loves the creative side of content creation, and her content draws on skills she picked up in business classes and advertising internships during her time at Wake Forest.
“As a content creator, I genuinely feel like it is an arm of advertising,” she says. “And I’m very excited and lucky to have the opportunity to be the performer, the writer, the producer, the director, the editor. It’s all the things I really loved to do all wrapped into one.”
James admits to having a love-hate relationship with social media. She’s experienced both its positives and pitfalls firsthand. And there are plenty of content creators out there showcasing just how exhausting it can be to raise kids.
That’s why her aim is to be a positive light for other moms, acknowledging the reality, but showcasing the playful and fun side — how moms can evolve as individuals even as they care for their kids. Says James: “Life is too short to take yourself too seriously.”
Sarah Lindenfeld Hall is a longtime North Carolina-based journalist, former staff writer for the Winston-Salem Journal and The (Raleigh) News & Observer and founding editor of WRAL-TV’s popular parenting website. Today, she’s a freelance writer, regularly diving into stories about interesting people and parenting, health, education, business and technology topics.
