Like many young (and not-so-young) adults, Peace grew up watching the long-running television program Sesame Street on PBS. Her interest in the show, however, extends well beyond casual fandom. In addition to having worked in real estate investments, the Cincinnati native is an accomplished ventriloquist and puppeteer who has performed in front of audiences across the nation, including on The Tonight Show and America’s Got Talent.

Two years ago, Peace realized one of her lifelong dreams when she successfully auditioned to train as a puppeteer on Sesame Street. In taping her first episode last September, she made history as the first Black female puppeteer to work on the show—a milestone she was not even aware of until afterward.

“I would have cried like a 𝑏𝑎𝑏𝑦 on the 123 steps if they had told me beforehand,” admits Peace, who plays the role of Gabrielle, a 6-year-old Black Muppet, on the show. “The sets of Sesame Street are like walking into a fantasy. To be there is really something.”

Peace traces her initial interest in puppetry and ventriloquism to watching TV programs such as Sesame Street and Lamb Chop’s Play-Along as a 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥. Like most young viewers, she “believed the characters were real and didn’t know that someone was operating them.”

As a teenager, Peace made appearances at daycares, schools, churches and festivals, both locally and out of state. At 15, she was even featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show’s “World’s Smartest and Most Talented Kids” episode.

It was around this time that Peace began thinking about college. Her older sister, Fredrica, attended Tennessee State University, participated in a summer program at Vanderbilt and earned her MBA from Lipscomb University. During one trip to Nashville, Fredrica encouraged Megan to tour Vanderbilt. “The school moved to No. 1 on my list after that,” Peace recalls. “However, I watered down my expectations of being able to get in and being able to afford the school,” she says. “I knew I needed financial aid or a scholarship.”

Peace wasn’t expecting to hear from Vanderbilt until spring 2010. But over the winter, she received a surprise email from the university informing her that she’d been awarded a Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholarship. “I remember jumping up and screaming,” she says. “I was so overwhelmed that I got in and that they saw enough in me to award me that scholarship.”

Meanwhile, she continued finding opportunities to make the most of her talents as a performer. At 18, she founded Color My Dream, an initiative that uses mentoring, ventriloquism, puppetry and music to encourage youth to reach for their dreams. At 19, she was crowned Miss Black Tennessee, and at 20, she appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

During spring break of her senior year, Peace flew to Las Vegas to attend boot camp for Season 8 of America’s Got Talent. Half of the participants were given an opportunity to perform for the judges; the others were sent home. Peace was one of the lucky ones. She got four yeses from the judges after her initial ventriloquist act but was eliminated after her second performance. Afterward, judge Howard Stern, who was impressed that Peace attended Vanderbilt, pulled her aside.

Peace with Gabrielle on the set of Sesame Street 

Meanwhile Peace has found opportunities to combine her diverse talents. In 2019, she collaborated with the University of Cincinnati and PBS to develop $martPath, series of videos that use puppetry to teach elementary school 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren about finance. “That meant a lot to me because I didn’t have any financial literacy growing up,” says Peace, who won two Emmys for the project. Currently, she is working on six additional videos for the series.

Yet, the experience on Sesame Street remains the highlight of her puppetry career so far. Peace submitted her audition tape for the show in 2017, and in 2018 connected with Leslie Carrara-Rudolph, a puppeteer best known for playing Abby Cadabby, the pink, pigtailed “fairy-in-training” Muppet. However, it wasn’t until the start of the pandemic, in March 2020, that Peace received an email from Matt Vogel, the show’s puppet captain, asking if she’d like to learn Muppet-style puppetry via a virtual workshop online.

At the time, Sesame Workshop was creating the racial justice initiative Coming Together that included a special called The Power of We. The producers needed someone to play the Muppet character Gabrielle. “Megan was our choice from the beginning,” Vogel says. “She already had lip sync s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s from her abilities as a ventriloquist, but she did not know the monitor work, which is harder than it looks.”

Peace learned the necessary s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s through the Zoom workshop, and before long it was apparent that she had the right chemistry for the show. “We needed authentic representation, and Megan is incredible,” says Carrara-Rudolph, who had championed Peace for the previous two years. “She’s got a light inside her.”

While Peace says she’s fortunate to have a role on Sesame Street—as well as a husband and two young sons at home—juggling it all requires careful planning and expert execution, s𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁s she developed in school. “Vanderbilt is where I learned how to balance totally different experiences—classes and ventriloquism,” she says, “and how to rebalance if something wasn’t right.”

Peace with first lady Jill Biden and fellow puppeteers on the set of Sesame Street