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Carly White
Carly White: Finding History, Finding Home

Growing up, Carly White was the kind of kid who left the library with stacks of books tucked under her arms. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson & the Olympians, mythology, and ancient civilizations. If a story opened the door to another world, Carly wanted to follow it.

Some of that curiosity came from watching her older siblings. As the youngest of five, she often found herself pulled toward the creative interests already alive in her family. “My older sister has always been into drawing, creating, and writing,” Carly says.

Her mom also earned a degree in classical history through Carroll College and later worked for many years as a librarian with the Montana State Library. “She is a big reader,” Carly says. “She reads like a hundred books a year.”

In Carly’s home, creativity wasn’t treated like an extracurricular. Books, art, history, music, and imagination were simply the air they breathed.

“I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that appreciated the humanities,” she reflects.

Her parents encouraged Carly and her siblings to follow what genuinely interested them, without pushing them toward one specific career path or definition of success.

The Path of Performing Arts to Ancient History

In high school, Carly’s creative interests continued to grow in history and in the performing arts.

She began dancing with the Creative Arts Center when she was just four or five years old, later auditioning for the Premier Dance Company. In high school, she also began acting and theater, where she first discovered improvisation.

Carly credits her Capital High theater teacher, Laura Brayko, as a formative influence. “Very Shakespearean, very amazing,” she says simply.

After graduating, Carly took a gap year to pursue a career in the performing arts professionally, traveling back and forth to major cities like Los Angeles and Orlando for Disney auditions. She remembers walking into warehouses with 200 performers from around the world, all wildly talented, auditioning for roles without even knowing exactly what they were casting for.

“You just had to be in the right place at the right time,” she says.

Eventually, the competitiveness and uncertainty of the industry began to take a toll. At the same time, Carly watched many of her friends enjoy college and realized she wanted that experience for herself as well.

During that time, however, one passion remained steady: history.

More specifically, Carly had become deeply fascinated with Greek mythology and medieval history. But as she began researching schools, she realized programs focused on those subjects were surprisingly hard to find.

Then she found the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.

Calgary sits six hours north of Helena. As Carly describes it, the drive is basically a straight shot with zero turns. In addition to offering a degree specifically in ancient and medieval history, the university also offered a minor in museum studies.

“I got really lucky,” she says. “That same year, they were trying to break their record for international students accepted into the incoming freshman class.”

The decision to move to Calgary was spontaneous in spirit. Carly had only visited the city once for a few days before choosing to apply. Immigration paperwork, on the other hand, took months, so the logistics were anything but impulsive.

But for Carly, it still felt like a leap of faith—one fueled equally by her studies and a longing to branch out beyond her hometown.

Her Personal Odyssey: Leaving Home and the Unexpected Return

Like many young adults, part of Calgary’s appeal was simply that it was somewhere other than where she grew up.

Carly was born and raised in Helena, with family roots stretching across nearby Montana communities like Pony, Avon, and Elliston. After growing up in a smaller town, she craved something different.

“I thought I was going to be a big city girl,” she remembers.

In Calgary, Carly found the change she was looking for, and she was suddenly surrounded by people from all over the world. Ironically, none of her closest friends were Canadian. Instead, her friend group included students from India, Russia, Ecuador, Brazil, and many other countries.

“I was actually the only American in our friend group,” she says.

Those friendships became one of the most meaningful parts of her experience abroad. They expanded the way she viewed culture, identity, and history itself.

At the same time, much of her college experience unfolded during the pandemic, making it harder to fully experience life abroad and connect with people in person. But eventually, restrictions were lifted, and Carly was finally able to explore more of what Canada had to offer.

Just as she was embracing life in the city, working a serving job she enjoyed, her work visa was denied. Practically overnight, the life she had built there disappeared, and she had to pack up and return to the United States almost immediately.

She thought returning to Helena would only be temporary. “I thought I would be back just long enough to apply for another visa and then go back to Alberta,” she says.

Instead, something unexpected happened.

To bridge what she assumed would be a short transition, Carly began applying for jobs. First came a part-time position at the Myrna Loy, Helena’s beloved independent arts and community theater space, where she quickly fell in love with both the staff and the atmosphere.

Soon after, another unexpected opportunity appeared through the opening of the Montana Heritage Center with the Montana Historical Society.

“I was blown away that I was able to find a history-related job at a brand new museum,” Carly says. “I thought I was just going to be in Helena for a few months, but now it has been two years.”

After years of living in a larger city, Helena now feels peaceful in a way Carly didn’t fully recognize growing up. Her parents, friends, and community are nearby, and the slower pace of life feels grounding rather than limiting.

Finding Her Fit Through Storytelling, Improv, and History

Today, Carly works in Outreach and Education with the Montana Historical Society, leading tours at the Montana Heritage Center, the State Capitol, and the Original Governor’s Mansion.

No two tours are ever the same. Carly guides everyone from retired travelers visiting every state capitol to groups of epidemiologists and members of the Montana Snowmobile Association, often researching unique facts and stories to tailor each tour to the people in front of her.

And then there’s field trip season, which brings an entirely different energy.

Through the Montana History & Civics Education Endowment, schools from across Montana can now receive assistance for travel costs, giving students from the far corners of the state a chance to visit Helena for tours and educational experiences.

“We’re trying to have every school from every county in the state come to the Heritage Center at least once,” Carly says. In January alone, the museum welcomed more than 500 students.

Fourth and fifth graders, in particular, are some of Carly’s favorite groups and always keep her on her toes. “They ask the craziest questions,” she says, laughing. “‘How big were Charlie Russell’s feet?’”

“You have to use your improvisation skills to roll with the bit,” she says with a smile.

In many ways, all the pieces of Carly’s life have prepared her for this role. Theater and improv taught her how to think on her feet. Dance taught performance and presence. Restaurant jobs taught customer service and crowd management. Her degree gave her the historical background. Together, those experiences shape the way she connects with visitors.

“It’s kind of a performance,” she says.

But to Carly, history has never been simply about memorizing dates. It’s about making people feel connected to stories.

Shared Humanity Across Time and Place

That perspective traces back to Carly’s love of mythology.

What fascinates her about ancient history is not just the facts themselves, but the similarities between stories and traditions carried by people separated by oceans and thousands of years.

Across time and place, she sees recurring themes in how humans have tried to understand creation, the natural world, the divine, and the relationship between people and something larger than themselves. She points to parallels between stories like Adam and Eve and Pandora’s Box in Greek mythology, as well as flood narratives that appear across many cultures. The details differ, but the core questions often feel remarkably familiar.

To Carly, those connections reveal something deeper about humanity itself. “All these cultures may be different, and may be unique in their own right,” Carly says, “but there is a common human experience for thousands of years.”

“It gives me a lot of empathy for other cultures,” she says.

That mindset also shaped her friendships in Canada. Her friend group came from a wide range of backgrounds and countries, yet they found common ground through shared experiences, curiosity, humor, and storytelling.

Whether they came from Mumbai, Colombia, El Salvador, or the United States, they each took pride in where they came from while also making space to celebrate one another’s cultures and traditions.

For Carly, history offers a way to look back at the threads that have connected people across generations while recognizing how those same threads continue to connect people today.

Finding Her Way Home to Helena

Living away from Helena and building friendships with people from all over the world gave Carly a new appreciation for where she came from. “I realized I could be proud of being from Montana,” she says.

And right now, Carly is exactly where she wants to be.

She describes working at the newly renovated Heritage Center as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and has no plans to leave anytime soon. At some point far down the road, she could picture herself exploring museum opportunities on the East Coast and diving deeper into the ancient history and mythology work she studied in college.

But in the present, she’s focused on building community right here in Helena.

One of her current projects involves working with her best friend, an environmental scientist, to help restore Helena’s historic lilacs.

The lilacs, originally introduced to the town more than 100 years ago by the first governor’s wife, are now dying throughout Helena’s historic neighborhoods. Together, Carly and her friend hope to combine science, ecology, and history to help preserve them for future generations.

“She brings the science side,” Carly says. “I bring the history.”

In many ways, the project reflects the connection Carly has rediscovered with her hometown. Helena is no longer just the town she grew up in, or somewhere she returned to by circumstance. It is the place she is choosing to care for.

She is helping to carry Helena’s stories forward, honoring its past and shaping its future. Not as someone passing through, but as someone who has found her way home.

Faces of Helena