In 1927, the Packard family traveled to Mexico for Walter's consulting job with the Mexican government working on agrarian and land settlement reform issues.

In 1936 Packard graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with her bachelor's degree and later studied sculpture, mural and fresco painting at the San Francisco Art Institute.

[7] When Diego Rivera came to San Francisco in 1940 for the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), he asked Emmy to be the chief assistant for painting the Pan American Unity mural.

[6] In the mid-1960s, Packard designed and executed the mural on the exterior of the dining commons at the University of California, Berkeley in the Lower Sproul student union center.

[9] She also designed the terrace parapet which is embellished with an 85-foot long, 5-foot high, bas-relief, Modernist mural depicting California landscape features, including coastal bluffs, cultivated fields, mountains, and rivers located in the central façade of Chávez Student Center at the University of California, Berkeley in the Lower Sproul.