Adventure Nannies is THIRTEEN years old today!

While I won’t be making any comparisons relating to puberty in this blog, thirteen is generally the age where humans develop a greater capacity for abstract thought and can think more about hypotheticals and possibilities. It’s also a time that we gain more self-awareness about our own thought processes and define their sets of ethics and values. This feels particularly poignant when I think about some of our wins and some of our learning edges thinking back over the past twelve months. 

Here are a few highlights from our past twelve months, in no particular order:

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NALANY Gala

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Last September, we had the honor of attending the 2024 Latino Nanny Gala in NYC. This incredible event put on by NALANY was a wonderful celebration of not only the incredible spirit of Latino Nannies in NYC by also was a joyous celebration of community and diversity.

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We were treated to a Paraguayan traditional dance and got to dance the night away surrounded by the incredible Latino community in New York City as well as friends and supporters of the community.

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State Senator Jessica Ramos even made a special appearance and proclamation celebrating the 10th anniversary of the NALANY community.

It was such an honor to be a part of this incredible event and we’re already planning our trip for the 2025 gala! 

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Nanny Camp

In August, we welcomed 60 nannies from all over the country to a small summer camp in Connecticut, owned by our old friend Laura (who also owns Boston Nanny Centre.)

The friendships and long-standing relationships that have blossomed out of this week have been incredible to watch over the past nine months. We are currently gearing up for our second Nanny Camp, and are so grateful to the sponsors and supporters who have helped us reach our goal of 20%+ of all Nanny Camp attendees being granted full or partial scholarships to ensure as many people have access to this unique experience as possible.

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‍Nanny Ball

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We trekked back to NYC in December to go to Nanny Ball, an incredible event designed and sponsored by My Nanny Circle that has been called “the Met Gala for nannies.”

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We danced the night away with our friends from Newborn Care Solutions and the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance and even got to help give awards away! This event has become so near and dear to our hearts and we are thrilled to be invited to celebrate

these amazing caregivers every year.

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‍Norland College

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This spring, we got to visit Norland College in Bath, England (a very huge thank you to the International Nanny Association for coordinating this once-in-a-lifetime visit!)

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Norland was founded in 1892 and is the first institution for formal nanny and childcare professional training in the world. It was an honor to walk Norland’s hallowed halls with some of our fellow US and Australia-based agency owners and INA nannies and get to meet their students, learn more about their storied history, and even sit down for a high tea! We are thrilled at the way their work has evolved over the past 130+ years and love cheering them on from across the pond. (We’ll be coming back to the UK in the fall for some speaking events, so please stay tuned!)

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‍Our Book

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Also in March, we released Adventure Nannies: Tales of Wonder, Wildness, and Wisdom out into the world - a compilation of autobiographical chapters written by our founder Brandy (who AN shares a birthday with! Happy Birthday Brandy!!) and nannies we’ve had the pleasure of working with and getting to know throughout our company’s history. Putting this book together was a huge investment and labor of love for us, and we are thrilled to have something in print to describe to families and hopeful future Adventure Nannies to really tell the stories of what we do. (For those of you who have asked - yes, more editions of the book and more opportunities to tell your stories are coming soon!)

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International Nanny Training Day

This April, our employees spoke at International Nanny Training Day events in Denver, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Westchester, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Houston, and Dallas!

We loved getting to meet a few hundred nannies from coast-to-coast and love the spirit and patience of the event organizers in each city who donate their time and energy back towards the nanny community. We are ardent supporters of Nannypalooza and love this day-long initiative across the country for nannies to join each other in community and learn together. We already can’t wait for next year!

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Nannypalooza / Hurricane Helene

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This year, we sent three employees to North Carolina for our fourth time sponsoring Nannypalooza, an annual conference that is focused on child development workshops, professional training for nannies, and one of the most inclusive and welcoming spaces in the industry for nannies.
In a moment that will be reserved for a much longer setting, as I was piling boxes of mugs in my car to hit the road for Raleigh from western North Carolina, I watched a tree decide to exit the earth and land on my house.

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I ended up rolling into the conference a day late, unbathed and unaware of the devastating effects Hurricane Helene had on the rest of the state. Being at Nannypalooza and getting to see some of our team, Sue (the event’s incredible organizer) and some of the nannies I’ve become close to after years at this event was exactly what I needed after eating Spaghettios off of my grill for a day and wondering how much further into my house this tree was going to decide to fall until we got cell service or power back.
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I’m eternally grateful to Austin Macfarlane, owner of Triangle Nannies, for not only letting me crash in her house while I regrouped and charged my phone to prep for going back into the eye of the storm to support my neighbors and bring my partner and pets to safekeeping, but who did a massive Costco run (with her mom Nancy who I adore) to fill my SUV with batteries, toilet paper and sanitizing wipes, bottled water, and all the other essentials our neighbors would need in the days and weeks to come while we rebuilt. 

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Magic Castle / Los Angeles

We had a leadership retreat in Los Angeles in December to map out our 2026 and got to visit the Houdini Room at the Magic Castle, one of my favorite places in the United States! It was such a treat to host our team there (we brought along a couple of our SoCal agency friends - Ryan Jordan from Educated Nannies and Dara Yates from Seaside Staffing) Even if the seance was a little cheesy, we laughed, we cried, and we got to witness the thing we try so tirelessly to create all year long - magic. 

It’s hard to imagine that only a month later, our friends and community in Los Angeles were living between evacuation notices when wildfires spread throughout the entire city. We are so grateful for the time we got to spend in LA and for all of the community efforts that have led to the rebuilding process for everyone in LA. Especially on the heels of Helene, I remember speaking with my friends there in the weeks that followed and news coverage was at its peak, asking them to hold closely that the news cycles would end, that friends would stop checking in, and the world would move on long before the repairs were done or the damage was accounted for. In those moments, I began to feel that the stories and experiences we witnessed through Hurricane Helene at least had a use for a moment, or led to a deeper moment of empathy, or a better ability to support people who matter to us - even if it was just to say “I’m so sorry this happened” in the moments when no one can send anything or do anything. 

I’m proud that Nanny Relief Fund was able to quickly come together both after the wildfires and after Hurricane Helene to mobilize grants for nannies affected by both natural disasters, and am especially grateful to HomeWork Solutions for stepping in to support our causes there with both generous financial support and strategic wisdom on how to provide resources for the nanny community at large to prepare for unforeseen disasters.

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‍Community Advisory Committee

In keeping with all of the above - if there’s one thing we have witnessed over and over again this year, it’s that the long-distance bonds we formed out of necessity during COVID are still being tested, and are still growing. So many things in our country that we have taken for granted are disappearing, and things that have been considered common decency and respect are being harshly labeled and weaponized - often at the expense of caregivers, a community in this country that, regardless of anyone’s efforts to professionalize it, will always have origins in slavery and in parts of our country’s history that are now being erased and ignored. Public and private institutions are facing pressure to remove, or rename, efforts to repair our communities and backtrack on the efforts that have been made to co-create and live in a country that embraces people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all belief systems. 

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We are not engaging in that backtracking. 

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To help keep us accountable and in line with our values despite these external pressures, and to help us see our own learning edges and where we can rise up to being the leaders in the industry many see us as, we have formed an advisory committee made up of our mentors and industry leaders who we’ve had the privilege and pleasure of working with over the years. These dynamic folks are going to be supporting us in making sure that our company values are upheld through all of the work we do, from allocating our sponsorships, scholarships, and donations budgets to making sure our processes are equitable, fair, and always getting better. To learn more about our freshly-formed committee and meet our new advisors, click here!

We are so grateful to the many families, family offices, nannies, educators, and newborn care specialists who have trusted Adventure Nannies over the past thirteen years and cannot wait to see what adventures lie in store for us next year. 

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I also want to acknowledge and thank our amazing team, who display a level of dedication and genuine care to the work they do every day. We celebrate our wins together and troubleshoot our learning edges with so much grace and kindness, and I feel truly lucky to get to work with such amazing people every day. (If only we all got to share an office space together!)

Thank you for being part of our adventures, and cheers to our next trip around the sun!
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Shenandoah

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