In May 2025, Adventure Nannies established the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) with industry leaders from across the United States. Our committee was filled with seasoned career nannies, newborn care specialists, RBTs, advocates, and educators who came together to collaborate on the future of the agency and the future of this industry.
The committee was not built to be advisory in name only. It was built to hold Adventure Nannies accountable to the community it serves, and to help hold the broader nanny industry accountable too.
What Year One Was
Five founding members gave their time, their expertise, and their honesty to building something that didn't have a template. From day one they were compensated for that contribution, because caregiver expertise has value, and community input shouldn't come at a personal cost to the people giving it.
The committee guided philanthropic decisions, oversaw scholarship selections for Nanny Camp, and began auditing the agency's candidate process. Before the scholarship cycle launched, the committee asked the community what it was actually dealing with.
The answers were clarifying. Nearly 58% of caregivers said their financial situation had affected their ability to attend industry events like Nanny Camp. More than a third of caregivers called finances a major barrier to professional development overall. And this wasn't a group of newcomers: nearly 80% of respondents had ten or more years of experience. These are seasoned professionals navigating real financial barriers to reach the spaces that were supposed to be for them.
That community told the committee what it needed. The committee listened, designed a process grounded in that feedback, and worked alongside Adventure Nannies to get scholarships into the hands of caregivers who had earned them. Year one happened because people showed up and said something.
Not everything landed perfectly. The committee came out of year one with a sharper sense of what it needs to be effective: data that actually closes the loop back into agency decisions, clarity about scope so the work stays sharp, and the kind of consistency that builds trust over time. Those are the things year two is built around.
Meet Clara Akwarandu, Incoming CAC Chair
This May, Clara Akwarandu stepped into the role of Chair of the Community Advisory Committee after serving as a committee member since its inaugural year. She is currently pursuing an MA in Human Development and Family Science with an emphasis in Family and Community Services, a field dedicated to strengthening support systems for children, caregivers, and families. Her academic focus and longstanding advocacy work closely align with the committee's vision and future direction.
The Chair is a new leadership position within the committee, created to give the CAC a clear lead voice and create autonomy for the committee. Our Chair will be running committee meetings, driving special projects, managing member recruitment and onboarding, and representing the committee in conversations with Adventure Nannies leadership. The Chair role represents not only greater responsibility, but also the trust to help shape the committee’s direction, strengthen its impact, and ensure the voices of caregivers continue to be heard at the highest levels of the organization.
Clara on why she's here:
This committee has already created meaningful conversations and real momentum, and I'm excited to help guide what comes next. My goal as Chair is to keep our work organized, collaborative, and action-oriented, and to make sure every member feels heard and valued. I care deeply about advocacy, community care, and creating systems that genuinely support nannies in this industry.
— Clara Akwarandu, CAC Chair
The CAC's Work Is Guided by Six Core Mandates
The mission of the Community Advisory Committee (CAC) is to serve as a strategic bridge between the professional childcare community and agency leadership, transforming real-world insight into actionable guidance. Through consistent engagement, innovative projects, and thought leadership, the CAC advances ethical standards, strengthens community trust, and supports sustainable, people-centered practices. Grounded in diverse professional perspectives and operating independently, the CAC fosters a more equitable, responsive, and empowered caregiving community.
To bring this mission to life, the CAC operates through six interconnected mandates. While each mandate serves a distinct purpose, they function as an interconnected ecosystem. The committee gathers real insight from the community, evaluates it with a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and then works to translate it into professional resources, stronger relationships, and broader advocacy. Together, they create a framework for turning community insight into meaningful impact across the caregiving profession.
Here's what each one means in practice.
1. Community Representation & Strategic Feedback
Think about how many decisions get made about nannies without a single working nanny in the room. This mandate is the mechanism that changes that. It gets caregiver voices into conversations before decisions are already made, so lived experience shapes outcomes rather than reacting to them.
2. Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility Advancement
This isn't a separate lane of work. It's the lens the committee applies to everything it does. Through this focus, the committee promotes equitable access, inclusive participation, and culturally responsive engagement across programs, events, and community spaces. It encourages us to continually assess how accessible and welcoming our initiatives are and to take meaningful action when gaps or barriers are identified.
3. Advisory Review & Strategic Collaboration
Before a new Adventure Nannies program launches, before a partnership is announced, before a community-facing decision is made, the advisory committee gets to weigh in. Community perspective is built into a process from the beginning produces better outcomes than feedback asked for after the fact. This mandate keeps that from being an afterthought.
4. Professional Development & Knowledge Sharing
The nanny profession has a knowledge-sharing problem. Caregivers who have figured things out, how to negotiate a contract, how to navigate a difficult family dynamic, how to build a sustainable long-term career, often have no real channel to pass that on to the people coming up behind them. This mandate is about creating those channels: resources, mentorship, and industry conversations built by people who actually do the job.
5. Caregiver Community Engagement & Relationship Building
Most nannies work alone in one household and with one family at a time, often without colleagues or a professional community. The isolation is real and it costs caregivers something: in confidence, in perspective, and in the simple knowledge that what they're experiencing isn't unique to them. This mandate is about building the connective tissue. Spaces where caregivers can find each other, share what they know, and feel less alone in work that matters.
6. Broader Community Outreach & Impact Initiatives
Caregivers are leaders. Advocates. People whose work shapes children and families in lasting and often unseen ways. This reflects the belief that their influence doesn't have to stop at the front door. Through outreach, partnerships, and service, the impact caregivers make every day can extend far beyond the households they serve.
Caregivers are leaders and advocates whose work shapes children and families in lasting and often unseen ways.
A Note from Our Chair
As Chair, one of my priorities is ensuring the CAC remains accessible, transparent, and accountable to the community it serves. I want caregivers to understand not only what we do, but how we do it and why it matters.
This next phase is about execution and impact. The CAC is committed to strengthening its approach, refining how we operate, and delivering work that reflects the full potential of our mission and mandates. We are stepping into the year ahead with clarity, conviction, and a shared commitment to building something stronger than what came before.
— Clara Akwarandu, CAC Chair
New Voices, New Members
Year one built the structure. Year two is about who joins it.
The committee is growing, and applications are open through July 10th, 2026. Anyone can apply on their own; no nomination or invitation is required. There's no need to know anyone at Adventure Nannies to apply.
Who the committee is looking for:
People with active or recent experience in caregiving, education, community work, or related fields. People with lived experience or deep work in communities that are underrepresented in domestic staffing, who want to advocate for those communities at the table where decisions get made. People who are willing to give Adventure Nannies honest, critical, sometimes uncomfortable feedback. That is genuinely the job.
The time commitment is real but manageable: one to five hours a month, enough for a monthly Zoom and some project work between meetings, not a second job.
What the role includes:
Monthly committee meetings on Zoom, project work between meetings in small subcommittees, travel and expenses covered for any in-person events, and a monthly stipend.
In the application there's one open-text question that matters more than any credential or checkbox:
What communities, especially underserved ones in the nanny and childcare industry, do you represent, and what voices do you hope to advocate for on this committee and why?
There's no wrong way to answer this. Every new voice that joins changes who and where the committee is capable of reaching. Diverse backgrounds, regions, areas of expertise, and lived experiences within this profession matter. That breadth is what makes the CAC’s work real.
Apply here: adventurenannies.typeform.com/to/UwiOl6fR
Applications close on July 10th.
If this work speaks to you, the committee would love to hear from you - and if someone comes to mind, feel free to share this post with them.
Questions about the committee or the application process? Reach the team at community@adventurenannies.com.
ABOUT THE CHAIR
Clara Akwarandu brings a thoughtful, service-centered approach to every role she takes on. With over 11 years of experience in childcare, education, and neurodivergent support, Clara has worked as a special needs nanny, ABA behavior therapist, Montessori classroom assistant, and mentor to middle and high school students. Backed by a strong academic foundation in Early Childhood Education and Public Health, she is pursuing graduate studies at the University of Missouri with a Master’s in Human Development and Family Science with a concentration in Family and Community Services as well as a Graduate Certificate in Special Education. She also serves as the Director of Community and Partnerships for the Nanny Relief Fund, where she is passionate about strengthening connections, elevating caregiver voices, and advancing the professional nanny industry.
