WE ARE SEVEN YEARS OLD.
VeryWell says “Most 7-year-olds display an unending thirst for knowledge and will have an innate curiosity and excitement about things in the world. They are natural explorers, scientists, and analysts, and often ask questions about everything from why the sky is blue to where babies come from. At this age, they also take great pride in sharing their knowledge about things and often enjoy showing younger children skills that they themselves have mastered.”
Adventure Nannies is on track to hit many of these 7-year-old typical milestones. As a young company who has the privilege of working with entrepreneurial families across the globe, we have done so much exploring, asking questions, and research in the last few years to really tune into how we can make the most of our role in the lives of the families and candidates who seek us out.
The last couple of years have been challenging for everyone in different ways, but particularly for families, business owners, women, people of color, and people who possess other protected traits. Our country is divided politically, economically, and philosophically. In what is the ‘most robust economy’ ever, there are critical issues still in play every day. It is challenging to be a stay at home parent. It is complicated to be a working parent. It is challenging to be a professional nanny with a family of your own, and difficult for both families and nannies to navigate changing laws and standards in order to make sure that both parties are secure, confident, and protected when entering into employment agreements together.
In a time where we get the opportunity to witness so many individuals taking the plunge and commitment to make themselves better people who are more aware of the world around them, the privilege they’ve experienced, and the impact that their words and actions make, here are a few things we have changed in our seventh year of business. We are not done changing by a long shot – and we’d love to hear your thoughts on how our agency can be more inclusive, welcoming, and supportive of families and candidates from all walks of life.
Summit Sessions
Last year, about 12,000 candidates applied for our positions. Despite having one of the largest staffs of any agency in the country (10 full-time staff members and counting,) we don’t get to interact with the majority of our candidates on a very personal level. After speaking with the National Domestic Worker’s Association and several other nanny-focused action groups, we realized that with such a large audience of nannies, we had a larger responsibility to the domestic staffing community than just to the 8% of applicants we work with over the course of a year.
In January, we launched Summit Sessions, which is a monthly interactive series featuring an industry expert from a relevant field. Up to this point, the sessions have occurred on Facebook Live so that participants can ask questions of our guest speakers in real time. We’ve featured guest speakers on teaching children to code, respectful care (RIE/Reggio Emilio/Waldorf/Montessori philosophies), positive discipline, gender identity, and much, much more. We are looking forward to expanding Summit Sessions into other avenues of media and expanding our content to be relevant and inclusive to today’s nannies and childcare providers.
No More Profile Photos
When was the last time you applied for a professional position and were asked to provide a photo of yourself? Unless you are a model, probably never. Yet for some reason, almost every nanny agency (including us until recently!) have asked candidates to provide a professional headshot of themselves that is passed along to families as part of their candidate profile.
Equality and equal opportunities are of paramount importance to us – that’s why we spend between 10-15 hours on each candidate just to get through our initial round of vetting before they can begin being introduced to families. Because of that, we have made the decision to remove profile photos from our candidate profiles to give families the opportunity to decide which candidates to interview based on their experiences, qualifications, personality, and written essay responses rather than their physical appearance. Over the last seven years, we have become passionate about professionalizing the industry, and in order to help our families find the rock star, unicorn, and amazing candidates they are seeking, part of our role is to create an agency where nannies from all walks of life can be welcomed, celebrated for their differences, and treated like the professionals that they are. Every family and caregiver is unique, and in order for us to succeed at our jobs, we need to recognize and celebrate that uniqueness in every person who chooses to work with us.
Building Our Families
This has been a huge year for several members of our staff – Brandy, our founder, is currently globe-trotting around the world as her husband’s band prepares to release their third album, and this is the first tour cycle where they have a 1-year-old and an Adventure Nanny of their own in tow for the ride! Our recruitment coordinator Nina who has been with us for nearly 2 years will be welcoming a baby over the summer as well, and we are so excited to meet them!
In addition to our own families growing, we had the privilege of adding several positions to our team in the last year to keep up with growing demand for Adventure Nannies around the world. It’s already difficult to imagine what our team was like before Kenna, Angela, Amos and Elizabeth were here – each of them brings a unique set of skills and perspectives to their roles and have worked together to make our agency run more smoothly than ever.
It is truly humbling to observe how far Adventure Nannies has come in the last seven years (of which I have been around for nearly 5), and I am so grateful to the families, nannies, and other agency owners who continue to spread the word, offer us feedback, and trust us with your nanny and private educator searches. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Happy birthday to Adventure Nannies!
Have any questions for our team? We’d love to hear from you– reach out to us on Facebook, Instagram, and check out the other posts on the blog!
If you are looking for an exceptionally skilled nanny or private educator for your child, we’d love to hear from you!
If you feel that you have what it takes to become an Adventure Nanny or private educator, reach out to us.