From the day she learned she could travel the world while taking care of children, Natalya Clasen dreamed of being an ‘Adventure Nanny’.
Adventure Nannies is a company that connects families with nannies who meet even the most specific needs in terms of education, culture, extracurricular activities and childcare. It’s like it’s a pitch for Disney’s next four-quadrant blockbuster:Indiana Jones meets Mary Poppins.
Nannies placed with families through the company have embarked on 300-mile bike rides across France and three-month train journeys across Europe and Asia; lived on Alaskan houseboats, cattle ranches, organic vineyards, biodynamic farms; and are even outsourced for stays on private islands. All the while, they not only take care of their employers’ children, but enrich them lives. Families who come to Adventure Nannies for help are looking for people with a range of skills: fluency in several languages, expertise in certain pedagogy, experience in horseback riding and hiking, and even experience in molecular gastronomy.
“It’s really strict and very competitive,” Clasen, 24, tells me Fortune. “They have very high expectations of what they ask of their nannies in terms of how involved they are in the world around them, what they are like as a caregiver, what their references say about them, how they present themselves, what they bring to their own unique experiences to be able to contribute to the lives of these very unique families as a unique caretaker.”
Clasen listened to the Adventurous nannies in the sky podcast expanded over the years to prepare well for the application process, maintaining the value Adventure Nannies places on candidates with unique experiences and what they can bring to the care table.
“We had to find people who weren’t your typical babysitter,” says Brandy Schultz, who founded the company more than a decade ago to help support her then-aspiring musician boyfriend, now known worldwide as Lumineers lead singer Matthew Schultz. “Families always wanted these unicorn people.”
Schultz has taken care of children of his own while taking advantage of opportunities to dive off a cliff in Italy, maintain a farm in the south of France, and attend the Burning Man madness. In the beginning, Schultz traveled across the country connecting with highly qualified friends and friends of friends and convincing them to become nannies.
Thanks to Adventure Nannies
Today, the company employs 17 operational staff who work to interview and place the approximately 20,000 nanny applications they receive each year with the 300 to 500 families the company serves. The company’s CEO, Shenandoah Davis, says sales have increased tenfold over the past seven years. Some nannies make more than six figures, she says, and in many cases they work with “very cool families.”
The first family Clasen interviewed with chose a different candidate, but that put her on the Adventure Nanny roster and she was soon picked up by the family she now works with – the parents are a senior director for one of’ the world’s top consulting firms and a consultant at an oil and gas company, and live just outside Denver with their 11-month-old and 5-year-old.
Become a babysitter
Clasen first heard about Adventure Nannies after graduating from Colorado State University, from a graduate research assistant who spent some time working for families. “When she told me about it, I thought, ‘I can travel the world and be a caregiver at the same time?'” she says. “That’s me, that’s me as a person.”
While working towards a double major in ethnic studies and women’s and gender studies, Clasen studied abroad in Sweden and traveled to more than 15 countries on several continents. She also spent some time studying in Ghana, “while becoming more and more closely connected to how children are an integral part of the world we live in, and that ageism is real,” she says.
Those experiences helped form the core of Clasen’s approach to teaching and raising children: treat them as full human beings, validate their opinions and experiences, and introduce them to the world.
“I really strive to bring this humanity, this different understanding to kids, to help them put themselves in the world in a more intentional way. It has to do with supporting children in their process of self-actualization,” she says, acknowledging that class and the position of the children and their family play a role in how they will ultimately form their identities.
“The ways children are marginalized is very clear – it’s something I’ve personally experienced,” she says. “It made sense that my studies along with my travels, and wanting to heal my own inner child in many ways, led me to this career.”
Her approach has caught on with her employers, who Clasen affectionately refer to as “father boss” and “mother boss.” Her mother-boss tells Fortune that she was attracted to how Clasen treats children as if they were adults.
“She is good at respecting children’s feelings and opinions, and that was a relief,” said Clasen’s mother-boss, who asked not to be identified to protect her family’s privacy. “A lot of times we’re like, ‘You’re the kid, you don’t know,’ but they have thoughts and feelings and if you ignore that, you’re sending a not-great message that it’s okay to ignore how other people think and feel .”
They didn’t have the money to hire someone like Clasen with their first child, who relied on nearby family for support. But with a second child, between the flexibility and childcare burdens of the pandemic, and a new job with new responsibilities—and more money—it was time to pay for help.
A million women have left the workforce since the start of the pandemic, in part because childcare is so expensive. And those who continued to work through COVID have experienced deteriorating mental health under the stress: 42% of working moms say a 2022 Harris Poll survey commissioned by CVS, have been diagnosed with anxiety and/or depression. And 33% were more likely to report that their mental health had deteriorated in the past year. A lot of stress and responsibility is placed on working mothers, and it is necessary to be able to afford the help and support at home a level of income few can afford.
The family Clasen works for has a household income of about $500,000 a year, and they spend somewhere around $10,000 a month on childcare, her mother-boss says. Although contracted through the family and paid by the hour, her salary is comparable to about $73,000 a year, Clasen says.
“It is a huge financial commitment to get the support we have. And I’m willing to make sure we have that and can prioritize our relationship with our children,” Clasen’s mother-boss says. “Still, if you look at how much money you spend on childcare: wow.”
A day in the life
Clasen’s bosses haven’t planned any train, boat or bike adventures abroad, so it’s not a typical Adventure Nannies setup. But raising a family and running a household is an adventure in itself, and Clasen is more than happy to be a part of their lives for now. However, she plans to look for a more traditional Adventure Nannies role, which requires her to travel when her current contract ends.
For now, Clasen spends her days commuting 15 minutes to the family’s single-story ranch-style home in the car they provide for her (she also receives health care, paid time off, and other benefits). She arrives at 8am to pick up the kids and get them ready for after school and daycare. She prefers not to live with the family, she says. Lines are blurred enough when working in one of the more intimate professions. “I’ve been initiated into other people’s lives that I normally wouldn’t be, and I get compensated for it.”
She works a relatively normal schedule from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., give or take the extracurricular activities, emergencies, and contingencies that arise when juggling high-powered careers and childcare that make the night last longer than expected.
After driving the kids to school, she spends her time on more monotonous tasks such as doing laundry, running errands, doing inventory, and making sure parts of the house are efficiently organized – tasks that Clasen and her father and mother boss have agreed upon to add. a pay rise.
Three days a week, she runs to pick up the 5-year-old, change her clothes, and transport her to his private school for the second half of the day and pick up the 11-year-old so her mother can breastfeed her. On the days when the eldest is out of school, she arranges activities tailored for him, usually museums and farm visits and art projects, just to “cultivate a deeper sense of identity and understanding and explore what excites him,” Clasen said. say.
“No day is the same,” she adds, but they’ve gotten into a good routine and it’s a pretty flexible and collaborative process.
“We understand that while we are the employer, we don’t have all the answers,” says Clasen’s boss. “She’s a valuable resource who has a lot of insight and opinions and training that we don’t have.”
She knows they could have gone elsewhere for help; found cheaper childcare, but they have great confidence in Clasen and the quality of nannies that Adventure Nannies connects families with.
“It’s hard on moms to figure out how to handle everything,” says Clasen’s mom-boss, adding that she wishes nannies were more accessible rather than a luxury. “We need to remove the stigma around leaning on help because you just can’t do everything, but Natalya makes sure we can do a lot of everything.”