Meet Shenandoah Davis

We were lucky to catch up with Shenandoah Davis recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shenandoah, you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
My generosity comes from an immense sense of gratitude for the many people who have shown me generosity throughout my life. Every major shift in my life trajectory has been caused by someone seeing something powerful in me that I hadn’t yet acknowledged in myself. I was fortunate to have a mother who prioritized my education over her own career and homeschooled me until the age of 14. When I went into public high school, I had an amazing choir director named Jim Keller who was incredibly kind and caring and instilled a love of music theory in me. I then went to college for opera performance and became a singer-songwriter and moved to Seattle. A musician named Tomo Nakayama took me under his wing and invited me to join his band, Grand Hallway. I was able to tour the USA with that band for several years and then began touring and releasing albums under my own name. At my company, Adventure Nannies, the founder Brandy Schultz tried to hire me as a marketing consultant (which I turned down due to a lack of marketing experience) and then brought me on as a business coach, then COO, then co-founder and CEO, and made me her business partner. She really instilled the value in me of allowing people to bring their whole selves to the workplace and set the tone for an inclusive and dynamic company culture that I have worked hard to grow and maintain. If it weren’t for the generosity of these people and many others who have changed my life, I don’t know where I’d be. I’m committed to exuding that same generosity and confidence in the people I surround myself with and love celebrating wins and successes with my team, and helping others up their own ladders.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I run Adventure Nannies, the coolest nanny agency in the world. We help dynamic, active families across the US find outstanding, adventurous nannies to travel with their families on musical tours and vacations, as well as to work full-time in their homes and teach their children how to be inclusive and brave global citizens. The families who have worked with us have shared that our nannies have allowed them to be more successful in their businesses and their marriages, have helped their children through obstacles and insecurities, and have provided excellent educational support both in and out of classrooms.

A fun fact about Adventure Nannies is that the founder, Brandy, was the original “Adventure Nanny” and worked with families around the world before launching the business to support her musician boyfriend, Wes. Wes is the lead singer of The Lumineers and now Brandy travels the world with him, their two beautiful children, and their own Adventure Nanny while the business helps other families find the balance and freedom they need and deserve.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
The most impactful qualities that have led Adventure Nannies to success are our abilities to self-reflect on what we know and what we still need to learn, and a fearlessness (or even recklessness) when it comes to tackling problems. We approach every opportunity with a “yes” mindset and embrace the unexpected at every turn. We also became passionate early on about the difficulties domestic workers face in the United States and have worked hard to support their rights and elevating industry standards to ensure the professionals who work in these fields are compensated legally and fairly and have access to the same standard benefits offered in any other industry to the professionals at the top of their fields.

For anyone early in their journey, I would encourage them to think and dream big and to run at their goals at full speed. If you are waiting for things to change or to be more optimal, you will be waiting forever. Life is short – take the risks, learn from the mistakes, and keep trying.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
One of the most impactful books I’ve read is “The Big Leap” by Gaye Hendricks. My major take-aways were understanding how, as humans, we feed our own limiting beliefs and really set our own standards and ceilings for what success looks like and how we can and will succeed or fail. Being willing to take the leap into believing you are capable of more and understanding that you as a person deserve happiness and success, and then building plans from there, leads to far greater accomplishments and wins than you would have thought possible previously.

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Image Credits
Friends & Lovers Photography Zack Smith Lou D’Aprile

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