I’m Rachel Carrell, founder and CEO of Koru Kids. I’m also a mum from Highgate in North London (although originally from New Zealand). Before founding Koru Kids, I worked at McKinsey and in health technology for years.
But it was only when I had a baby – and all my friends had babies – that I realised how difficult childcare was in London. It’s hard to arrange with no great tools out there to simplify it, incredibly expensive, and common options like nursery just don’t work for lots of families – either it’s not as individually attentive as you hoped for or you just missed the boat and didn’t get your name down prior to conception!
I kept hearing horror stories from friends who weren’t happy with their choices but felt powerless to change them. I also saw lots of female friends unable to go back to work, or making career choices they didn’t really want to make, just because they couldn’t find the right childcare. I felt deeply that this was unfair, and bad for society.
I decided to quit my job and help families find the right childcare so they can flourish. Childcare that creates awesome mini-humans, puts emotional wellbeing first, that’s easy to arrange and doesn’t cost the earth.
Along the way, I’ve been lucky enough to get amazing backers like Michael Pennington, the co-founder of Gumtree. My team now numbers 60 and I couldn’t be more proud of the talent of the team around me to help me with this mission – together we want to make sure every family can flourish with our help.
As an aside – I’m personally obsessed with child development. I’ve channelled this obsession into the Koru Ethos.
The Koru Ethos takes the stance that childhood lays the critical foundations for lifelong emotional wellbeing and so we want, via our childcare, to give your child tools they can use their whole life long to flourish on their own unique path, whatever that might be. The Koru Ethos is woven through our candidate selection process, our training, our community, how we support our people day-to-day, and the core values of how we run our business.
To explore and challenge and develop the Koru Ethos I’ve run a Facebook group, “Bringing Up Great Kids” for over 5 years – to share interesting articles about child development and techniques, and to ask for recommendations from people who are thoughtful about creating wonderful childhoods. Whether you’re a parent, a nanny or just an interested person, you’re most welcome to join us, or sign up for our Bringing Up Great Kids newsletter here.
We love chatting to parents so if you’d like to find out more you can contact us right here.
Or come find me on Instagram (@rach.of.koru.kids) or Twitter (@rachcarrell)!