Mary Clurman
Trained as a Montessori nursery school teacher (AMI, teaching for 12 years), Mary researched and established employee child care centers for two major New Jersey hospitals, with responsibility for all elements of the program. Under a grant from the United Way of New Jersey, she also founded and developed a network of family day care homes.

She originally launched Nanny.com in 1996 as the Web site of her nanny placement agency, Apple Pie USA, Inc., based in Montclair, New Jersey. She founded and operated the agency for altogether 18 years. During this time she was for five years a Board Member of the International Nanny Association. For three of those years she edited their newsletter, INAVision, revamping its format entirely to emphasize issues of importance to nannies and families and to agency owners. Then for the next three years she published and edited Nanny News(TM), a subscription-based publication and the first national newsletter for nannies and families.


Mary is a graduate of Cooper Union Art School, New York City. She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years, winning scholarships and awards for writing and for directing theater on campus. She currently lives outside Seligman, Arizona, where she paints and writes, and edits Nanny.com. She has 3 dogs there but two beloved grandchildren on the East Coast.

"I am a project person, active in community work, historic preservation, writing (poetry as well as child care articles), music, crafts, woodworking, painting, drawing, gardening, light construction, rock laying, wood cutting, teaching Sunday school, and T'ai Chi."

Many of the articles on this site were originally published in Nanny News, a newsletter Mary publishes.

Andree Aelion Brooks
Journalist, author and lecturer specializing in Jewish history topics, Andree Brooks has made children her second focus. For nearly two decades she was a contributing columnist and news writer for the New York Times. She founded the Women's Campaign at Yale University, where she is an associate fellow, and served as director/editor of an important teaching series, Out of Spain, for 5th-7th graders studying Jewish history and culture.

Her award-winning book, Children of Fast-Track Parents is still available for purchase, either from amazon.com or from the author (signed). Contact the author at andreebrooks@hotmail.com or write to her at: 15 Hitchcock Road, Westport, CT 06880. Cost new: $19.95 including postage and a personal message from the author. Please enclose a check and the text of any message you would like on the book and you will receive your book within ten days.

Becky Kavanagh
Nanny, Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Becky's articles are about her experiences with her school-age charges.

She has an Associate's Degree in early Childhood Education and for more than three years she co-directed/co-owned Mt. Washington Child Development Center. She was Lead, and later Head Teacher at the Chippewa Valley Technical College Child Development Lab School. She's been a live-in nanny with the same family for 14 years now, since the oldest child was a toddler. She homeschooled this child for six years and also served as a classroom volunteer for the two younger ones, now 14 and 11.

Becky served as Educational Para in the Project Success literacy and math program at her local elementary school for the 1998-1999 school year.

Becky has been a Board Member of the International Nanny Association, holding offices of Secretary, Vice President and then President. She chaired the INA Nanny Credentialing Exam. She is also a longstanding and active member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. As a member of Twin Cities Professional Nannies, she edits their newsletter. Becky was the first nanny to receive the Parents' Magazine Child Care Award (1998).

For the past three years, she has been a part-time Placement Counselor and Temporary Placement Specialist at Nannies from the Heartland, Minneapolis, There she participates in all aspects of nanny placement, fielding nanny/family inquiries, managing the agency newsletter, developing special projects, and more.

Becky says, "Now that the children are older, I am responsible for transportation, attending Suzuki cello classes with the 14 year old (and attending a week of music camp with him each summer), supervising children's homework, encouraging children to take responsibility for their own rooms and laundry, traveling with children/family - sometimes the youngest and I will travel alone while the older children and their mother are traveling elsewhere. I also do a great many more overnights - maybe 2-3 nights per month on average (parents are now divorced and the mother has a position where travel is involved). Because of family dynamics there is a lot more 'juggling' that needs to be done to keep everyone informed and involved."

Jenny Portman
Free lance writer, Fair Haven, New Jersey
Jenny writes about issues in children's health.

A triathlete (swim-bike-run), Jenny has set multiple state records in Red Bank (New Jersey) YMCA Masters Swimming. She was in the top ten at the 1998 Nationals in six events, the 2003 National Champion in two events, and winner of numerous 2000-2003 top ten world rankings. She's among the top ten in local triathlons and (with her husband, Robert) has toured Italy by bicycle.

Jenny is a freelance writer and fundraising consultant to nonprofit organizations. As grant writer/consultant to the Children's Cultural Center at Red Bank she raised funds to renovate the old building and develop arts programs for children ages 4-16.

A longtime volunteer for Junior League of Monmouth County, she was voted 1999 "Outstanding Leaguer," having been newsletter editor, community research chair and Community Director. She also chaired a committee to research, develop, fund, build, and staff "Hand-in Hand," a new daycare center for Long Branch High School students with babies.

Right now Jenny works with the Women Helping Women Scholarship fund at Brookdale Community College Foundation, the Monmouth Festival of the Arts (various positions), and on committees of the Fair Haven PTA.

She's also the founder and Executive Director of Swim for Kids, a nonprofit corporation established to raise money for local children's charities through sponsored marathon swims.

Jenny's children are now 14, 12 and 8 years old.

Janice St Clair
Nanny, Boston, Massachusetts
Janice has been a full-time nanny since 1991, always on a live-out ("come-and-go") basis. Her training was as a "baby-sitter, camp counselor and devoted aunt." Although she did not complete college, she reads voraciously on child care topics - when Nanny News asked her for a book list on potty training, Janice produced a long list, including picture books for children and instruction manuals for parents. She'd read all and used most of them. Her specialty is babies and toddlers, but she "works well with children up to (but not including) teenagers."

She is a longtime member of the International Nanny Association and of the National Association of Nannies. She founded the Boston Area Nanny Support Groups (BANSG) and maintains its Web site. She is a founding member of the National Association for Nanny Accreditation (NANA), working to establish a nationwide, tiered credentialing system, so that families can be assured of at least minimal training for their nannies and so that capable nannies receive recognition for their skills and accomplishments.

Janice's Web site is www.bigfoot.com/janstclair. A visit there will give you much information about BANSG. NANA's Web site is www.nanaccreditation.org.

Janice says, "I married late in life, and children were not in the cards for us. So being a third, nonvoting parent in the lives of my nanny charges fulfills my need to raise and nurture children. I keep in touch with all of my former charges, whom I think of as 'my kids who live with their parents.' In this day and age when real family members can live so far apart, I have been a welcome presence as an honored extended family member , and all of our lives have been enriched as a result."

Sheila Lynch Sych
Nanny
Sheila, originally from Britain, wrote several articles for Nanny News while she worked as a nanny in the Midwest. Always concise and brief, her articles capture the spirit of the career nanny who is married and works on a come-and-go basis.

So far, we have been unable to locate Sheila for an update and more specifics on her experience and qualifications. We welcome any help you may be able to provide, as we feel privileged to have been able to include her here.

Mary Weldon,
Nanny, Baby Nurse, Parent Educator
Mary's curriculum vitae reads like a novel, or better, as she's been and done everything possible to combine learning and professional growth through helping others.

She's a Certified Instructor in Redirecting Children's Behavior, has worked in public and private day care centers, operated a day care center within her home, was a Cub Scout Den Mother and a library "Story-Hour volunteer. She is a licensed Child Foster Parent and Adult Foster Caregiver and has operated a shelter for babies and children who could not live in their own "problem" homes. She has worked with infants on monitors and children with behavioral problems; with single and divorced parents and parents in the process of divorce. She is Fire Safety, First Aid, CPR, Red Cross Lifesaving, and Emergency Cardiac Care certified and a dedicated student of Professional Organizing. She is a graduate of St. Joseph's Academy and Rasmussen Business College, both in St. Paul, MN. She is a member of La Leche League. Mary is the mother of four grown children, stepmother to four more and grandmother to seven.

Mary has extensive professional experience with multiples and high-risk babies and in educating and teaching new parents, including breast-feeding support and instruction. She has taken classes on parenting at the Alfred Adler Institute, courses on Preparation for Childbirth, Parent Effectiveness (PET), and several child psychology classes. She has training experience in working with ADD/ADHD children.

She once took four sets of mother/baby combinations into her home. These were mentally retarded mothers and their "normal" babies. She taught them parenting skills and documented their abilities, reporting to the Court system as they learned to perform as parents.

Although her specialty has been babies and toddlers, her strength is in teaching parents and children how to be happy and successful within themselves, - as parents, as children.

Mary has most recently worked as a full-time baby nurse and nanny in Florida and California. Barbara Blouin's book, Like A Second Mother: Nannies & Housekeepers in the lives of wealthy children, includes a chapter on Mary's career. As Blouin observed, Mary teaches "parents how to be better parents, and the baby how to be a happy baby."