Noemi “Mimi” Hernandez has been called “the kid whisperer.”
A 34-year-old professional nanny, the mild-mannered Hernandez has been working in home-based childcare for more than a decade. She now works 20 hours a week for a Lookout Mountain family with three children.
“Children are my happy place,” says Hernandez, who has an infant daughter herself. “If you see me at a gathering with adults, I’ll always be at the kids’ table with a coloring book.”
As more and more busy Chattanooga families look for help with childcare, a well-qualified nanny is the gold standard. And as the pay-rate inches upward — to an estimated $20 to $35 an hour in Chattanooga — becoming a nanny has emerged as a viable career for young workers or a bridge to retirement for others, such as former schoolteachers.
Madison Blakeley, founder of The Nanny Collection, said her Clarksville, Tennessee-based company increasingly recruits and deploys childcare professionals in the Chattanooga area. A former nanny herself, Blakeley says demand for qualified, deeply vetted nannies here is robust. She says most of her customers are business executives and health care professionals whose busy lifestyles push them to find help with managing their households.