The ethos behind X+1 is to empower young people to thrive by helping them to develop the tools needed to navigate the most difficult years of their lives. The ultimate goal of the sessions is to ignite their inner drive by identifying passions, then openly discussing potential pitfalls, which could stand in the way of success. 

 

X+1 is a relatively new chapter in my career journey, which truly began when I left Virginia, USA, at the age of 19 to take a year’s sabbatical from the college of William & Mary to go to the former Soviet Union. Having both been raised on farms in the USA, my parents joined the military as young adults to see the world and this in turn instilled a sense of wanderlust in myself and my siblings. My mother, the original “teen whisperer”, was a paediatric nurse whose attitude to life was a huge inspiration. She taught us that success comes from a combination of self-belief and a strong work ethic, and that “I Can” is more important than IQ. She never judged or preached, only listened and motivated and we sadly lost her in 2014.

 

I spent 15 years in Russia throughout the transition from communism to capitalism, where I started out as a commodities trader, and then moved into media. I was Deputy Managing Director of McCann-Erickson for 5 years, which was the largest international agency in the country at the time, and went on to found an award-winning through-the-line marketing agency at 1 Red Square which we built for 5 years and eventually sold. My fascination with advertising stemmed from the psychological theory behind effective messaging, and our agency developed the concept of sensory advertising: the engagement of all five senses to affect behavioral changes. Throughout my time in management, I found the most rewarding aspects of the experience to be the training and motivating of young people to find their passions and inner drive, in order to participate in building a new world.

 

On moving back to London after selling the agency in Moscow, I continued to work as a Marketing Consultant on a project-to-project basis, and subsequently entered into the much more challenging career of full-time motherhood. It was only during the course of raising my own three children that I fully appreciated that my true interest lies in studying the psyche of young people. I finally made the decision to take my passion for listening to and then motivating them to the next level, and so X+1 was born.