It started, as so many things in the Hamptons do, with a whisper. “There’s this nanny service I know of that sends Ole Miss sorority girls up to New York each summer to work in the Hamptons…,” a Brearley mom said to me sotto voce a few summers back in East Hampton at a tech executive’s birthday party for a former White House press secretary. She later passed along a generic Gmail address that she wasn’t altogether sure was still working. With the fierce competition to find good babysitters in the Hamptons only increased after Covid, I figured it was worth a shot—at the time I had an eight-month old, a three-old-old, and a nanny who just gave notice. This service seemed like a dream.
My email eventually found its way to Hartwell Furr, then a junior at the University of Mississippi. She was taking over running the nascent Nanny Network business from Chi Omega sister Kate Hayes, who moved to New York after graduating to pursue interior design. Hayes had started the business matching Ole Miss girls with New York families looking for seasonal childcare. The kids get someone full of energy and enthusiasm, relatable because they are not too much older, who speaks in a mysterious (Southern) accent about fascinating and faraway places like a sorority house and college in Mississippi. The parents get someone (else) to jump in the pool when the kids come home from camp, is tech savvy enough to research and register for toddler classes through a booking app, can handily drive the family SUV to playdates, and, if politeness were a sport, would reach Olympic status.
On our first call, Furr interviewed me as much as I interviewed her. She told me about the service, and (reasonable) fees, and sent me a lovely follow-up email that began, “I enjoyed visiting with you!” After reviewing PDFs for a handful of select candidates (quiet, non-partyers, please, as per my skeptical husband’s request), all with smiling pictures, and glowing references, I moved forward with an SMU business major rising junior, whose main childcare experience consisted of being a counselor at a North Carolina Christian girls sleepaway camp. (We are Jewish.) Before I knew it, we were buying a round-trip plane ticket from Birmingham, Alabama for a stranger with two first names, who (initially) referred to us as ma’am and sir, to come live with us for the summer in the Hamptons.
Nanny Network and HARTWELL CEO Hartwell Furr, 24, in her West Village office (also her studio apartment). Hayley Ellen DaySpoiler alert: Our kids had the best summer of their lives; we made a new extended member of our family. Our nanny, Elizabeth Reid Gray, had her first lobster roll, attended her first shabbat, and bumped into Emma Roberts at the park. “That had never happened to me, where I was having a casual conversation with someone famous,” she told me recently. We set her up on informational interviews with our contacts from everywhere from Pepsi to Morgan Stanley. Come Labor Day her parents even shipped us a thank you gift of Big Bob Gibson Bar-BQ. She’s now working in New York as a corporate investment banking analyst.
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R16ekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R26ekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeWord of mouth spreads quickly when it comes to good childcare, and invariably on Mondays after parents have hit the country club cocktail party circuit, “my email box explodes,” says Furr. So far this year she has made 120 placements, and counting, up from 80 last year, primarily in the Hamptons but also now in upscale locations all over the country including Locust Valley, Bedford, Darien, Nantucket, Sonoma, New York City, as well as in Greece, Italy, Croatia, and London.
“My kids thought it was really cool that they had somebody who was college-aged living with us who was from close to the part of the country where their grandparents lived,” says Jenna Bush Hager, who used the service a few summers back, when she actually employed Furr as her summer nanny, out in Locust Valley and (at her parents’ house) in Maine. (President George W. Bush gave Furr a painting as a gift.) “She definitely taught my kids to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.” For Bush Hager, most important is gratitude, kindness, and graciousness. “Manners were part of the conversation, which I so appreciated.”
Ole Miss nannies Sarah Welles Edwards from Birmingham, Alabama and Sarah Liza Stockett from Madison, Mississippi in Locust Valley last summer. Sage JerniganFurr notes that another reason for growth is that it’s getting harder for families to get au pairs from other countries. Visa requirements have tightened and logistically it’s more difficult since Covid. Also, and I’m speculating, the increasing uneasiness on the Upper East Side, and across the country, about potential deportations for undocumented caregivers are likely driving the interest in her pool.
And on the nanny side, applicants—including the occasional manny!—have increased as well, from 270 last year to 330. It would be even higher, but Furr has made it more rigorous to apply, including implementing an application fee. And this year Furr is requiring the nannies to stay later in August and miss sorority rush, which traditionally has them heading back to college weeks earlier leaving parents bereft during summer’s busiest month. "I write them a formal excuse letter to submit to their chapter." She, along with her team of eight college students who work part-time, screen candidates vigorously but notes that by pulling from highly competitive chapters of Southern sororities the recruitment teams already vet prospective pledges “like the CIA.”
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R1cekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R2cekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeFurr looks for candidates with a sense of adventure and appreciation of new experiences, not to mention independence. Many see this as on-ramp to spend the summer in the Hamptons and to make future NYC connections. Indeed, many former nannies often find entry level roles at companies that their host family owns, as well as other opportunities opened to them through this experience.
Alabama nanny and then-SMU business school undergrad Elizabeth Reid Gray helping to prepare a lemonade—and ice cream!—stand over Fourth of July weekend in the Hamptons. Courtesy Caroline WaxlerThe majority of nannies placed are still from Ole Miss, now equally dispersed over four different sororities there, but the nannies come from 38 different schools. Candidates usually hear about the service from friends or family who have nannied previously, but occasionally candidates come in from social media as well. Annie West, from the rural town of Anderson, South Carolina, then a rising junior, remembers when she in high school being struck by an older girl she knew posting pictures on Instagram from the Hamptons. “And, I was like, ‘How is she in the Hamptons? What is she doing?’” says West, who tracked down the Nanny Network. “When I interviewed with Hartwell, she said I was the first Clemson girl, so I was really excited about that.” That was last summer. This summer, five Clemson girls applied for Nanny Network jobs, four from the same sorority, Tri Delta, and one Kappa.
“I originally thought my family was going to pick me up from the airport, but they ended up getting me a [Hampton] Jitney ticket, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world because I had seen people taking the Jitney out to the Hamptons on TV shows,” says West of the famed bus service and her entrée into the Hamptons. Her mom had flown up with her to New York City, but after she left West “just kind of gallivanted through the city by myself,” before boarding. “I just stared out the window the entire time just trying to figure out where I was on a map and where this town Quogue was. I'd never heard of it,” says West. “My nanny dad and the little two-year-old were waiting at the stop for me when I got there. It was the cutest town that I've ever seen.”
Mallory Mcquillen, then a rising sophomore at Ole Miss, and a Chi Omega, flew up to New York with fellow sorority sister to nanny together with the same family in Southampton during the summer of 2023, for their first of what would be her three summers. “My nanny mom was just like, ‘I'm going to send out a driver,” to the airport, says Mcquillen, to pick them up. “We had to text with the driver, and it was just kind of cool. It was literally our first impression of the family.” She had only spoken with the mom once before getting out there. “We hadn't even seen the kids or met them.” She and the other nanny piled their two huge suitcases (each) into the big Audi for the long ride out. “And you show up at the door with your suitcases and the family's just waiting there to welcome you in.”
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R1jekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R2jekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeIn the Hamptons these nannies toggle all the usual tasks along with remembering to the various club rules, such as dressing the kids and themselves in all whites when going to the tennis club and no phone use at the beach club. (The nanny agreement form the year I did it allowed for onboarding instructions for multiple clubs.)
To stave off loneliness, Furr gathers the nannies each summer—last year it was pizza on the beach in Southampton—and puts them in a GroupMe chat, which allows them to connect for walks when the kids are occupied in camp and dinners on their days off. “It’s just funny that we're group of nannies just hanging out in the Hamptons,” says Mcquillen, who was out one time shopping with a fellow nanny when they spotted Jennifer Lopez eating outside at a restaurant in Southampton. They were so starstruck that they walked multiple laps by her and took video of her from inside a nearby jewelry store so they could show their moms.
Mcquillen is easily able to identify her fellow Southern nannies. “When you're walking around town or in the grocery store, you can tell if a girl is from the South or a nanny because we're all kind of wearing the same thing.” Tennis skirt, and tank top from Lululemon, Alo, or Vuori, or lounge wear, like sweat sets and larger sweatshirts from popular TikTok brands like Daily Drills or Parke.
Furr grew up in Jackson Mississippi, the middle child to busy working parents: a real estate agency owner mom and a sales executive dad. The family spent a ton of time together, travelling all over the country for older brother Wilson’s golf tournaments; he’s been playing since he was 9. Wilson turned pro a few years back. Younger brother Prentiss is a singer-songwriter who started at age 9 and scored a record deal and Justin Bieber as a supporter at 14. Hartwell got an even earlier jump. At age 7, she launched a non-profit with Wilson called “Just Have a Ball,” to combat the childhood obesity epidemic in Mississippi, by encouraging kids to play. It got so big that they handed it over to The Partnership for a Healthy MS to run.
Liz Burnet, Ole Miss Chi Omega from Amelia Island, Florida, with her charges in Paris during the summer of 2023. Illa Gaunt“I was really impressed by just how thorough and thoughtful she is. She's on the ball,” says Alexa von Tobel, Founder & Managing Partner of Inspired Capital, a $1 billion New York-based early-stage venture capital firm, and New York Times-bestselling author, who had heard about Furr and her agency from several different friends. “There was very much a buzz about it.” (Furr introduced her to her current nanny and matched her with one coming up this summer from Georgia to lend a hand, out in Quogue.) Von Tobel is also informally mentoring Furr.
AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R1qekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframe AdvertisementAdvertisement#«R2qekkr8lb2m7nfddbH1» iframeFurr, now 24, and two years out of college, established a foothold in New York City, by working as a live-in nanny and personal assistant for a news colleague Bush Hager introduced her to. (“Hartwell? I just think she's a queen,” says Bush Hager.) She is moving out into her own place—a studio/home office designed by Nanny Network founder Hayes—in Manhattan, and, in September, along with a Nanny Network alumna and Ole Miss Chi Omega, naturally, is launching HARTWELL. She refers to it as a lifestyle staffing agency, through which she will place assistants, creative roles, and event staffers, for example, with female founder-led businesses and high-profile women. (She’s already made half a dozen placements, including an assistant for an Oscar-winning actress.) She will pull primarily from her network, focusing on young graduates disenchanted with corporate life, and others right out of college, who she describes as hardworking, nice people, whose resumes are overlooked by AI. “Smiling, positive, nice, with a can-do attitude,” she says is what she’s looking for. In other words, Southern charm.
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