Crafting global success: Leadership through international experience

Koru Kids Founder and CEO, Rachel Carrell, shares how her international experience, and the leadership mindset it’s created, have played a key part in the startup's growth.???

Formerly the CEO of international HealthTech platform DrThom, sky-high childcare costs in London inspired Rachel to start her current venture, Koru Kids. In high demand with parents, Koru Kids has raised nearly $20 million across five funding rounds.?

Rachel’s career has taken her around the globe, working for organizations such as McKinsey, the United Nations, and the NHS, in locations such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the USA.?

Collecting weird and wonderful experiences??

International experience was something I really consciously chose.??

I was schooled in three countries, New Zealand, Canada, and Germany, and I did my undergrad at home in New Zealand before coming to the UK for Postgrad.??

My first role was with McKinsey. It’s a very international kind of company and during my six years there I did projects across Russia, South Africa, Norway, Australia, the US, and the UK.??

I wanted to keep my options open and have as broad an experience as I possibly could.??

If you have enough weird and wonderful experiences, they’ll come in handy later. You can’t predict which will be the helpful ones, so you may as well have lots.??

Building a leadership muscle??

Having international experience makes you a more open-minded leader.??

You’ve seen different ways of working; you’re used to different styles of communicating. You’ve got that experience of knowing that there’s a spectrum of styles, all of which can be good, they’re just different.??

Experiencing different cultures and ways of working first-hand expands your axis of thinking.??

It’s like building a muscle to cope with the everyday stresses of leadership — especially useful if you’re in a startup where you’re constantly on the brink of survival and you have to be able to manage your own psychology through that.??

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A global team??

About half of the parents who use our services are expats who don’t have that family network, and the majority of our nannies are international too.??

That global user base is reflected in our team.??

We speak an enormous number of languages. It means we can phone up references in France, Turkey, Portugal for a new hire and get a real understanding of who that nanny is by speaking to references in their first language.??

It also brings discipline to the way we communicate. We work to remove idioms to make our comms as clear and inclusive as possible, which ultimately works better for every reader.??

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A strategic choice?

Having a global, diverse team brings a whole range of strategic benefits too.??

Koru Kids is an innovative startup — we’re aiming to build models of childcare that don’t exist at the moment. To do that, we need diversity of thought.??

With an international team, it’s more likely that someone will say “hey, I was living in Cape Verde for a while, and I saw this interesting thing”.??

Everyone brings their experiences and the ideas those experiences create to the table and the company and our services are stronger as a result.??

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Learning from McKinsey?

The way McKinsey was able to put people from very different cultures together to create instantly high-performing teams stayed with me.??

There’d be someone from Brazil, Japan, and the Netherlands, all working on one project. We’d land in a country, having never met one another, and be ready to start working together and meet a client that same day.??

Being able to bring together those different viewpoints and cultures effectively comes down to the strength of the company culture and training.??

Even though we’re a much smaller team, I’ve taken inspiration from that approach to making a global team work, prioritizing shared experiences, company culture, and strong relationships.??

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Async, voice notes, and the power of in-person?

It takes a mix of practical steps and conscious communication to make global teams work.??

As we’re very parent focused, we’re flexible about time zones and often work asynchronously so people can do that nursery pick-up or attend that school play in the afternoon.??

Sometimes that flexibility is enough; other times it makes sense to invest in having someone on the ground so you’re not having unproductive meetings at 10pm. Knowing when to make that switch can make a big difference.?

We also put a lot of effort into our communication. When you’re working in your second or additional language, it’s easy for the tone, inflection, and emotion behind a message to get lost, so we use voice notes a lot to try and help those nuances come through.??

Finally, in-person collaboration still has an important role to play. Whether that’s in the office or meeting up a few times a year, it helps build the relationships that strong teams rely on.?

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The Koru Kids team now numbers 60 people, all focused on helping families across the UK find childcare options that help them flourish.???

Rachel lives in London with her family. Helping her balance the demands of a scale-up, global team, and family life???

A Koru Kids nanny.??

Whether it’s a startup like Koru Kids or an international giant, experiencing different cultures can help business leaders create cohesive, high-performing teams. Read more about how leaders with international experience are able to bring teams together in Local to global: How English skills unlock a career in leadership.?

This interview is part of Pearson Languages’ series, Global Voices: Leaders on Language and Business, an exclusive exploration into the pivotal role of language in achieving international business excellence. In this thought-provoking series, we examine how leaders foster diverse teams, navigate global markets, and ultimately propel organizational success to new heights by leveraging language skills.

Explore the rest of the series on Pearson Languages’ LinkedIn.?

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