Two sisters sit in a private jet looking out the window.
Extreme photographer | E+ | Getty Images
When Gloria Richards isn’t performing on off-Broadway stages, she’s traveling the world with the billionaire children she’s often never met.
Richards spent half of each year babysitting for the ultra-rich to supplement her income between off-Broadway and one-woman shows in New York and Virginia. The gig pays her up to $167 an hour, plus covered flights and lodging, she says — meaning caring for the billionaire’s children makes up 80 percent to 90 percent of her annual income.
“I could be a nanny for about two months at the beginning of the year and I’d be fine for the rest of the year,” Richards, 34, tells CNBC Make It. “What feeds me is the opportunity to work so closely with these kids.”
Richards’ job is atypical by most definitions, from the pay to the responsibilities. The nanny of the super-rich isn’t always associated with childcare: she spends most of her working time coordinating the children’s educational and social calendars.
She gets paid up to $2,000 a day for 12 to 15 hours of work, she says. She travels the world on private jets and yachts, drives a Porsche and Tesla on the job, and attends small children’s birthday parties where iPads are party favors.
The glamor comes with an emotional toll: Richards often acts as a companion to neurodivergent children with absent and complicated parents, she says. And as a black woman helping to raise rich white children, she must navigate cultural situations tactfully—or risk losing her paycheck.
Here’s how she makes it work.
Some of Richards’ clients are famous actors whom she never formally meets. One of them was so constantly surrounded by security guards and makeup artists that she was only able to glimpse the top of the client’s head during her three-month stint, she says.
She has watched other clients spontaneously buy homes on layovers and eat single bites of $3,200 steaks. she adds. On her first day as nanny to the ultra-rich, she shows up at an airport, meets the family’s children and instantly becomes their escort on a private jet to a chartered resort in Barbados.
Richards, who usually works with roughly 10 families at a time, says it took her a while to figure out exactly what her job duties were. Unless the family is understaffed, she doesn’t mop up spills, prepare meals, or open car doors.
Rather, she is a social coordinator and often an emotionally supportive mother figure. The parents once enrolled their child in an Italian boarding school under her last name, she says.
“I’ve had full-fledged interviews [parents] are like, “We’re looking for someone to raise our kids,” she says. “They tell me they had children to hand over their trust funds, [and that] “I’ll hang out with them after boarding school when they can drink.”
Richards, who grew up one of eight siblings and landed her first professional acting role at age 14, says she came to nannying organically.
When she moved to New York more than a decade ago, she worked in the childcare department of Reebok Sports Club, which was later acquired by Equinox. Some of the members were wealthy families who started asking her to babysit.
She had no idea what to charge or how to secure regular babysitting jobs. Her research eventually led her to the Madison Agency, a New York-based housekeeping staffing firm. Her willingness to travel and her passion for working with neurodivergent children made her an attractive candidate, says Madison Agency Director of Operations Jackie Mann.
Richards also has the kind of “extraordinary personality” needed to work with billionaires, Mann adds.
Sometimes when Richards is overseas, employers will “blindside” her by withholding her pay or her international phone plan, or “completely ignore” her pre-arranged work hours, she says.
Some of them simply don’t realize that Richards will miss paying bills if she isn’t paid on time, she theorized. Others may not trust their own staff because people have only used them for their money before.
“I’ll be in Switzerland, for example, and they tell me they can’t pay me for three weeks because they don’t have the cash,” Richards says. “That’s how they communicate when they don’t like something you’ve done. They’ll stop paying you.”
That’s when Madison’s agency support becomes essential, Richards says — to make sure she gets her money on time, even after a customer deliberately signs the wrong name on a check to avoid payment.
Balancing her mental well-being with clients’ unpredictable mood swings is taxing, Richards says. But having lived in the world of billionaires for more than 10 years, she says she feels sympathy for most of them.
Many of her clients were born into wealth and fame, and despite efforts to be normal, they cannot walk into grocery stores or commercial airports without being verbally and physically assaulted. That understanding is what makes Richards an invaluable employee, Mann says.
“The competence one has to take care of a child is not unusual,” says Mann. “[But] the qualities needed to work for the ultra-rich are patience and a nuanced perception of anticipating human needs.”
When Richards first begins working with new clients, she gradually shares personal stories to build trust with parents and children. But even then, she still has to be vigilant, she says.
“I’ve had families that have gone through a tremendous amount of grief in the public eye. I watch their divorces or deaths in the family,” she says. “Sometimes I’m literally a shoulder to cry on. A second later they’ll turn on me.”
Racial dynamics can also get messy, she adds: “I’m a black woman and I often work for white families, and when kids get to be six or seven, they have very specific thoughts about people who look like me.”
The money, the thrill of the trip and the opportunity to help even difficult kids are enough to keep Richards around, she says. She sets strict boundaries around how much and when she’s willing to work, and when she’s not working, she spends on smoothies and massages as a form of self-care.
“I have to be very mindful that even though it’s an intimate setting, it’s still work,” Richards says.
DON’T MISS: Want to be smarter and more successful with your money, work and life? Sign up for our new newsletter!
Get the free CNBC report, 11 ways to tell if we’re in a recession, where Kelly Evans reviews the main indicators that a recession is coming or has already begun.