I love my life and the opportunities that have been afforded to me. Embracing challenges head-on has been one of life’s most important lessons for me.  Opportunities and challenges go hand-in-hand. Outcomes are never guaranteed.  Decisions must be made to act or to not act for any given idea. One often asks questions internally: Is it worth the effort? Does it make sense? Will I have the time? Am I smart enough to do and/or learn to do what I must? Will I fail?

Sometimes good fortune shines upon us and things align to make success seem natural. Most often in any endeavor, however, success is due to dogged determination, creativity, risk-taking and the strong belief of yourself, your abilities and of the idea you pursue.
I thank my parents for pushing me and each of my sisters to achieve. We worked hard at our studies through high school, university and post graduate degrees. Never without challenge and rarely enjoyable, these struggles imprinted on us the drive to succeed and the knowledge that one must make the most of the opportunities with which they are presented. 

My sisters and I were given the building blocks to be successful by my parents, who themselves had little. We always celebrated being a family. At times, like many, we struggled with each other but we learned how to be friends aside from being family.  Here too, things were not always simple.  Growing up in St. Petersburg, we were pushed to apply these life lessons from an early age. We worked at our country house to cultivate land, grow food, clean, maintain, build. We pursued jobs when old enough and have never stopped. 

Upon moving to the USA, job prospects were slim and I worked, taking jobs to live while constantly looking forward for the next window of opportunity for “something better”. When that next great opportunity did not readily present itself, I took risks and created my own path by creating my own language-based business in 2005. I was the boss. All success or failure rested upon me. What did I know of running a business? What had I gotten myself into?

Never one to sit on my hands, I jumped in head first and learned to market myself, build client relationships, taught myself rudimentary accounting, became my own IT support staff, created a business website, learned applicable business laws, accepted business practices and I have never looked back. With clients, I have traveled to far reaches of the globe and my business continues its successful run, serving thousands of clients, nearly 15 years later. From this, I have launched several other successful ventures. I’m not short on ideas! My limitation? Time. Where would I put my energies? In how many directions could I go and maintain a balance with my family life, which is vitally important to me?

A new challenge…camp
I have had the honor and good fortune to build close friendships with two women with whom I share ideas, passions and a drive to succeed. With varied experiences, interests and talents, we compliment each other’s strengths and together we are better than as individuals. We share a deep love of family and a commitment to our children. With those shared values, we set out in 2018 to create an experience for our kids that would have them engage in activities to learn, grow and be entertained while living the experiences in the traditions of Russian-speaking people. We settled on the idea of creating a camp experience unlike any other. Decision made. Now would come the hard work and my time…

After multiple brainstorming sessions, we settled upon themes, built frameworks and then sought locations that would allow us to bring these ideas to life. By late 2018, we had investigated possible dates and matched them against camp availability throughout MN and Western Wisconsin and booked our camps accordingly. We were doing this! 

With months of effort, creative sessions, theme discussions, building of stories and marketing our vision, we ended up with 65 kids who signed up for our vision of a Russian-speaking camp. We had parents and volunteers to be counselors, we created programs, activities, developed games in support of our themes and a syllabus for events that would run for an entire week of camp. With great planning, creative assistance from talented people and endless long days/nights, we celebrated the successful completion of our camp in June 2019. We did not want to leave, but it was time. Now, we look forward to our next amazing camp experience in August 2019 where will will again have more than 60 children to celebrate with!

What motivates us…
Children are our focus. Our love for them drives us to create an environment that surprises, challenges and cultivates wonder in each of them. With us, children are not subjects who must obey a master. Instead, they are guests who we educate, who we encourage to participate in activities and share in the unique experience a group camp can provide. We choose to celebrate our Russian-speaking heritage by embracing themes that resonate with the children, all delivered in Russian (and we have a blast along the way)!  We build environments that enable each to learn teamwork and to experience new things for themselves.    

If you find our message appealing, join us for a magical experience your children will talk about for years. While we are fully booked for this upcoming session in August, we would love to see you at our future events!

Tamara von Schmidt-Pauli, aka Professor Babochka and Super Tosha for this upcoming Super Heroes Camp