Nurse, founder of Cowo & Creche.
Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic was less than ideal for a lot of people. For Shamena Nurse, it led her life in an entirely new direction.
Nurse can laugh about trying to potty train her two little girls while on conference calls with her law enforcement team members now, but it wasn’t so funny at the time. (Her son, who is now 17 years old, was more independent.)
Nurse said some of the child-related interruptions while working from home were “at best embarrassing, at worst worthy of HR complaints.”
Unable to find a good solution and the balance she needed, Nurse started to create it.
Cowo & Crèche, a new type of co-working space, is intentionally designed with an office space on one side and a daycare and preschool across the hall. Busy working parents with young children can drop their child off for hours of play and education while getting in some uninterrupted work-time.
“I was ready to be a stay-at-home mom, but I wished there was somewhere I could go where I could have focused work and the kids were also engaged,” she said, noting that she wasn’t interested in leaving her fulfilling career.
Like many start-up business owners, Nurse has kept her day job in law enforcement logistics while starting up the new co-working space. Her husband works in user experience design and has been her business partner through this development.
Cowo & Crèche will be located on the third floor of the Society for Human Resource Management building at 330 John Carlyle St. in Alexandria, midway between the King Street and Eisenhower Avenue Metro stations. Parking will be available.
The co-working space, which will launch this spring, will be designed to facilitate organic connections between adult members. It will offer similar amenities that other co-working spaces offer, from open seating areas to private offices, coffee, cold brew, a kitchen, printing, high-speed internet and more. In addition, Cowo & Crèche will have a lactation room and easy access to the adjacent educational facility.
The “Crèche” side (a word the British use for a nursery) will be an 800-square-foot multi-use space with learning zones. The curriculum for children up to age 5 will come from Experience Learning (formerly known as Mother Goose), which flows into Virginia’s Standards of Learning. Children will learn through sensory play and hands-on experiences under the supervision of three licensed adult caretakers. The building itself is secure and the educational center will be facing the reception desk for easy monitoring.
Nurse’s daughters, who are now 4 and 5 years old, are helping design the educational space.
There will be separate billing for members for the workspace and daycare — something potential members have requested for tax purposes.
However, the billing separation also seems symbolic. One thing Nurse hopes to get from her new space is a return to some work-life balance.
“It doesn’t matter the square footage of your house. I just didn’t like that everything was bleeding into each other. I need my house back, and I need work to be work,” Nurse said.
