When Richard and Nadja first drove up Route 49 toward Waterville Valley, they were not sure where they were headed. A friend — an avid real estate searcher who had zoomed out one click too many on a map of the Loon area — had spotted something worth investigating. “It was like a cabin in the woods,” Richard recalls, “and then you open up into this beautiful loop back town, valley experience.” A margarita on the deck of the Hacienda, looking out across Corcoran Pond, sealed the deal. They had come looking for a ski place. They ended up finding a home.
That origin story opens a rich and wide-ranging conversation with hosts Charlie and Ken on the latest episode of Waterville Unwrapped. Richard, who grew up in Cambridge, England, and spent twelve years working in London before immigrating to the US, and Nadja, who grew up in Newton, MA, met while working together at a promotional merchandising company in London in 2006. After years of long-distance visits, business school, and building a life in the Boston suburbs, the couple bought a place in Boulderwood in 2022 — initially just for ski weekends. Within a year, they had loaded up U-Hauls, downsized dramatically, and moved their two children full-time to the valley.
The kids are the heart of the story. Richard and Nadja speak about the Waterville Valley Elementary School with the kind of enthusiasm that only comes from genuine surprise. With roughly 30 to 40 students across kindergarten through eighth grade, the school uses multi-age classrooms: K–2, 3–5, and 6–8. “I always say it’s like a private school setting in a public school environment,” Richard explains. The arrangement, he notes, has revealed things about their older son’s learning needs that a larger, highly-regarded Newton school had missed entirely.
Charlie called it “Little House on the Prairie.” Nadja embraced the comparison. Younger children are exposed to higher-level material simply by proximity; older students develop patience and leadership. Nadja describes the morning their then-kindergartener marched up to the eighth graders on the playground and said hello. They knew his name. They were kind to him. “What other school does that?” she asks.
Their younger son’s story centers on the Rey Center’s pre-kindergarten program, housed in the Curious George Cottage — a detail that delighted Charlie, who admitted he had no idea the author of Curious George had any connection to the region until he moved there. Nadja joined the Rey Center board and speaks about its outdoor-focused curriculum with clear admiration. Their younger son spent more than 60 percent of his school days outside, in all weather, in full onesies. One morning, walking through the woods, he stopped to identify autumn olive berries by the shape of their leaves, the waxy top surface, the fluffy white underside, the spiky bush. He was four years old. “I had one,” Richard says. “They’re an acquired taste.”
Beyond the school, the couple talks about the texture of daily life — the freedom that surprised them most. The children leave the house in the morning with a few dollars, walk to Jugtown, buy candy from Tom, and come back having learned something about money when the tab runs short. “Credit’s not extended to any other customers,” Richard jokes. That kind of community trust, they agree, is genuinely rare.
Work remains the complicated piece. Nadja has flexibility through her family’s commercial real estate business and can work remotely most days. Richard, who has spent more than twelve years building a career at Staples, now manages vendor relationships and commutes to Boston three days a week — 300 miles a day, in a Tesla, by necessity. “Is that sustainable?” he asks. “I’ve been doing it three years. I’d say we’re probably on the back end of sustainability now.” The couple sees real opportunity in the valley for skilled project management — helping property owners navigate contractors and renovations in a place where demand for that kind of work clearly outpaces supply.
On the mountain, Richard volunteers with ski patrol, an experience he describes as academically challenging, community-building, and deeply rewarding. Nadja learned to ski as an adult and completed her fourth season last year, graduating to the blues and joining the occasional Skin the Moon event. Richard also mountain bikes the local trails in summer and is learning golf, though he describes his game cheerfully as “army golf — left, right, left, right.”
The episode ends where it began: with a genuine question about the future. When Charlie asks whether they can foresee ever leaving, Nadja is direct. The school, and the institutions around it — the Rey Center, the rec center — are what make the valley work for a young family. “The second those bricks start to erode,” Richard says, “that’s whereby we’d question our decision.” For now, though, those bricks look solid. The children are running home from school. Tom at Jugtown has their tab. And Richard and Nadja are planning a dueling pianos fundraiser for the Rey Center, tentatively set for October 11th in the new ballroom at the Snowy Owl. Tickets will be on sale soon.
The full conversation — including the berry identification story, the margarita moment at Corcoran Pond, and a lively digression about glade skiing and trees that don’t move — is worth every minute.