Ali Kitinas, 16, is Australia's youngest chief executive. Photo / Ali Kitinas Instagram
For most parents just having a teenager can be a nightmare. But what if your teenager was also your boss?
Meet Ali Kitinas, believed to be Australia's youngest chief executive.
Ali started her first business at age 11 and, having just turned 16, is now the founder and chief executive officer of her own company. She is the real-life Doogie Howser of the business world.
Her company, Freedom Scrub, sells ethically sourced body scrubs that help poverty and war-stricken kids from Rwanda to Kolkata.
But that's not the weird part. The weird part is that Ali is also her mother's boss. She subjects her mum Lynne to performance reviews and has even had her mother ask her for a pay rise.
"Yes she has!" Ali tells news.com.au.
And did it work?
"I do pay her actually. I'm a good boss. I make sure she's got money to feed the family."
It's a relationship that the Sydney teenager describes as "interesting". Especially when it comes to performance review time.
"Ah, I mean she's pretty good at reporting. We have monthly sessions where we sit down and discuss what's happened over the last few months, what we've both done separately and then what we need to work on going forward for the next month. So there's kind of a review there."
The tricky part is that while Ali is the boss after hours - in other words, after school - when she works on the business, during the day her mum is still in charge. So is there ever any payback?
"Yeah. There's some moments. We kind of laugh about it. We find it quite funny that the dynamic switches. But I try not to be too difficult as a daughter just so she tries not to be difficult as an employee."
But the family's story is even more extraordinary than that. Lynne herself was living on the streets at age 14 after fleeing home and pulled herself up by her bootstraps. She worked in a laundromat so she could wash and dry her school clothes each day. Then she got another job in retail to support herself through school.
Nowadays she and her daughter hang out with Richard Branson. They've just returned from his base in the Virgin Islands where Ali was chosen for a mentoring programme for other young entrepreneurs.
There Ali took part in a yacht race with the mega-mogul Virgin founder, as you do. So what did he say to her?
"He asked me how old I was and I said I was 15 and he said: 'I might push you off the boat before you start an airline'."
But in the meantime Ali is going back to the streets. Next week she will become the youngest chief executive ever to participate in the Vinnies CEO Sleepout, an Australian charity project raising money to fight homelessness and poverty.
Vinnies New South Wales chief executive Jack de Groot said: "Ali is the youngest CEO, by some distance, that we have ever had participate in the Sleepout and possibly the youngest in Australia."
After that, having made her fortune, Ali will turn her attention to fame. Having started out in business to support herself trying to make it as an actress in Los Angeles, she says the dream is still to make it in the United States.
"I still want to act," she says. "My focus has changed a lot because I fell in love with business. Now it's very equal because I love them both."
To help Ali raise money for the homeless go to www.ceosleepout.org.au/ceos/nsw-ceos/ali-kitinas or for more info go to www.ceosleepout.org.au.
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