Marina Gennadievna Verenikina (born 3 October 1982), known as Marina V, is a Russian singer and musician. She has released 12 albums and toured internationally, performing over 1,200 concerts. Early life and education Verenikina was born to a nuclear physicist father and child psychologist mother in Moscow, Russia. Her father Gennadiy Verenikin is of Russian descent and her mother Irina is half Jewish (her family came from Belarus in the 1870s). Marina started singing before she could talk, and writing songs at 4 years of age. Her mother arranged for formal music education, and Marina attended classical music school every day after her regular school day, from age 6 until age 14. She graduated summa cum laude. When she was 10 years old, Marina performed one of her original compositions for her piano teacher, who dismissed it as "nonsense". Marina was discouraged and stopped writing for a while. At the time, the Soviet Union was falling apart and Western culture slowly started appearing on the market; therefore the only music Marina was exposed to as a child was classical and Russian folk songs. After a friend gave Marina a bootleg cassette of The Beatles, she was inspired to write songs again. She learned many Beatles songs, which also helped her improve her understanding of the English language. At 15, Marina won a national competition, beating over 100,000 peers, for a fully funded scholarship (Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX)) to study in the United States. After living in Springfield, Illinois, for a year, she returned to Moscow and started working to save enough money to return to the US, where she felt a greater freedom for individual creativity. At the same time, Marina learned that her parents were divorcing and her mother was moving to Australia, and that the Russian school system would give her no credit for her time studying in America. Marina returned to Springfield when she was 17 years old, having saved money for a plane ticket, and she enrolled at Illinois College. During this time she battled with severe depression, and began to write more songs about her experiences and relationships, channeling her emotions into music. While at Illinois College she was also involved in the Concert Choir, International Club, and Investment Club. She graduated cum laude with a combined degree in international studies and economics-business and a minor in Spanish. Career Shortly after she turned 19, Marina