Marina Verenikina  Marina Verenikina (known as Marina V) is a Russian singer/musician. She was born in the city of Moscow in the Russian SFSR to a nuclear physicist father and a child psychologist mother. She now lives in Los Angeles and tours internationally. Marina V (Marina Gennadievna Verenikina) was born to a communist nuclear physicist father and a psychologist mother in Moscow, Russia. Marina started singing and writing songs at an early age. Her father Gennadiy Verenikin is of Russian descent and her mother Irina is half Jewish (her family came from Belorussia in 1870s). Marina's middle name means "daughter of Gennadiy". 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 each day after the regular school, from age 6 until age 14 (she graduated summa cum laude). At age 10, 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 to 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)/Freedom Support Act – sponsored by US Senator Bill Bradley) 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 mother was moving to Australia, and that the Russian school system would give her no credit for her time studying in America. After graduating from high school at 17, after saving money for a plane ticket, Marina returned to Springfield, where she enrolled at Illinois College. During this time she battled with severe depression, and began to write more and more songs about her experiences and relationships, channeling her emotions into music. She started performing during her freshman year, and started touring the Midwest. She graduated cum laude with a combined degree in international studies and economics-business and a minor in Spanish.