From Educator to Business Executive: How Ready To Grow is Strengthening Early Childhood Leadership

Ready to Grow participants and SVP Program Manager, Jenn Luevano-Brummett

When Yuridia Meléndez Castro started the Ready To Grow program, she ran her preschool the way she'd always done; focused on caring for children, managing day-to-day challenges as they came. By the program's end, something fundamental had shifted: "Since taking this course, my tone of voice with my employees has completely changed. I want to understand their goals and set plans together."

This transformation, from reactive caregiver to executive leadership, is at the heart of what Ready To Grow hopes to accomplish through its programming.

The Numbers Tell a Powerful Story

This year's cohort served 19 participants across 17 organizations, collectively caring for 568 children and employing 111 teachers. That's growth of 420% from our pilot program.

Real Impact, Real Results:

• Before the program, 56% of participants operated with no formal business plan. By completion, 100% had developed comprehensive business plans for structured growth or scaling. As Leslie Ventura Hernandez of ABC University shared: "I never had a business plan before... To have a professional look at it and say, 'This looks great'—that was a huge success."

• The business plans participants created weren't just exercises, they became essential tools for real expansion. Ray Hekmat of Learning Days noted: "The timing of this cohort was perfect. We were buying a new business, and the business plan we built here was exactly what we needed to finalize that expansion."

Why This Matters Now

Oregon's early childhood education sector stands at a critical juncture. Many families in Multnomah County currently allocate 20% of their median income toward childcare — nearly triple the federal affordability benchmark. (The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines care as affordable only if it costs 7% or less of a family's income.) For single-parent families, the burden is even more acute: Child Care Aware of America estimates Oregon single parents may spend upwards of 47% of their median income on center-based care.

This affordability crisis is driven largely by a staggering lack of supply. Despite recent expansions, demand for programs like Preschool for All in Multnomah County far outpaces available capacity. Without a significant increase in regulated slots, parents are forced into a bidding war for a finite resource, driving prices even higher.

At the heart of this crisis is a workforce that is 90% women and disproportionately women of color. These professionals represent a deep well of community-based expertise, yet they are often the ones subsidizing the system through low wages. In Oregon, early educators are six times more likely to live in poverty than their K-12 counterparts.

Ready To Grow serves as an essential bridge, working to connect early childhood entrepreneurs to the resources and growth opportunities they need to thrive. The program equips these providers with the confidence and skills to successfully navigate local resources and accelerate their expansion goals.

As Jessica Wolfram from Happy Hollow explained: "The business plan is the 'front-work' that makes grant applications easier. You already have the answers to the hard questions funders are going to ask."

This isn't just business training; it's about ensuring that community-based, culturally responsive providers can be the primary drivers of our early childhood education expansion, not just participants in it.

The Transformation is Personal

For many participants, the shift was as much emotional as it was technical. Ely Alvarez from Little Piece of Heaven captured this perfectly: "At first, I wondered if this was too much for my brain, but now I know I've got it. I feel more motivated and secure about what I'm doing."

The program moved providers from financial "worry" to financial "clarity", from wondering how they'd make payroll to confidently forecasting expansion. It transformed isolation into community, as participants built peer networks that will support them for years to come.

What's Next: Ready To Grow 3.0

Building on this momentum, we're launching Ready To Grow 3.0 with an entirely Spanish-language cohort and Alumni Workshops for continued growth. We're streamlining operations, sharpening our criteria to prioritize providers most ready to benefit, and deepening the hands-on, practical approach that participants found of greatest value.

Thank You

This impact wouldn't be possible without our Investor Partners and funders who contributed not only financial support, but also their professional expertise as facilitators and mentors. To our collaboration partners who believed in these entrepreneurs and helped connect them to Ready To Grow, thank you for trusting us with your networks.

And to our participants: your courage, commitment, and vision inspire everything we do.

Together, we're not just building better preschools. We're building an ecosystem where mission-driven entrepreneurs can thrive, where every child has access to quality care, and where the leaders who know their communities best have the tools to serve them powerfully.

The impact is clear. The need is urgent. The opportunity is now.

Ready to make an even greater impact in 2026? Connect with us to learn more.

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Sources

Common Sense Institute. (2024). Oregon's Child Care Crisis. Retrieved from commonsenseinstitute.org

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Child Care Affordability Benchmark: 7% of family income.

Child Care Aware of America. (2024). Child Care in State Fact Sheets: Oregon.