Adriana Menendez never dreamed of owning a preschool. Education wasn’t the family business, and it wasn’t on her radar either, until her daughter Sophia was diagnosed with autism. A diagnosis that any parent struggles with. So much is unknown. So many questions and uncertainties.
While Sophia was in preschool, Menendez saw her daughter’s diagnosis play out in real time inside that classroom, in the specific ways Sophia needed to be taught, held, and understood differently than the other kids. This catalyst changed Adriana’s life.
She realized how much of a child’s future gets decided in a room full of blocks and nap mats. How much is determined by how the child is supported through her learning and how well her needs are or aren’t understood. Because she could not sit idle, Adriana went back to school to become a teacher, wanting to understand education well enough to make a difference. In 2009, with no roadmap, she opened Growing Days Preschool.
“I wasn’t handed a business,” she says. “I just worked hard, trusted my instincts, and put my heart into it.”
Seventeen years later, that instinct has grown into two schools, Growing Days Preschool and Oxford Academy, along with a second career consulting other childcare business owners on building programs of their own. Menendez realized through the years that this was her calling and that knowing arrived in pieces: a toddler who walked in barely talking and walked out ready for kindergarten, a former student who came back years later just to say hello, a parent who told her, simply, “thank you for loving my child.”
As a Miami preschool owner, Menendez is direct about who she’s built her schools for. Her ideal family values education, trusts the process, and wants a partner in raising their child, not a drop-off service. “Preschool isn’t just babysitting,” she says. “It’s the foundation of a child’s education.” That belief shapes everything from her staffing choices to her curriculum, and it’s the same belief driving her push into consulting, helping other early childhood education entrepreneurs build what she built without the trial and error she went through alone.
The hardest part of running two schools, she says, has been learning to lead people: building a team, making the hard calls, and hiring employees who will carry the work with the same fire she does.
“That’s when it hit me,” she says. “We aren’t just running a preschool; we’re helping build the foundation for a child’s future.”
Running two schools taught her that solving everything herself was never the job. “As the owner, my job isn’t to do everything,” she says. “It’s to know everything.” She delegates because she has to. She still carries the weight because she’s the owner but this is where a powerful team who is equally invested comes in to help bear the load.
Menendez calls herself a softy by nature, someone wired to fix every problem and make everyone happy. Running a school forced her to separate her heart from her decisions, to say no, not now, or I can’t, even when it hurt to say it. “That has probably been my greatest lesson as an entrepreneur,” she says.
Off the clock, she’s the one who leaves last most days. Then she goes home to being a wife and a mom, planning the next family trip, preparing dinner.
Her must-know advice for parents is as direct as her advice for other business owners. “Don’t underestimate the importance of the early years,” she says. “Preschool isn’t just daycare; it’s where children build the foundation for everything that comes next.” For fellow entrepreneurs, her advice is to stay a student. “If you’re the smartest person in the room,” she says, “it’s time to find another room.”
She hopes to be remembered simply. “I hope people remember that I cared,” she says. “About the children, the families, my staff, and about doing things the right way.”
