‘Never thought we’d get here’: Albuquerque child care business named NM family owned small business of the year

Erika Estrada-Quezada had her hands full caring for not one, but two daughters in 2017. It was a challenge, but Estrada-Quezada’s mother, Norma Estrada, stepped up to help.

It was out of that struggle, and the pair’s mother-daughter bond and love for kids, that Twins Academy Inc. was born.

Twins Academy, a women-led, family-owned bilingual child care business in Albuquerque, was established in 2018. It started as a humble operation run out of Estrada’s home. Today, it’s a fully licensed child care business with four centers across Albuquerque.

The business is this year’s “New Mexico Family-Owned Small Business of the Year,” an honor given by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s New Mexico District Office .

The award is one of many that the Small Business Administration, or SBA, is handing out this week to businesses and businesspeople that demonstrate entrepreneurship, innovation, resilience, growth and community impact. The honorees are being recognized at an event on Thursday, coinciding with National Small Business Week.

In addition to Twins Academy, SBA New Mexico will recognize 12 other honorees, some of whom include TechSource Inc., Clearly Clean Janitorial Services LLC, Tax Help Santa Fe owner Peter Doniger and WESST.

Liliana Reyes, once a business adviser to Estrada-Quezada and Estrada, said their recognition is well deserved.

“As a business adviser working with the Spanish-speaking community in Albuquerque’s South Valley, seeing Norma and Erika succeed is deeply meaningful,” said Reyes, who works with the Small Business Development Center at Central New Mexico Community College. “They are hardworking, family-centered Latina women who turned a dream into a thriving business that now inspires others.”

Estrada-Quezada was a working nurse when she had her twins in 2017. When she saw the way her mother stepped away from her day care job to help care for them, it inspired her to dream up a child care business in which the two could combine their shared passion for early childhood education to provide needed and affordable services in the Albuquerque area.

Estrada acquired a license to start running a day care at home. During that time, she cared for 12 kids.

Discovering a “need for child care in the community,” Estrada-Quezada said, the mother-daughter duo began fervently seeking out professional development and training opportunities to help them launch and grow the venture.

They discovered the Crianza Accelerator Program in 2018, the same year it was created. The program was offered by CNM in partnership with the local Small Business Development Center to support local entrepreneurs.

With guidance from one of the center’s business advisers, Reyes, the Twins Academy owners learned the ins and outs of how to get a business up and running.

“They gave us the confidence of being able to know what struggles you’re gonna go through, but that’s normal and not to step back and give up,” Estrada, translated by her daughter, said in Spanish.

Estrada-Quezada and Estrada said the training helped them grow their home-based business to a four-center operation that has created more than 30 jobs in underserved neighborhoods and serves more than 150 families with affordable child care.

The small business’ first center opened in 2018, and its latest opened last year. The Montgomery location, the business’ flagship center, currently serves up to 170 children in the Northeast Heights, they said. Estrada-Quezada said they are getting ready to open a fifth center this year.

The business’ teachers and staff care for kids between the ages of 6 weeks and 12 years old on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Developing motor and social skills through a bilingual teaching process is a focus of the program.

To receive recognition from the SBA this week is “an honor,” Estrada-Quezada said.

“We never thought we’d get here,” she added.

Their accomplishment also means a lot to Reyes, who said their “journey reminds me why I do this work — to support women who build not just for themselves, but for their families and their community.”

“Norma and Erika show us that with faith, support and determination, anything is possible,” Reyes said.