Letter from our Founder: Entering 2026 From a Different Place
- Daniella Cornue
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
This year has felt unexpectedly quiet.
Not in a way that feels wrong, but in a way that has made me pause. I usually come into January with a lot of momentum and urgency around the work I’m doing. This January has been different. I’ve been moving more slowly, and I’ve been trying to understand whether that slowness is coming from exhaustion after a very full year, or from something deeper...
For most of my life as a founder, I’ve been driven by a very specific kind of fire.
It came from being told “no.”
It came from being told Le Village was too green, that the model was unproven, that what we were building was too complicated or too ambitious. I heard over and over that I needed to prove it — prove the demand, prove the structure, prove that parents would actually show up for this kind of community. I remember early meetings where people nodded politely and then gently suggested I come back when it was “more real.”
So I did.
That stubbornness became fuel. It shaped how I worked, how I took risks, how I kept going when things were hard. COVID was about survival. The years that followed were about growth. Every January felt like the start of another campaign to show that what we were building was not just a good idea, but a viable, scalable one.
Last year, something shifted.
In 2025, we opened three franchise locations without venture capital, angel investors, or institutional backing. I still remember standing in our Irving Park space late one night, looking at a map of all the locations and realizing how far we had come. At the same time, Irving Park and Brewers Hill remain strong, Le Village Learners had its highest enrollment year and a waitlist, and our leadership team grew in depth and confidence. After seven years of building, many of the seeds we planted finally began to show what they were capable of becoming.
Toward the end of the year, I sat down with a close friend and consultant and asked a question I had been carrying quietly for a long time: had we finally proven the model?
The answer was yes.
That moment was deeply affirming, but also surprisingly disorienting! When so much of your identity and momentum has been shaped by having something to prove, there’s a strange quiet that follows when the work can finally stand on its own. I realized that this news (combined with a year of my therapist dismantling my long-standing reliance on panic as a productivity tool) has been great for my mental health and terrible for my inner chaos gremlin (Yay, growth!).
Briefly, I thought that maybe 2026 could simply be a year of celebration! Wheee! I turn 40 this year, and there is so much to be proud of in what we’ve built. After years of pushing, proving, and grinding, it felt reasonable to finally let myself enjoy where we’ve landed.
But that feeling didn’t quite settle in the way I expected.
I found myself restless. Not unhappy, and not ungrateful – just aware that celebration alone wasn’t enough to carry me forward.
I think part of that tension comes from the fact that I’m not building Le Village around a short-term win. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve done the years in the weeds and learned what it takes to build something that lasts. My place isn’t in the day-to-day operations anymore, but I also don’t want to detach from the heart of what we’re creating. Like many women founders I know, I’m deeply invested in building something that is both durable and meaningful—where long-term value is created by the people inside it as much as by the numbers on a page.
What I started to realize is that I wasn’t searching for less motivation—I was searching for a different kind. One that isn’t rooted in proving or fear, but also isn’t satisfied by applause alone..
That’s when I stumbled across a post that put words to what I was feeling. It described ambition not as greed or personal gain, but as a responsibility. The idea that when you grow, you create opportunities for other people. When you rise, families become more stable, careers become more possible, and belief spreads. And suddenly it clicked.
That’s what has always driven me.
I saw it reflected again at our New Year’s gathering. I asked everyone to write down one thing they were proud of and tape it to a window. And one of my own proudest moments from last year wasn’t tied to revenue or expansion. It was being able to promote two of our leaders into larger roles — watching them step into more responsibility and confidence inside something they helped build.
Those promotions represent stability, trust, and the fulfillment of promises we made to the women who have helped carry this organization forward.
What I’m listening for now is different.
Not louder. Not faster. Just clearer.
I’m listening for the places where this work opens doors instead of just meeting goals. I’m listening for the moments when someone steps into a bigger version of themselves because this community made it possible. I’m listening for the quiet signals that say something here is becoming stable enough, strong enough, and real enough to hold more than it did before.
That’s the kind of growth I care about now.
The kind that doesn’t rush.
The kind that compounds.
The kind that gives people room to stay.
So as I step into this next year, I’m not chasing the same urgency that carried me through the early years. I’m choosing to move with intention, with responsibility, and with a deep respect for what we’ve already built — while continuing to create more opportunity for the women and families who will come after us.
There is a lot ahead of us. A lot still unfolding. But there is also so much that can now be built because this foundation exists. I’ll probably always have to defend the model, but now I’m not defending an idea — I’m pointing to the work. It’s lived. It’s visible. It exists.
So here’s to us. Here’s to 2026. And here’s to the next chapter.
Cheers 🥂— Daniella