I Am Luckie.
EconQuest Architect & Developer · LearnForge · Founder, Daniels Family Incubator · Senior Technical Program / Project Manager · Social Impact Entrepreneur · Taos, New Mexico & Houston, Texas
I wear many hats. The one I enjoy most is Mama Bear to Jerold, Justis, and Jaiya. Everything else I do is downstream of that.
I started as a teen mom who learned quickly that the world would underestimate her. I decided early on to use that as fuel, and I have been building ever since. More than 26 years later, I am a senior technical delivery and program leader, a Certified Scrum Master, a Cornell-certified Diversity and Inclusion professional, and the founder of Daniels Family Incubator, an innovation studio rooted in Northern New Mexico since 2015. I have led complex, high-impact technology initiatives across public-sector, enterprise, and community-centered environments, because I have always believed that the best technology is built in service of real people navigating real situations. That delivery track record includes PRCe360, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission’s statewide modernization of a 20-plus-year legacy e-filing system, now live in production and serving regulated utilities and public users across New Mexico.
Access should not be accidental. That belief is the foundation of everything I build.
Whether I am leading a sprint, building a platform, or launching a new product, I am always asking the same question: Who does this serve, and are we actually making it reachable for them? That question is what moved me from a background in child advocacy and domestic violence work into technology. It is what makes me a social impact entrepreneur. And it is exactly what brought me to EconQuest.
I have been a community partner and educator in Taos since my kids and I rolled in back in 2014. From day one, I found my people through a shared commitment: leveraging technology to empower young people. That thread has run through every collaboration, every project, and every relationship I have built here since.
The moment that led to EconQuest came through a client engagement that stopped me in my tracks. An AP Macroeconomics educator had built something remarkable in his classroom. A simulation where students stopped reading about the economy and started running one. Real decisions. Real consequences. Real learning. When he brought me in to lead the ideation phase, I recognized immediately what was sitting on the table. This was not just a classroom exercise. It was proof that economic literacy does not have to be passive, inaccessible, or forgettable. My job was to take that proof and build the platform it deserved.
Under Daniels Family Incubator, I led EconQuest through its ideation phase as a dual-market concept: a live simulation for AP Macroeconomics classrooms and a consumer app that puts anyone in the seat of a policymaker. The ideation phase is complete. EconQuest is the IP. LearnForge is the company. And the belief that learning should be built, shaped, and tested, not assigned, is the foundation everything stands on.
If you want to understand the kind of builder I am, look at the projects behind Daniels Family Incubator. Each one started with a gap someone was actively navigating, and each one required me to show up as both the architect and the advocate.
The one I am most proud of is SEESAY. In the summer of 2016, our small town of Taos lost several teenagers to suicide in a cluster that shook the whole community. My son Justis was one of the young people left grieving, trying to figure out what he could do. We sat down together over a cup of chai and asked a simple question: What if technology could save someone’s life? That conversation became the See Something Say Something teen suicide prevention app, a 100% teen-led initiative that Justis and a team of Taos students built with me serving as project manager and technology architect. The app connects teens in crisis to live, trained Crisis Counselors via text, 24/7, in partnership with Crisis Text Line. Out of approximately 1,800 submissions to the 2017 Verizon Innovative App Challenge, SEESAY was named Best in State, Best in Region, and Best in Nation. The team was awarded $20,000 in development funding and the opportunity to work with MIT scientists to advance the platform. Justis told the story himself on the Crisis Text Line blog, and the Taos News covered the award ceremony. I was there for every step, as his mother and as his technical lead.
That project set the standard for everything I have built since. Step Into My Shoes is a VR empathy platform that grew out of a college application prompt Justis wrote in 2017, asking what he would do if given the chance to use technology to impact the world. WATO.LIFE connects community members to capital and opportunity. Taos Creative Market brought local artisans online when the infrastructure did not exist for them. FuelSTEAM and Taos STEAM put science and technology access in front of students who might not have found it otherwise. Enchantment While Black was our family-run travel and transportation business operated to support and celebrate Brown and Black adventure travelers across Northern New Mexico and Northern Arizona. None of these started with a pitch deck. Every single one started with a problem that was personal, and a decision that waiting for someone else to solve it was not an option.
That is the Incubator philosophy. It is also what I call the Barwick gene, the work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit I inherited from my maternal grandfather, William Charles Barwick, a serial entrepreneur born in 1918 in Headland, Alabama, long before that word existed. He built businesses, raised a family, and moved through the world with relentless intention. His reminder lives with me every day.
Don’t nothing come to a sleeper but a dream. — William Charles Barwick, 1918–1995
Balancing all of it, the products, the platforms, the family, the advocacy, the deep technical work, requires intention. I do not believe in separating identity from work. I am an IDEA educator and thought leader who brings an equity-centered lens to technology, learning, and organizational change. Everything is personal. Everything is political. And everything I build is grounded in the same vision: equity and justice for all, delivered through systems that actually work.
EconQuest is the latest expression of that. Economic literacy is not just a school subject. It is a life skill that belongs to everyone, not only the students who happen to land in the right classroom. Building a game that closes that gap, and makes it genuinely engaging in the process, is exactly the kind of work I am here to do.
The trail is just getting started. I am glad you are here.
Luckie Daniels is the EconQuest Architect and Developer, operating under Daniels Family Incubator. EconQuest originated from a client engagement in the ideation phase of a Macroeconomics app and game aligned to the Advanced Placement curriculum. The ideation phase is complete.