Win-Win Partnerships Between Child Development and Business Leaders to Support Economic and Social Well-Being

By Dr. Sara Watson, Director, Center for Business Champions

Child development leaders want children to have a nurturing environment that provides a good start and a bright future.  Business leaders want a well-prepared workforce with employees who can focus on their jobs while living in safe, healthy and supportive communities.

These are similar goals, just expressed in different words!  

Leaders from the world of business and childhood development can form partnerships that advance joint goals and that provide satisfying experiences for all partners.

And there are great benefits to these partnerships — across many cultures and socio-political environments, business leaders have the platform and influence to drive significant change in how countries give their youngest learners the best possible start.  At the same time, executives need to work hand-in-hand with children’s leaders so that their actions are well-informed and effective.  

Building Partnerships

The good news is that business leaders around the world are recognizing the value of giving children a good start – not (only) because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s the effective and smart thing to do for the future of their businesses, families, and nations.   

• The Business Council of Australia’s 2023 report, “Seize the Moment: A Plan to Secure Australia’s Economic Future,” issued an urgent call: “We must build a world-class early childhood system that recognises the fundamental importance of the first five years of a child’s development.”  
• Global business journal The Economist has produced extensive research on “the child care dividend.” 
• U.S. business group ReadyNation and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation have published a variety of economic studies showing that the impact of child care challenges on parents’ employment cost billions of dollars in loss to parents, taxpayers, and government. 
•  The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, has identified child care as just as important as other key elements of physical and social infrastructure, saying, “It’s past time that we treat child care as what it is – an element whose contribution to economic growth is as essential as infrastructure or energy.”

Business & Child Development as Equal Partners

These recent reports and messaging are powerful tools for engaging business, for several reasons. They speak directly to immediate business concerns, such as the productivity of working parents, and they present economic impacts in clear monetary terms. 

Perhaps most importantly, reports such as the one from Australia place early learning alongside other well-known drivers of overall economic competitiveness and prosperity, such as trade, energy, and agriculture.  

Worldwide, there is widespread acceptance of the importance of these latter issues, and the need to invest in them. 

By framing early childhood development in this context, the policy debate is elevated beyond pitting one children’s program against another – the choice moves from “which children’s program should we fund” to “which economic driver should we fund,” potentially opening up further opportunities for funding and support.

The implications of this framing are that early childhood leaders can approach business not as favor-seekers asking for help to solve child development challenges – but rather as equal partners inviting collaboration to solve a mutual problem, to the benefit of all.   

Engaging New Allies

To capitalize on this growing interest and evidence, childhood leaders can build effective partnerships with business leaders in their communities, helping executives take a wide variety of actions to support children.

Business leaders can be policy advocates, use their communication channels to highlight the business case for investing in children, ensure that children’s issues are included in national conversations about economic and social wellbeing, encourage the media to cover investments in children as a key driver of national success, adopt more family-friendly policies, and take many other actions.  

For example, in 2023, the Royal Foundation’s Centre for Early Childhood created a Business Task Force to support business action; its first major report identified a “£45.5 opportunity for the UK economy from investing in early childhood.” Reports such as this highlight in very concrete terms the urgency for investment in children’s development and learning for the benefit of entire nations.

Learning How to Engage New Partners

There are clearly many benefits to collaboration between business and child development leaders, but it can be hard to get there!

The child development and business sectors have different professional cultures that must be bridged. It can also be time-consuming to find the best candidates for engagement, and it takes specialized knowledge and skills to build effective partnerships between advocates and private sector executives.  

Many children’s leaders have had the experience of spending time and effort planning meetings to attract business, only to find that in the end, businesses didn’t attend. Or they worked hard to open a relationship, but because there was not a clear plan of action, the relationship didn’t last.  

To successfully build these collaborations, it is vital that child development leaders learn how to identify likely business allies, craft compelling messages, develop a structure to support business engagement, recruit champions, ensure that business leaders use child development expertise in choosing actions and messages, and sustain interest over time.

Supporting Country Leaders to Build Their Own Partnerships

CE International’s Center for Business Champions trains child development leaders in building their own effective partnerships with business.

We are currently working with a national children’s organization in Brazil, Fundação Abrinq, to support their creation of their network of business leaders – Champions for Children – who will take a variety of actions to advance children’s wellbeing as a business issue.

The Center for Business Champions will also offer an online Building Business Champions Training Institute in early 2025 to give country leaders a foundation to engage business in their own way. 

Many countries have the potential to create effective partnerships between the business community and children’s leaders, to the benefit of all. These partnerships can lead to better life success for children, more support for parents, a stronger economy, and improved quality of life for everyone.

It’s time to leverage the growing recognition that investments in children are vital drivers of economic and social wellbeing and warrant investments that match their significant impact.   

Learn more about the Center for Business Champions

About the Author

Dr. Sara Watson, Director of the Center for Business Champions

Dr. Sara Watson is Director of the Center for Business Champions. She is the only expert in the world who has worked in many U.S. states and cities, at the U.S. national level, and with partners in several countries to create networks of business champions for child development.

Sara founded and was the National and then Global Director of ReadyNation/ ReadyNation International, designing, fundraising for and leading the joint organization for 14 years.  Her hands-on work included personally persuading more than a thousand executives to join campaigns for early childhood investments, and supporting them to take action. She worked with local partners in Brazil, Australia, Romania and Uganda to create their own networks of business champions for early childhood.

Sara has spoken at more than 15 international meetings of child development and business leaders on how to build partnerships between the sectors.  She led the organization of more than a dozen national (U.S.) and two Global Business Summits on Early Childhood and the first European Business Forum on Early Childhood for audiences of business executives.

Sara also co-chaired ECDAN’s Advocacy Task Force in 2016-2018.  Before creating ReadyNation, she led The Pew Charitable Trusts’ national advocacy campaign for pre-K.  Dr. Watson is now an independent consultant and the founder and principal of Watson Strategies, LLC. She serves in a consulting capacity with CE International.

Sara holds Master of Public Policy and Ph.D. degrees from the Harvard Kennedy School.  More information, including a complete list of presentations and publications, is at www.watson-strategies.com.