Joseph Sparling is the Board Chair of the Abecedarian Education Foundation (international), a Senior Scientist Emeritus at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina (USA), and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education of the University of Melbourne (Australia). His 50-year career has been focused on bringing educational opportunities to vulnerable or disadvantaged children from birth though age five. With Professor Craig Ramey, he developed an early educational program known as the Abecedarian Approach. This program has been evaluated in a series of randomized controlled trials with results published in more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles. He serves as a consultant on international early childhood research and/or staff training activities currently being conducted in Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Jordan, Mexico, Singapore, and the USA. Sparling was the Director of the Frank Porter Graham Child Care Center during the intervention phase of the world-known Abecedarian longitudinal studies. Nobel Laureate James Heckman’s recent economic analysis shows a 13.7% annual return on Abecedarian investment.