Need a satellite or a space station?

You might give Boeing a call.

But when the organizers of April’s “Our Kids: Our Business” project needed a speaker for their capstone event, they too turned to the world’s leading aerospace company.

This Friday, Bob Watt, Boeing’s vice president of government relations and global corporate citizenship, will speak at the Davenport Hotel. The title of his talk: “The Return on Investment When Kids Thrive.”

Perhaps you were expecting Oprah. But not to worry. Co-chair of the Washington Early Learning Council, Watt has delved into the hard facts and best science surrounding early learning and child abuse prevention.

Watt plans to lay out the research he’s seen on the economic development benefits of tackling these issues and then pose a familiar, if seemingly un-Boeing-like question.

But first this one: Why does Boeing care about the problems of struggling babies and toddlers?

His answer: “We need great people who can form solid relationships with others here and around the world to solve the amazing problems that we get to work on inside this company.”

Watt, who has four grandchildren, finds the science of their development fascinating. Yet he understands why the eyes of business people have tended to glaze over when they hear words like “early learning” and “child abuse prevention.”

“It all seemed like it was kind of soft stuff,” he says. “Gee whiz, golly, do we really know anything about that?”

Watt plans to reassure Spokane listeners that scientists and economists now do.

He’s particularly intrigued by a project of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Economists there crunched the numbers, looking for the best way to invest in the long-term growth of a community.

Two of the standard approaches – building stadiums and luring new businesses to town – didn’t pay off. Instead economists found a greater return from investing in the long-term well-being of the city’s children.

That study cited the landmark Perry Preschool Program, which intervened in the lives of disadvantaged minority children. Children were followed for 40 years, and on a wide variety of scales – high school graduation, employment, adult home ownership – they fared much better than their peers. The program had a cost-benefit ratio of $17 for every $1 invested.

“(The economists) showed a compound rate of return, year after year, in double digits on the investment, which is pretty good from a business standpoint,” Watt says.

On the issue of child abuse prevention, he shifts his perspective. He hears lots of moral outrage and chagrin about child abuse and neglect.

And he cites more research. This time he talks about the stress hormone called cortisol that gets produced in the brain of a child exposed to violence. Cortisol inhibits, he says, the physical development of areas of the brain that allow people to attach to others, to feel empathy and to be good citizens.

It’s no wonder, Watt says, that children exposed to such toxic stress early in life wind up with serious behavioral problems later on. Their brains simply haven’t developed as they would have in a more stable environment.

“It’s not warm fuzzy stuff,” Watt says. “It’s hard wiring in the brain.”

Watt also cites long-term research by David Olds, who has shown that a structured program of home visits from registered nurses can bolster the skills of young parents and actually prevent child abuse.

“That’s part of what’s so amazing about a lot of this early brain research,” Watt says. “It doesn’t take a lot of exposure to make all the difference in the world.”

Watt plans to lay out this solid science at Friday’s luncheon. And then there’s that oh-so-familiar question he plans to pose to Spokane.

“Now that you know this,” he asks, “What are you going to do with this knowledge?”

Whether we approach these issues with the hard science perspective of Boeing or the compassion of Oprah, our shared future comes down to the very same question.