Paul Tough is the author, most recently, of "How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character," a New York Times best seller that has been translated into 22 languages. His first book, "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America," was published in 2008. Paul is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, where he has written extensively about education, parenting, poverty, and politics. His writing has also appeared in the New Yorker, Slate, GQ, Esquire, and Geist, and on the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Dr. Robertson has extensive experience in data collection and analysis, focusing on the evaluation of early intervention and various school and community-based programs for at-risk children and youth, including work on the Chicago Longitudinal Study (CLS) and the Abecedarian (ABC) preschool program. He has expertise within the areas of applied statistics in prevention and program evaluation research, the acquisition and use of administrative data and research design and methods.

Edward (Ted) Melhuish is Professor of Human Development at Birkbeck, University of London, and Research Professor at the University of Oxford, and is director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families & Social Issues. He has undertaken research in 12 countries, including the Effective Pre-school, Primary & Secondary Education (EPPSE) and the National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) projects.

Marta Korintus is the Director of Research at the National Institute for Family and Social Policy in Budapest, Hungary. She has been involved in work related to services for children under the age of 3 for more than 30 years. Her activities extended to producing guidelines for working with young children, developing curricula for training childcare workers and family day care providers, conducting surveys, evaluating services, promoting the diversification of existing childcare services, introducing new services, and monitoring all forms of childcare for under threes.