The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the relationship between emotional intelligence and organizational commitment among early childhood educators. Organizational commitment and its established precursor, job satisfaction, have gained relevance because turnover within early childhood education has fluctuated between 25% and 40% for more than a decade. Also assessed was the relationship between educators' job satisfaction and organizational commitment and their supervisors' leadership type (i.e. traits and processes). Survey respondents completed a multi-faceted Likert-type survey designed to measure their emotional intelligence, job satisfaction, leadership type preference, and organizational commitment. A convenience sample of 296 educators was drawn from training conferences in North Carolina. Pearson's "R" was used to determine the strength of correlations and significance of relationships among the variables. Although select dimensions were correlated, no significant relationship was found between educators' overall emotional intelligence and organizational commitment. However, emotional intelligence was moderately correlated with job satisfaction ("R" = 0.418, p less than 0.05). There was no significant relationship found between supervisors' leadership traits and processes and educators' organizational commitment, although educators' job satisfaction and supervisors' leadership traits and processes were slightly correlated ("R" = -0.114, p less than 0.05). Based on positive associations within the current study, it is recommended that organizations incorporate emotional intelligence assessment into the educator hiring process as well as determine the job satisfaction and organizational commitment levels and leadership type preferences of current educators as a basis for forming training budgets and retention strategies. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]