Chad E. Foster Email & Phone Number

OUR VISIONA world where every person is welcomed and empowered to shine their brightest light on humanity’s most pressing challenges.OUR MISSIONEmpowering people with the energy, confidence, and tools to not be victims of their circumstances.OUR PHILOSOPHYWe don’t see obstacles as roadblocks, but as opportunities for growth. Our approach centers on cultivating hope and optimism, breaking down the anatomy of resilience, and instilling the belief, self-confidence, and persistence necessary for a fulfilling and purpose-driven life.WHAT WE DOWe enable people to view challenges as stepping stones to greatness, cultivating hope and optimism by breaking down the components of resilience. Our programs and initiatives are designed to:Instill Belief: We foster self-confidence and persistence, empowering individuals to live fulfilling, purpose-driven lives.Promote Continuous Learning: We encourage a mindset anchored in embracing discomfort, knowing that growth lies just beyond our comfort zones. Through our various programs, we provide the tools and support needed to realize just how much each person is capable of achieving.Break Down Barriers: We support programs that help people break the shackles that are preventing them from reaching their full potential.Uncover Strengths: We believe that within each person lies towering strengths. Our mission is to help individuals uncover, nurture, and harness these strengths to solve our biggest challenges.

Read Chad E. Foster’s resume and you know he’s a rainmaker. A billion-dollar revenue generator, a job creator, a tech innovator. What’s not so obvious? He’s blind. And when he speaks to audiences, he shares a powerful message: His loss of eyesight as a young adult didn't hold him back. Instead, he embraced obstacles as opportunities.Chad became the first blind executive to graduate Harvard Business School's leadership program and did what Oracle said couldn’t be done, becoming the first to create CRM software for the visually-impaired. Turning adversity into advantage, he thrived at a Fortune 500 company, directing financial strategies that resulted in billions in revenue, industry-leading growth, and best-in-class margins despite hypercompetitive market conditions.Today, Chad teaches this same overcomer mindset to companies around the world, breaking down the anatomy of resilience using his tried and tested tools to empower people to emerge from setbacks stronger, sleeker, and resolute to succeed.Connecting inspiration to implementation™, Chad provides a roadmap for overcoming obstacles and achieving the impossible. His keynotes are a blend of heartfelt stories, entertaining delivery, no-fluff truth-telling, and practical strategies tailored to empower individuals and teams to transcend their limitations.His keynotes are not just talks; they are transformative experiences that ignite change, inspire action, and unlock potential. When you invite Chad to your event, you’re securing a catalyst for positive transformation, leaving your audience motivated, equipped, and eager to tackle their challenges with newfound vigor.His direct style, combined with a go-for-it inspiring belief system—he is an avid downhill skier and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner (that’s not a joke), has made him a high-impact keynote speaker for leaders at companies such as Google, IBM, Salesforce, GE and Microsoft. He’d be honored to inspire actions that drive outcomes at your next event.

Toronto, Ca

Advised Semper8 executives regarding mid-term and long-term strategic initiatives. Identified ecosystem synergies that create client value, build demand, and align strategic partners.

Raleigh, Nc, Us

Advised, influenced, structured, negotiated, and priced large/strategic deals for key verticals and accounts. Designed structure and price for EMEA’s largest Single Year Bookings deal. Drove global vertical best practices across industry teams. Established governance for deals, account planning, escalations, and synergy between Red Hat and IBM.

Raleigh, Nc, Us

Led the ~200-person Corporate/Marketing Finance organization, part of which closed the $34 billion purchase by IBM—the largest-ever software acquisition. Established purchase requisition processes to support prioritization of spending based on expected and actual return on purchase requisitions—leading to a better use of funds. Identified common KPIs to use across the org to align team incentives. Led a team that drove financial planning across the company while navigating the cutover from pre-acquisition FY schedule to post-acquisition FY schedule. Led the team through major changes including acquisition by IBM, on-boarding of new CFO, and multiple reorganizations.

Raleigh, Nc, Us

Improved operational efficiency by ~57%, drove account growth, and substantially improved customer service by leading a team that redesigned worldwide sales pricing and approval methodology. Led a team that crafted, modeled, influenced, negotiated, and sold the largest (nine-figure) deal in company history. Redesigned channel pricing and discounting architectures worldwide, creating the foundation for greater scale by empowering the partner ecosystem. Drove a transformation initiative that up-leveled Deal Desk to become trusted advisors to Sales while identifying and removing barriers to successful healthy deal bookings. Led a worldwide team of Deal Desk strategists tasked with structuring contracts while considering broader corporate consequences. Participated in, improved, and influenced presales strategies. Met with customers and influence purchasing decisions while negotiating commercial terms. Directed assembly, understanding, and use of market pricing, analytics, and financial strategies for large and/or complex deals. Communicated lessons learned to key stakeholders. Partnered with executive stakeholders (Business Units, Finance, Legal, Sales) to navigate complex organizational dynamics while achieving key corporate goals. Oversaw strategic thinking and influenced adoption of various business models while considering their implications to the corporation. Facilitated career growth for associates while improving their contribution to the corporation.

Buford, Ga, Us

Led Membership activities aimed at creating value for members, the community, and Harvard Business School. Grew membership by ~20% through creative outreach, repackaging membership offerings, and new events—reaching record membership levels that exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

Falls Church, Va, Us

Generated over $45 billion in contracts, best-in-class margins, and industry-leading growth amid hypercompetitive market conditions by directing the pricing decisions and financial strategy formulation on large and/or strategic government proposals. Established price targets with 83% success rate, leading to a win probability (P-Win) twice the company average—40% v. 20%. Led price-to-win (PTW) efforts across the firm for all types of bids: Cost Plus (CP); Firm Fixed Price (FFP); Fixed Unit Price; Time and Materials (T&M). Crafted sound pricing strategies and PTW targets, and drove these financial solutions through the sales lifecycle. Consistently influenced executive management and key stakeholders to adopt winning PTW and pricing strategies. Shaped procurements by working with sales teams, business area leaders, customers, and third party advisors. Develop PTW and pricing strategy competencies across the company by mentoring pricing analysts, technical leaders, and business leaders. Faced off with customer representatives and third party advisors during audits, fact-finding, proposal pricing justifications, and contract negotiations. Reduced pricing process time by ~80% by building advanced financial models used to price managed services transactions, including a file-set that sped the cost-to-price process utilizing multiple prelinked files. Prepared the P&L for all types of deals – producing operating margins, cash flow analysis, return on investment (ROI) and internal rate of return (IRR) analyses. Estimated staffing levels and design to cost solutions used by engineering teams, including basis of estimates, for various program types. Identified, quantified, and mitigated risk associated with new business transactions.

Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, Us

Underpinned all major phases of the solicitation process for multibillion dollar proposals. Regularly presented to and interfaced with senior management, assisting them with financial, pricing, and solution efforts. Liaised with operational staff to craft staffing profiles, while spearheading subcontractor price targets and skill mix objectives. Shaped the cost and price curves associated with varying degrees of acceleration in service transformation, while overlaying PTW from the top-down to characterize the appropriate levels of cost and price. Benchmarked IT services for market competitiveness by parametrically modeling the client environment. Pinpointed and fine-tuned cost levers for pricing proposals, while creating PTW targets and cost profiles that led to profitable, competitive business solutions. Managed subcontractor pricing while driving to winning price points. Introduced commercial best practices to federal government contracts to enable cost/price comparisons and solution analysis. Evaluated various cost modeling methodologies, tools, techniques, and software to determine appropriate uses and needs for upgrading. Designed and maintained a utility pricing model used to produce estimates for managed computing transactions. Provided leadership and work guidance to less experienced associates.

Global, Us

Priced commercial multibillion dollar IT outsourcing transactions, reallocating the costs and fees of non-billable frameworks to billable resource units where appropriate, and leveraging the appropriate pricing mechanism for each service e.g. base charges with ARCs/RRCs, fixed unit rates, T&M, and milestone payments. Partnered with sales executives, capture executives, proposal managers, and solution executives to shape the IT solution that best met client requirements, winning strategy, and financial hurdles. Crafted and explained responses to client RFPs that included a competitive business case, pricing tables, and contract language around resource unit definitions and costing/pricing assumptions. Architected and rolled up complex cost models used in large full-scope outsourcing transactions, analyzing cost reasonableness, cost/solution alignment, and cost element trending. Generated top-down pricing estimates based on industry experience and each client’s unique circumstances e.g. technology environment, resource volumes, office locations, service levels, financial responsibility, labor requirements, offshore flexibility. Built business cases for outsourcing transactions by working with clientele, internal staff, and third parties to normalize and build the base case for comparison purposes. Presented new business deal review materials to senior management, including deal scope, solution, deal-level assumptions and risks, costing/pricing approach, the business case, major concerns, and the P&L statement. Benchmarked current pursuits against prior bids in order to identify costing errors, service level variations, and value tradeoffs. Analyzed new business wins in order to distinguish differentiating characteristics that drove win probability. Reduce process time by ~70% by automating Excel process elements with Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code, infusing additional time for analysis.

Worked on-site at CSC: Led a team that sourced data related to market trends and businesses, synthesized, and communicated the analytical findings to senior leadership, including CSC’s executive sales force; collaborated with sales executives in order to forge and shore up industry development plans specific to key CSC verticals; participated in sales strategy development and refinement with business development community colleagues; generated a monthly newsletter to keep sales executives up-to-speed on market trends that impact CSC; forecasted and adhered to an annual budget allocated for market research initiatives. Bender Consulting Services (BCS) duties consisted of: managed a team of 25 consultants while networking with CSC execs and hiring managers in order to identify career opportunities paralleling available BCS candidates; enabled BCS consultants to attain professional growth and achievement through leadership, guidance, and support.

Dublin 2, Ie

Developed financial analysis tools used to educate senior management about the financial performance of clientele. Collaborated with partners in the CRM practice to ascertain inadequacies of internal sales content and collateral, and orchestrated a CRM Web-site refresh. Interpreted technical specifications comprising new health legislation (HIPAA), and prepared related marketing and sales materials for partners and project managers. Compiled Quality Assurance questionnaires, Marketing Brochures, Sales Presentations, Credentials, and Work plans for Accenture’s healthcare practice. Benchmarked competitors’ Web-sites in order to identify and shape the components necessary to foster the advertisement of knowledge capital. Outlined and conformed to a budget allocated for diversity initiative activities – engendering an itinerary designed to promote diversity amongst colleagues.

Harvard Business School Alumni, Program For Leadership Development

Bs, Business Management