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Chad Foster

Harvard-Educated Executive Dealmaker; Billion-Dollar Generator; Job Creator

As the first blind executive to complete the Harvard leadership program, Chad Foster teaches teams how to pursue success with blind ambition. He understands the anatomy of resilience at a practical level, providing tried and tested tools that empower people to emerge from setbacks stronger, sleeker, and resolute to succeed.

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Bio

Chad E. Foster is a husband, a father, and an avid snow skier (that is not a joke) who is not just competing with his condition; he is competing with the world’s most successful people.

Chad believes he is not successful despite being blind, but rather he is successful because he’s blind. He embraced his problem and turned it into a solution.

Can you imagine going blind as a teenager? When most people were preparing for the adventure of adult life, Chad E. Foster was watching the world he grew up in fade to black. But that didn’t stop him from becoming the first blind person to graduate from the Harvard Business School leadership program and climbing the corporate ladder as a successful Finance/Sales executive. Throughout his career, his financial strategies and decisions have resulted in the creation of countless jobs, billions of dollars in revenue, industry-leading growth, and best-in-class margins.

He works at Red Hat, one of the most innovative Tech companies and the world’s largest open-source software company (recently purchased by IBM for $34 billion). With determination, ambition, and drive, he created what Oracle said would be impossible. He gave millions of people the ability to earn a living by becoming the first to create customer relationship software for the visually impaired. With speaking invites from London to Beijing and the Atlanta Opera commissioning an opera inspired by his life story, Chad inspires people to overcome their own blind spots.

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Keynotes

Featured Keynote

BLIND AMBITION: How to Go from Victim to Visionary

In this signature keynote, Chad will entertain, inspire, and move your audience, while teaching them how to shift their mindset from victim to visionaryTM. Going blind at 21-years-old and facing a life with seemingly limited opportunities, Chad had to reinvent himself before even having a shot at success. Turning obstacles into opportunities, he became a Harvard-educated rainmaker, created countless jobs, and now he teaches teams how to cultivate resilient mindsets, adapt and thrive in change, and set ambitious goals with the right mindset to achieve them.

This program gives your people the tools and inspiration to overcome difficult circumstances and create a promising positive future. More than just a motivational talk, this session connects inspiration to implementation.

NO MORE COMFORT ZONES: Growth Through Adversity

NO MORE COMFORT ZONES: Growth Through Adversity

Life without obstacles removes opportunity for growth. For any of us to grow, we need to step outside our comfort zones. In this powerful keynote, Chad teaches how the obstacles that lie in front of us can propel us towards our goals.

Every organization finds itself face-to-face with problems that can seem insurmountable. Beyond Chad’s personal path of overcoming overwhelming odds, his business track record for moving through challenges and improving results gives a unique perspective on how comfort zones hold us back.

Chad will talk about how he’s not successful in spite of being blind. He is successful because he’s blind. He embraced his problem and turned it into a solution. In this session Chad will teach your teams how to realize exponential growth through adversity.
DIVERSITY: The Engine for Innovation

DIVERSITY: The Engine for Innovation

Chad was born part of the mainstream majority, but after going blind in college, he was treated differently as a disabled minority. After living over 20 years in both social groups, his unique vantage points of both worlds allow him to equip your teams to think differently about Diversity and Inclusion (DnI) in the workplace.

Chad goes beyond just valuing each person. He will show how DnI drives business innovation. We know that diversity of thought creates change, and when harnessed correctly, change drives innovation. How can we create a culture that invites diversity of thought to have a welcomed seat at the table so each individual feels valued to contribute? This session shows how you can unlock the value of DnI in your workplace to power the innovation your business needs to thrive.
VICTIM TO VISIONARY: Resilience Workshop

VICTIM TO VISIONARY: Resilience Workshop

In this workshop Chad will lead you through the steps you can take to improve resilience. He teaches the practical tools you can apply to any situation in order to move your mindset from victim to visionary.

During this session you will map out your resilience journey. After setting out your own personal vision of greatness, you will see your life more clearly than you ever have before. It can set you free to discover the amazing advantages that your disadvantages offer. You can then seek your own gifts that are disguised in terrible wrapping paper and see how the unique perspectives you’ve gained from those disadvantages contribute to your vision of greatness.

Nothing in life is permanent. Everybody and everything changes. The only certainty is change. The key is figuring out how you will adapt.