Chad Foster
Senior teams now run on permanent disruption. The familiar leadership question is no longer how to manage change but how to keep judgement, conviction and morale intact across years of it. Resilience has stopped being a soft topic and become a measurable variable in commercial performance.
Chad Foster is a Harvard-trained executive and resilience speaker who helps leadership teams hold their nerve and their commercial discipline through prolonged disruption.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Chad Foster
- He pairs a personal resilience story with a Fortune 500 sales record, which means he lands with revenue leaders, not only HR and culture audiences.
- The Blind Ambition Framework gives sales and operating leaders a structured five-step model rather than an inspirational set piece, and it has been delivered to 175,000+ attendees across six continents.
- He is credible on technology and commercial execution because he built the first CRM software for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had judged impossible.
- His Harvard Business School leadership credential, the first awarded to a blind executive, gives buyers cover when programming a resilience speaker for senior commercial audiences.
- Named client list includes Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina, which signals comfort with the standards of large enterprise commercial events.
Biography highlights
- First blind executive to graduate Harvard Business School’s leadership program.
- Author of Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, HarperCollins Leadership, 2021.
- Creator of the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology applied across sales, leadership and culture programmes.
- Fortune 500 finance and sales executive credited with directing strategies tied to $45 billion in technology contracts.
- Built the first CRM software for visually impaired users.
- Keynote clients include Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar, Nestle Purina and Amgen.
Biography
Resilience as a commercial topic has a credibility problem. Most speakers in the category sit on the personal side of the stage, helpful for a culture day, harder to programme into a sales kickoff or a senior leadership offsite. Chad Foster sits on the other side of that line.
Foster lost his eyesight at twenty-one and went on to become the first blind executive to graduate from Harvard Business School’s leadership program. He then spent his career inside Fortune 500 technology companies, directing financial and sales strategies tied to $45 billion in contracts and building the first CRM software designed for visually impaired users, a project Oracle had said was not feasible.
His book, Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary, was published by HarperCollins Leadership in 2021 and sets out the Blind Ambition Framework, a five-step methodology now used inside Google, Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft, GE, Caterpillar and Nestle Purina. He has delivered it more than 200 times to over 175,000 attendees across six continents.
The reason buyers programme him into senior commercial settings is that the framework is presented as an operating discipline for performance under pressure, not a story about overcoming adversity. The personal account is the proof. The argument is about how leaders sustain judgement and revenue when the conditions stay hard for longer than the playbook assumes.
Key speaking topics
- Resilience as a commercial leadership capability
- Performance under sustained pressure
- Sales leadership and revenue under disruption
- Mindset and decision-making for senior teams
- Inclusion and diversity as competitive advantage
- Change leadership and culture under strain
Ideal for
- Sales kickoffs and CRO-led revenue events
- Senior leadership offsites and executive development programmes
- Culture, inclusion and people leadership conferences with a commercial audience
- Technology and financial services firms running multi-year transformation
Audience outcomes
- A structured five-step framework for sustaining performance through disruption.
- A clearer language for resilience that travels into a sales and commercial setting.
- Specific tools for reframing setbacks into operating decisions.
- Renewed conviction at senior level on the link between mindset and revenue performance.
Talks
A keynote that turns a personal account of going blind at twenty-one into a five-step framework for performance under pressure.
Key takeaways:
- A working definition of resilience as a leadership and commercial discipline
- The five steps of the Blind Ambition Framework applied to a senior audience
- A reset on how leaders interpret obstacles inside an operating environment
A talk for leaders managing teams through prolonged change, focused on the cost of staying inside familiar operating patterns.
Key takeaways:
- How comfort zones erode commercial performance over time
- Practical methods for building productive discomfort into team rhythm
- A diagnostic for where leaders themselves are avoiding harder calls
A keynote linking inclusion to commercial outcomes, drawing on Foster’s experience as a blind executive inside Fortune 500 sales and technology environments.
Key takeaways:
- The business case for diversity grounded in product and commercial decisions
- How inclusion changes the quality of judgement on senior teams
- The link between perspective and revenue in technology buying environments
An interactive session that takes leaders and teams through the Blind Ambition Framework as a working method.
Key takeaways:
- A mapped personal application of the framework for each participant
- Tools to reset the team narrative around a current operating challenge
- Shared language to take back into commercial and leadership reviews
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Europe | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| South America | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| United Kingdom | €40000 to €90000 | £35,001 - £75,000 | $50000 - $100000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |