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Chad Foster

Resilience Leader, Change Disruption, Mindset and Transformation

About

Gender: Male
Languages: English
Travels from: United States

Engagement Types

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Biography Highlights

Harvard-educated Executive Dealmaker, Billion-dollar Generator, Job Creator Pursue Your Success with Blind Ambition Change – Disruption – Mindset – Transformation Resilience Leader, Blind Black Diamond Skier, Motivational Speaker, Author First blind executive to complete the Harvard leadership program

Biography

About Chard Foster

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. He believes in helping others turn their challenges into opportunities, a mission that he values even more than his eyesight.

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. With Chad, audiences receive actionable insights on fostering a mindset of growth and resilience, driving them to redefine their boundaries.

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 and confident 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.

Videos

Topics

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.

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.

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.

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.

Books

Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary

For anyone seeking to live life to its fullest potential, Blind Ambition is an eye-opening account of a tech industry executive who overcame fear and hopelessness to turn his blindness disability into a powerful, competitive strength. While most people were preparing for the adventure of adult life, Chad E. Foster was watching the world he grew up with 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. With determination, ambition, and drive, Chad 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. Even if you’ve been robbed of your self-identity and dreams for the future, you can change your story and achieve your goals. In Blind Ambition, readers and listeners will: Be inspired by Chad’s story of how he transformed the loss of his vision into a gift with unique strengths and abilities he did not have before. See how we choose the stories we tell ourselves about our circumstances and how this either limits us or propels us toward our goals. Gain new perspective on what is possible when you shift your mindset, give up making excuses, and decide that you oversee who you want to be. Learn the mental model that Chad uses to quickly overcome frustrations and stressors. Overcoming the challenges of blindness improved Chad’s perspective, making him more resilient and grateful for the life that he has. Ultimately, Chad’s unforgettable lessons and outlook will inspire listeners to overcome their perceived limitations and explore new possibilities where they once may have only seen obstacles. Blind Ambition will teach you how to take advantage of your disadvantages.

Speaker Bureaus and Talent Agencies

Chad Foster is available to book via these agencies
Recommended
Executive Speakers Bureau
Speaking Agency
Speakers Associates
Speaking Agency

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Blind Ambition: How to Go from Victim to Visionary

For anyone seeking to live life to its fullest potential, Blind Ambition is an eye-opening account of a tech industry executive who overcame fear and hopelessness to turn his blindness disability into a powerful, competitive strength. While most people were preparing for the adventure of adult life, Chad E. Foster was watching the world he grew up with 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. With determination, ambition, and drive, Chad 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. Even if you’ve been robbed of your self-identity and dreams for the future, you can change your story and achieve your goals. In Blind Ambition, readers and listeners will: Be inspired by Chad’s story of how he transformed the loss of his vision into a gift with unique strengths and abilities he did not have before. See how we choose the stories we tell ourselves about our circumstances and how this either limits us or propels us toward our goals. Gain new perspective on what is possible when you shift your mindset, give up making excuses, and decide that you oversee who you want to be. Learn the mental model that Chad uses to quickly overcome frustrations and stressors. Overcoming the challenges of blindness improved Chad’s perspective, making him more resilient and grateful for the life that he has. Ultimately, Chad’s unforgettable lessons and outlook will inspire listeners to overcome their perceived limitations and explore new possibilities where they once may have only seen obstacles. Blind Ambition will teach you how to take advantage of your disadvantages.