‘Blind ambition' guides NIBA keynote speaker Chad Foster

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—"He who has the why to live can bear almost any how."

Chad Foster is the embodiment of Friedrich Nietzsche's quote, proof that vision and eyesight can be mutually exclusive.

Foster, the first blind executive to graduate from Harvard Business School's Program for Leadership Development, has gone on to a successful career in the technology industry—and become an elite downhill skier.

But his true calling is enabling other business leaders to break from the circumstances that are preventing their success.

"Sometimes we have to help people get comfortable with disruption," Foster told nearly 700 NIBA attendees during the association's annual convention at the Omni Hotel Sept. 13. "You need to get comfortable with the change and the diversity you are navigating."

His keynote address, appropriately titled "Blind Ambition," is an autobiographical retreat into darkness, a recalculation of circumstances and, ultimately, a clear vision of who he is today.

"Everyone needs help with uncertainty," he said. "Whether that is training, product reliability or supply lines, right? As industrial automation leaders, you need to look ahead.

"But what happens when you can't see the changing variables? What gets me through is blind ambition. There is a lot of disruption out there ... we see it every day.

"But we have the technology and the tools to help us achieve amazing things. Despite my condition, I can still innovate and participate in the remarkable things that life has to offer."

Foster has parlayed his sharp business sense into becoming a master coder, writing programs to help him write programs.

His software and direction of financial strategies for companies like Accenture have been critical, employing systems that have led to a $34 billion contract with TSA and a $200 million contract with the FBI.

"This is an incredible time to go blind," Foster said. "Not that I am recruiting."

But 50 years ago? That was a terrible time to go blind, Foster offered in his self-deprecating style.

"Now is the time," he said. "Resilience revolves around perspective. The stories you tell yourself can keep you trapped or they can help you bounce back.

"Are you going to be a victim or a visionary? Imagine 'seeing' life through a different lens so that you can improve your vision. And to do that, you need to look deep inside yourself."

Foster was not born blind. The darkness began to creep in while he was in college.

"I always knew I could lose my eyesight," he said. "But I was never prepared, and I was in denial."

The high school athlete who excelled in soccer, football and basketball began experiencing symptoms of his inherited eye disease his sophomore year in college.

"The fog started to roll in," he said. "Imagine the densest, darkest fog you've ever seen."

Still, Foster was determined to live life on his terms, if a bit recklessly and directly in spite of his declining vision.

When he narrowly avoided tragedy while driving on a sunny day, acceptance of his fate began to sink in.

"The sunlight was blinding," he said. "I experienced about four or five seconds of complete blindness while driving at 45 mph.

"And I never got behind the wheel again."

Foster drew parallels between his eye disease and the pitfalls that present themselves in the business world.

"There is always something in your life you can't see," he said. "All of us have blind spots. For me, I could not see my literature assignments that were right in front of me.

"Like a swarm of bees, it invaded my vision. And I was frustrated, angry and bitter."

Foster was at a crossroads, and not just in terms of what he felt might turn into a wasted academic journey toward a now-fleeting medical career.

"Three years of university work flushed down the drain. And on top of that, I was never going to see another sunset, my future wife, my children," he said.

As his life disappeared like some sort of dream, Foster needed to come to grips with his dark reality.

But that did not mean it had to be a depressing reality.

"I needed a new philosophy," he said. "Excuses are for losers. Hard to hear, isn't it? But how many times do we look for a reason to fail?"

Foster said he planned on being around for at least another 50 years, "and that's a lot of 'sorry.' "

"My blindness was guaranteed. My attitude was up to me," he said.

As he went through service dog training—Sarge sat attentively at his side during the keynote—he met people whose straits were dire, people who were "far worse off than me," he said.

"Happiness is not an emotion, it is an attitude you choose every day," Foster said. "You hold the power to choose your perspective and your response."

And the stories told to oneself set the bar for reality. Facts, he said, are less significant than the self-improvement stories.

"Tell yourself the best story," he said. "We become the stories we tell ourselves."

Fittingly transformed in his mindset, Foster taught himself how to write code for programs that are now used by many blind people. This includes Stevie Wonder, to whom Foster pitched his software over chicken and waffles at Roscoe's in Los Angeles.

He added that Wonder had "seeing-eye people," not dogs, as the two "were on completely different budgets."

But Foster has earned his own share with his software that is compatible for the blind, and he has done it his own way.

"Just try believing you are a little better than you think you are," he said. "It is our relationship to our weaknesses that sets us apart."

Foster is even trying to have more understanding for people who let vision cloud their judgment.

"People come up to me and say, 'Oh, is that a blind service dog?' And I tell them, 'Jeez, I hope not, otherwise I'm screwed.' "