Richard Foster

Managing Partner, General Medical Networks

Dr. Foster the Managing Partner of General Medical Networks, focused on matching early stage digital medical enterprises with provider users. Dr. Foster is an Emeritus Senior Partner of McKinsey & Company, Inc. where he founded and led several practices including the private equity practice, the healthcare practice, the Technology and Innovation practice, and McKinsey’s worldwide knowledge development. Dr. Foster is Chairman of Ancera Diagnostics, the Lead Director at Zocdoc, a Director at Advantia Health. Dr. Foster has been a member of the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trust Company of the West (acquired by Société Générale), the Santa Fe Institute, and the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, athenahealth and LeanTaaS. Currently, he is Chairman of the Medical Research Committee of the W. M. Keck Foundation ($1.5B foundation in Los Angeles) and a member of the Board of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he a member of the Technology, Patient Care, Finance, Audit and Conflict of Interest Committees. He is the past Chair of the Presidents’ Circle of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, where he is currently a member of the Policy & Global Affairs Committee and on the editorial board of NAE Perspectives, a publication of the US National Academy of Engineering. Foster is a Fellow at the Creative Destruction Laboratory, a venture incubator, in Canada and the UK. He is a member of the China Speakers Bureau, and the International Advisory Committee of the Tsinghua University. Dr. Foster has written two best-selling books: Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage (1986) and Creative Destruction (2001). Dr. Foster received his BS, MS, and PhD from Yale University in Engineering and Applied Science. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.