Richard Foster

Managing Partner, General Medical Networks

Richard Foster the managing partner of General Medical Networks, focused on matching early-stage digital medical enterprises with provider users. Richard 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. He is the chairman of Ancera Diagnostics, the lead director at Zocdoc, and a director at Advantia Health. Richard has been a board member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trust Company of the West (acquired by Société Générale), the Santa Fe Institute, the Oak Ridge National Laboratories, athenahealth and LeanTaaS. Currently, he is chairman of the medical research committee of the W. M. Keck Foundation (a $1.5B foundation in Los Angeles) and a member of the board of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where he is a member of the technology, patient care, finance, audit and conflict of interest committees. Richard is the past chair of the President’s Circle of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, where he is currently a member of the policy and 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 Lab, a venture incubator in Canada and the UK. He is a member of the China Speakers Bureau and the International Advisory Committee of Tsinghua University. Richard has written two best-selling books: “Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage” (1986) and “Creative Destruction” (2001). He received his BS, MS, and PhD from Yale University in engineering and applied science. Richard was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2008.