From September 2002 until his selection for this position Foster served as the Assistant Deputy Administrator for the Office of Capacity Building and Development in FAS, where he focused on helping transform fragile and transition economies into viable two-way trading markets for food and agricultural products. He served as the Acting Assistant Deputy Administrator for the Office of Capacity Building and Development from 2001-02.

Foster was the Chief of FAS’s Trade and Investment Program Branch from 1999-2002. From 1997-99 he was based in Washington, DC on a detail from FAS to the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he served as a senior advisor on agriculture, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was Chief of the [then] New Independent States and Baltics Section in the Economic Research Service from 1992-97. From 1990-92 he was based in Brussels, Belgium with the [then] Bell Atlantic Corporation, where he served as the Director for Business Development for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He worked from 1984-90 as an agricultural economist in ERS, focusing on the ‘Centrally Planned Economies’ of Eurasia. From 1982-84 he was based in Arlington, VA, where he began his federal career as an economist for the Defense Intelligence Agency, focusing on the economies of Eastern Europe.

He earned a Master of Arts from Georgetown University in 1982 and a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1980.

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