Kaye Foster is a highly respected board chair, venture partner, and former corporate leader with over 20 years of experience engaging with executives at global corporations, including Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), and Onyx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ONXX).
Arriving in the United States at the age of 19 with only $50 in her pocket, her extraordinary career began with a BBA from Baruch College, an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and culminated in a Senior Advisory role at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). At BCG, Kaye shares her decades of business intelligence with executive leadership in venture and private equity-backed companies with market caps ranging from $2B to $30B. Her most recent projects include supporting the post-M&A CEO transitions for a $2B organization and coaching senior leaders in implementing an enterprise manufacturing system. Previously, Kaye guided the redesign of Onyx Pharmaceuticals’ “ready now and ready later” succession planning, resulting in a 90%+ retention rate. At JNJ, she managed a $100M HR budget and 1,800 HR professionals.
Across boardrooms, Kaye has spent the past two decades guiding C-suite executives and stakeholders on how to remain anchored in the strategic context and aspirations of their businesses while leading transformation. She is well-positioned to advise public and private, large- to mid-cap companies with strategic priorities in healthcare, global expansion, and cultural change.
Kaye is a Founding Director at two pre-IPO companies and a Venture Partner to ARCH Ventures in San Francisco. Her board service includes two corporations, the Advisory Boards of Collective Health and Waymark, and advisor to the CEO of Upside Foods. Kaye recently joined the board of Xaira Therapeutics, a company designed to deliver transformative medicines by advancing and harnessing AI for drug discovery and development. A champion of DEI and ESG, Kaye partners with boards, administrators, and trustees to discover the insights that define an organization’s culture. She encourages embedding those principles into the company’s practices and programs to create short- and long-term sustainable business success, while facilitating value-assertion conversations across critical diversity dimension, not limited to race and gender. As the lead independent board director at Agios Pharmaceuticals, Kaye meets with institutional investors annually to discuss ESG reporting and board oversight. Kaye is a guest lecturer at the Columbia Graduate School of Business, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, and a speaker at the Milken Institute Global Conference. Kaye is also an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think tank, the global biotech trade association BIO, the National Association of Corporate Directors, and Black Women on Boards.