OBITUARY FOR BRIAN JOHN FOSTER

On August 23, 2017 in New York City after a more than four year battle with Multiple Myeloma. Brian had a rich and complex career as economist, social worker and change management consultant with a voracious interest in working in many communities both in the USA and overseas, to make organizations and worksites more rewarding and effective. Born in the UK between VE and VJ days in 1945 he grew up in a post-war excitement of optimism and reform. It was a period when his parents moved him to a planned new town in the 1950s which was a ferment of citizen activism and change. He came of age in the turbulent 60s, studying Political Economy at Cambridge University during an era of rapid change in the British way of life, not least the dismantling of the British Empire.

He was hired by the UN Development Programme for 11 years after graduation, working in Greece, Pakistan and then New York. What had seemed a sound way to making the world a better place to live he however found too constraining for him. Brian was looking – and this proved a thread for the remainder or his life as a consultant – for faster, less bureaucratic and more effective ways to improve the ways that people lived and worked. To this end he gained a Master’s degree in Social work from Columbia University in 1979 and spent the next few years working in what was then the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union working with local unions in some 20 States east of the Mississippi. His English accent proved an asset particularly in the South, a rich experience he always said, and a deepening of an awareness of the complexity of culture and the foolishness of stereotyping.

His career took an independent path from 1985 when, with associates, he built a consulting practice working to reform several UN agencies in New York and Rome, Italy, as well as a number of UN field offices around the world. He eventually broadened his field to live and work in 30 countries, including substantial reform work within ECOWAS -the Economic Community of West African States. Late in life he joined Deloitte Consulting LLC in Afghanistan, and Liberia where his final illness started to appear. He was very grateful to all his associates and colleagues who supported him over 30 years in honing his skills in managing faster and deeper change, devising and honing techniques to produce home-grown results built on local cultures. He evolved from being the consultant “expert” to the consultant “facilitator”, mobilizing larger and larger groups for shorter and more intensive periods to solve their organizational problems themselves. He had the very good fortune to study with Kathy Dannemiller of Ann Arbor who had pioneered these sorts of approaches in Ford in Detroit, and a great inspirer. His learning in culture change, even during his last illness, led him to cherish and wonder at the richness of human cultures. He came to view race as a concept that only impeded human understanding and development and from his experience in visiting 65 countries – in 30 of which he lived and worked - he committed himself to the wisdom in Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Brian’s first partner, Michael Sussholtz of New York, died of HIV/AIDS in 1989. Brian is survived by his second partner and eventually husband, Dr. Michael Detres, a Psychologist working with mental illness and autism: this for Brian was a deeply fulfilling partnership of 33 years that ended much too soon.

There will be a Vigil on Wednesday August 30, 2017 from 6:30 to 8:00 PM at Church of St. Mary the Virgin 145 West 46th Street New York City follow by the Mass of the Resurrection on Thursday at 10:00 AM August 31, 2017 at the church. Interment to follow at Rockland Cemetery Sparkill, NY