Michelle Foster is a marketing and management consultant assisting U.S. and international media organizations develop strong business practices and strategic planning. She has worked with media organizations in China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Columbia, and East Timor. She is a member of the Knight International Press Fellowship Advisory Board and assists the International Center for Journalists in efforts to strengthen media management in emergent countries.

During 2007 and 2004 Foster served as a Knight International Journalism Fellow based in East Timor and Phnom Penh, respectively.

From 1991 until 2003, Foster was the senior market development executive for Gannett Co., Inc.’s $5.4 billion Newspaper Division. As such, she oversaw marketing efforts for 97 daily newspapers, a host of national brands, and niche/vertical product lines. She led efforts in branding, consumer and business marketing, database development, market intelligence, and the migration of brands from traditional to online media. Prior to that, she held marketing roles at Gannett newspapers in Iowa, Michigan, and Florida.

Foster has won numerous national and regional advertising awards and is a frequent public speaker. She has co-authored two books on newspaper marketing. Within Gannett, she repeatedly won recognition for excellence in innovation and for marketing leadership.

She is conversant in Chinese and has a Master’s degree in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. During the winter of 1981-82 she was a Foreign Expert at the Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade; as a Stanford Center student she lived in Taiwan from 1978 -1980. She was a member of the Conference Board’s Council on Services Marketing and on the national marketing board of Kids Voting. She has held numerous roles within media industry organizations. Currently she volunteers at a southern Chinese orphanage and competes in dressage, an equestrian sport.