David L. Foster is the CEO of Business Valuation Resources (Portland, OR), the premier provider of market data, professional education and research for the business valuation and related professions.

Prior to BVR, Foster was the president of IOMA (New York, NY). He founded IOMA in 1982, and sold it to the Bureau of National Affairs in 1998, staying on as president though 2005. He has served on the boards of nine publishing companies in the past or currently, including publicly traded BNA (Washington DC), Kennedy Information (Peterborough, NH), Business Publishers Inc. (Silver Spring, MD), BNA International (London, UK), North American Publishing (Philadelphia, PA), Pike & Fischer (Silver Spring, MD), and FDA News (Arlington VA).

Foster is a past president of the Specialized Information Publishers Association (SIPA), and served on its board from 1989-2001 (and rejoined for a second term in June 2019). He won SIPA’s highest honor, the Hall of Fame award for lifetime achievement, in 2000. He's still active in SIIA/SIPA.

David speaks extensively on the changing information market, and particularly the opportunities for publishers to create material revenue streams and growth with new content distribution channels that build direct contact with customers.

Foster is also on the board of Copyright Clearance Center (Danvers MA), the world's largest rights management organization. His prime philanthropic interest has been Bates College (Lewiston ME), where he served on the investment, academic affairs and development committees, and as chair of the honorary-degree committee.

Foster and his partner, the novelist Mina Samuels, live in Manhattan, but split their time between NY, Truckee CA, OR, Paris, and other destinations.

Specialties: Product development, corporate strategy, branding, marketing, operations, sales, development, mergers & acquisitions in the information industry.