WorldSkills Leaders Forum 2016
Lori Foster, Ph.D.

Professor of industrial-organizational psychology at North Carolina State University (USA) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa)

Lori Foster, Ph.D. is a Professor of industrial-organizational psychology at North Carolina State University (USA) and the University of Cape Town (South Africa). She currently serves as a behavioral sciences advisor to the United Nations and a fellow with the White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. Her areas of research and practice expertise include workforce development, computer-mediated work behavior, organizational survey design and analysis, and behavioral economics. Her current efforts focus on how the social and behavioral sciences can be used to enrich and improve work carried out for the purpose of addressing the most pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges facing our world today.

Professor Foster has held visiting scholar appointments at a number of universities around the world, including the London Business School, Singapore Management University, and the Universities of Valencia, Barcelona, and Bologna.

As a scientist-practitioner, she has more than 15 years of experience as a consultant, applying the science of work to regional, state, national, and international organizations in the private and public sectors. She has delivered hundreds of papers and talks to audiences in countries spanning six continents. Her printed scholarship has taken the form of refereed journal articles, book chapters, authored, and edited books, and her work has been featured in popular media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Folha de São Paulo, ARS Technica, Fast Company, Fortune, Science, U.S. News and World Report, and Scientific American.