T. Eloise Foster
T. Eloise Foster was appointed as a Montgomery County representative to the WSSC Board of Commissioners in June 2016. She is the current Chair and has served previously as Chair and three times as Vice Chair. She also serves as a Trustee on the WSSC Retirement Plan Board.
Ms. Foster has more than three decades of experience in the public sector, where she developed an expertise in fiscal policy and management. She served for over a decade as Secretary of the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, the first and only African-American woman in the nation to serve as a chief state budget officer. In this capacity, she was responsible for the development and management of Maryland’s $38 billion operating and $1.5 billion capital budgets, a personnel system governing approximately 80,000 employees and an employee and retiree benefits program covering more than 250,000 lives.
Previously, Ms. Foster served as Assistant Dean for Business Affairs and Program Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Earlier in her career, she served as a legislative officer for Governor William Donald Schaefer and as an analyst for the Maryland General Assembly.
An honorary lifetime member of the National Association of State Budget Officers, Ms. Foster is also a former member of the National Forum for Black Public Administrators. She has served on the Howard University Cancer Center Advisory Board, the Seton Keough School Board, and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County.
Ms. Foster was named one of Maryland’s Top 100 Women in 2002, 2007 and 2010, qualifying her for entrance into the Circle of Excellence. In 2014, Howard University selected her to receive the Distinguished Alumni Award in the field of Public Service.
She currently serves as Chair of the Maryland Supplemental Retirement Plans and is a Trustee on the Financial Accounting Foundation Board.
Ms. Foster, who holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Howard University, earned her MBA from American University and has completed the Harvard University’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program.