Alumni Highlight: Diane Foster

November 8, 2015MPA

Diane Foster

Meet Diane Foster, a 2013 graduate of the MPA program. She has worked hard since her graduation, and the MPA program asked her a few questions about her experience:

Who is your current employer and what is your job title?

Park City Municipal, City Manager

What are some of the duties of your job? Recent achievements?

As a City Manager, I am highly focused on two things:

1. Seeing that the City Council goals are achieved

2. Building our organizational capacity

With regard to building our organizational capacity, we are focused on building a Gold Medal Performance Organization: An organization where every person uses all of his or her skills, abilities, knowledge and energy to create the best possible outcome. We are building this type of organization by developing our people through industry-specific skills training, such as education for Water Department employees as well as leadership training for every employee.

With regard to meeting the City Council goals, this year they have focused staff on three areas: 1. Traffic reduction; 2. building more affordable, attainable and middle income housing for our local workforce; and 3. Energy conservation & renewable energy.

And while we are making great strides on each of the aforementioned areas, it was just a little bit more than a year ago when the ONLY thing the City and our community was focused on was whether Park City Mountain Resort would open for the 2014-2015 ski season. Vail Resorts had acquired a lease of a good portion of Park City Mountain Resort’s underlying property. Powdr Corp, the then parent company of Park City Mountain Resort, owned the base area land and facilities. These two ski industry giants were locked in a multi-year lawsuit that came to a head in the summer of 2014. In August of 2014, a time of year when locals are normally buying season passes and guests are booking winter holiday vacations, we still did not know if the resort would open. At the City, we were looking at the potential impact of losing a full 1/3^rd of our annual revenues.

As the City Manager and one of the few people with a ski industry background (I spent 8 years with American Skiing Company), I took ownership for this “project”. Along with the Mayor and one of our City Council members, throughout the summer we met every week with either the CEO of Powdr Corp. or the CEO of Vail Resorts, in an attempt to push the parties towards resolution. As a City, we even offered to hire one of the top mediators in the world to address the impasse (when I contacted him, he was facilitating a negotiation with the Israelis & Palestinians).

When July turned to August with no resolution, the head of the Chamber of Commerce and I determined we needed an Economic Resiliency Plan. Having never done one of these before, I searched for a consulting firm that could help us build a plan for what to do if the resorts closed. While there were lots of firms that could help with resiliency planning to address natural disasters or breaches of an Information Technology system, such as having customer data stolen, we could not find a firm that could help us address our issue. Eventually we found a few folks who had worked on resiliency planning at Oak Ridge National Labs; they were a huge help. We then gathered 30 leaders from our business community to help round out the plan – and to engage them in helping the community to not freak out.

In early September 2014 the two parties resolved their lawsuit; Powdr sold to Vail Resorts for $182.5 million. While it was a stressful summer for me and the entire community, it was a good learning experience.

For the past year at the City, we have been building a new relationship with Vail Resorts and the new management team at Park City Mountain Resort. This summer, Vail merged Park City Mountain Resort with Canyons Resort to form the largest ski resort in the US.

What are some of your past careers, and how did your MPA lead to your new career?

Prior to my seven years in local government, I spent 22 years in the private sector. For most of my career, I worked in high tech in the US and Europe. My last eight years in the private sector, I worked for American Skiing Company, which was, at the time, the largest ski resort operator in the US. My last role there was Vice President of Marketing Services, where I oversaw database marketing, web marketing, market research and I was the Product Manager for a $22 million season pass product. Combining my technology background with the ski industry was a wonderfully fun and interesting job, but it is not quite as wonderful as working in local government.

In 2005 I got an MBA in International Business from the University of Cambridge in the UK. I never intended to work in local government. But when the opportunity arose to move to local government, I took a chance and became the Environmental Affairs Manager for Park City Municipal. While in that role, I decided I should learn more about government, which is why I enrolled in the MPA Program at the University of Utah. I didn’t know what to expect at the U and I was impressed at the quality of the instruction and the qualifications of the professors. And, like any graduate program, I learned a great deal from my classmates – who were all professionals working in government or the nonprofit sector.

Being in the MPA program helped me build confidence and learn new skills. Both were critical when I decided to apply for the Assistant City Manager role at Park City Municipal. A short six months later our then City Manager, who continues to be a friend and mentor, moved back to his home state of California to be a City Manager there. I was still enrolled in the MPA program when I accepted the role if Interim City Manager while the City conducted a search for a City Manager. While it was a crazy time, going to school and trying to fill the Interim City Manager role, I wouldn’t trade that time for anything. My classmates helped me when the going got tough and there were even times when I consulted Professors on a professional challenge I was experiencing in our organization.

After seven months as Interim City Manager – and still enrolled in the MPA program -- the Mayor and City Council offered me the role of City Manager. Seven months after being appointed City Manager, I handed in my Major Research Project – the final paper – right on schedule.

What advice would you give to incoming or current MPA students?

Some students wonder if they should get an MBA or an MPA. I have done both. Here is my answer: It depends on what you want from your classmates. About once a year I have the opportunity to speak to students enrolled in an MPA program somewhere in the Salt Lake valley. I usually start by asking “How many of you are here because you want to make more money?” and most the class will raise their hands. Then I ask “How many of you also have another reason why you are here?” and about 1/3^rd of the class will raise their hands.

While many of my MBA classmates are amazing and wonderful people, about half of them were highly competitive, even in the classroom, and when it came to making a business decision in a case study, the ONLY thing that mattered was the bottom line – returning value to shareholders. While many of my MPA classmates made more money after the MPA program and/or went on to get promotions or new jobs, all of them were there because they want to make a difference in the world. Now to be fair, many MBA students go on to do great things for other people, but I can promise you that your classmates in the MPA program will be wholly different than your classmates in the MBA program.

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