Stephenie Foster is a founding partner of Smash Strategies, which provides strategic advice to corporations, institutions and philanthropists to ensure that their investments in women and girls are effective and transformational.  For the last five years, she served at the United States Department of State, most recently as a Senior Advisor/Counselor in the Secretary's Office of Global Women's Issues, where she focused on women’s economic and political empowerment, and before that at the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan where she focused on women and civil society. Prior to joining the State Department, she had her own consulting firm, with an emphasis on domestic and international policy advocacy, government affairs, program development and training, and law. In both the US and abroad, she has worked extensively on programs to increase core leadership, civic engagement and advocacy skills, particularly of women; strategic planning; corporate and democratic governance; and project planning and management. Foster has worked in private law practice, as a Chief of Staff to United States Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Chris Dodd (D-CT), and in senior management positions in the non-profit sector.