Official website of
Evan Micheal Foster
Founder of IVA · Public administration researcher · Writer · Board treasurer
I study and redesign the point where responsibility, authority, evidence, capacity and value stop lining up—and people are left carrying the consequences.
One pattern. Three public expressions.
Research it. Explain it. Change it.
The academic, personal and applied work are distinct. They stay connected because the same structural failure keeps showing up in each one.
IVA Decision Architecture
Decision readiness, strategic planning, performance management, AI-use readiness and implementation support for organizations that need work to move.
Explore services ↗Research and theoryIntegrated Value Architecture
The public theory, standards and research portal for the five-ledger model, structural accounting and human-AI governance.
Open the research portal ↗WritingStructures have consequences
Essays about overload, financialization, decision rights, AI context, family, place and what institutions ask people to carry.
Read the essays →Selected research
Working papers
Publication records live on the research portal, with persistent DOI, SSRN and ORCID connections.
Beyond Financial Dominance
A multi-ledger architecture that gives financial, operational, capacity, learning, and external value independent standing.
Internal Governance Monopoly
A working concept for structural failure when one internal domain gains disproportionate authority over value, evidence, resources, and legitimate action.
Current writing
Mechanisms before slogans
If an idea cannot be explained plainly enough to use, it is not finished.
Everything is context
Evan Micheal Foster explains why context-aware AI changes what organizations can afford to classify as useless information.
Read essay →Capacity and organizational designOverload is structural, not a personal failure
Why productivity advice fails when organizations assign responsibility without authority, evidence, or real capacity.
Read essay →Financialization and organizational authorityWhen finance stops measuring and starts governing
How financial information can become the default authority over operational, capacity, learning, and external value.
Read essay →Decision rights and accountabilityResponsibility without authority is a structural trap
Why accountability fails when the person carrying the result cannot change the evidence, resources, approvals, or tradeoffs shaping it.
Read essay →A career across institutions
I did not arrive at this work from one sector.
Automotive finance, healthcare, laboratory operations, public health, local government, national nonprofit leadership, board governance and doctoral research each exposed a different part of the same system.
That range matters because structural problems rarely respect department or sector boundaries. The language changes. The mechanism usually does not.
Professional background“People should not have to become exceptional at surviving a structure that should have been redesigned.
Research · Media · Speaking · Applied work
Start with the actual question.
Tell me what you are trying to understand, decide or change—and why it matters now.