She worked for the United States Veterans Administration in Tuskegee, Alabama, and served on the national boards of the YWCA, Planned Parenthood, and Common Cause.

[4] She earned a master's degree in social work at University of Chicago, and a PhD from the University of Nebraska in 1940, with a dissertation titled "A study of 100 adolescent Negro children in Omaha with especial reference to the family".

[7] Foster was Dean of Women and taught sociology courses at Langston University in Oklahoma.

[6] She worked as a psychiatric social worker for the United States Veterans Administration in Tuskegee, Alabama.

While her children were young, she spent summers as head counselor at Camp Indian Brook in Vermont.