Reimaging the role of the CEO. Let’s do a thought exercise. If the role of the chief marketing officer is to oversee marketing and the role of the chief operating officer is to oversee operations, while the chief financial officer’s responsibility is to safeguard the organization’s finances, then what’s the responsibility of the chief executive officer? Surely, it’s more than overseeing executions or leading executives, yet the “CEO” naming convention doesn’t give much insight as to what the role is or what it’s responsible for. This gets even more convoluted when an organization has both a CEO and a president. Who’s responsible for what? Clearly, a president presides over the organization or nation state—it’s right there in its etymology. But, perhaps, the “CEO” nomenclature needs a bit more clarity. After over 200 in-depth CEO interviews at the Yale School of Management’s Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management since 2020, Jon Iwata has an interesting take on the matter.