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Adding a Chief Diversity Officer to the C-suite is a growing trend in companies of all sizes.
In this post, I answer 2 questions:
- What is a Chief Diversity Officer?
- What does a Chief Diversity Officer do?
And I provide:
- Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer salary ranges
- Chief Diversity Officer job description examples
- Popular job titles for Chief Diversity Officers
What is a Chief Diversity Officer?
A Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) manages diversity and inclusion efforts for a company. A Chief Diversity Officer also develops diversity recruitment strategies for their organization.
Many companies hire a Chief Diversity Officer to create and monitor progress on inclusion and diversity goals. The CDO usually reports to the CEO, COO, Head of HR, or the General Counsel. Diversity at larger companies goes beyond employees (e.g., supplier and customer diversity), so the Chief Diversity Officer might fall into multiple departments.
What does a Chief Diversity Officer do?
The responsibilities of a Chief Diversity Officer include:
- Creating and deploying new diversity programs
- Crafting diversity and inclusion messages
- Supporting diversity and inclusion strategies based on data
- Understanding how to measure diversity
- Fostering collaboration between leadership teams and departments
- Developing culture management initiatives and programs
- Managing employee discrimination and harassment complaints
- Addressing issues faced by underrepresented groups in the organization
Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer salary
The Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer salary range, in most companies, comparable to other C-suite or VP roles.
Diversity Best Practices surveyed 150 D&I officers. The results showed that:
- the average Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer salary is approximately $225,000
- more than 40 earned more than $300,000 per year (base and bonus included)
Salary.com shows the range of the Chief Diversity Officer salary is between $153,488 to $301,548, with the median salary at $208,700.
The range is a bit higher with bonuses:
Chief Diversity Officer job description examples
The typical responsibilities of a Chief Diversity Officer might vary depending on the size of the company or its diversity mission. But any Chief Diversity Officer job description might include some of these core sections:
- About the Chief Diversity Officer role (daily duties and requirements)
- About the D&I team (including reporting structure and a diversity mission statement)
- Chief Diversity Officer benefits (e.g., perks like paid vacation or paid volunteer time for diversity initiatives/ERGs)
- Chief Diversity Officer salary range (including bonuses available for meeting diversity goals)
I found these 2 Chief Diversity Officer job description examples on LinkedIn that hit the mark.
Anaplan Chief Diversity Officer
Anaplan’s CDO job description is good because it:
- Opens with a clear mission and empowerment statement
- Shows who the Chief Diversity Officer reports to
- Highlights what the Chief Diversity Officer will do in the job
PagerDuty Chief Diversity Officer
PagerDuty’s Chief Diversity Officer job description is great because it:
- Includes a section about why they are hiring a Chief Diversity Officer
- Shows how the Chief Diversity Officer responsibilities align with their vision
- List interesting benefits and perks for the Chief Diversity Officer role
For suggestions on job description structure or sections to consider for your Chief Diversity Officer job description, check out our blog on How to Write a Job Description — Best Practices & Examples. And, you can find other ideas on what to include in the Diversity Best Practices report on Diversity and Inclusion Officers.
Chief Diversity Officer job titles
Many companies use the Chief Diversity Officer job, or some variation.
The Diversity Best Practices survey mentioned in the section above found that:
“34.7% of companies bestowed the position of diversity and inclusion officer with a title of senior vice president or above. The most common titles include:
Diversity Best Practices Survey — Diversity and
• Vice President – 64.7%
• Chief Diversity Officer – 23.5%
• Director – 17.1%
• Senior Vice President – 8.8%”
Inclusion Officers
Here are some examples of other Chief Diversity Officer job titles:
- Chief Diversity Officer (aka CDO) (Melonie Parker serves this role at Google)
- Global Chief Diversity Officer (Denise Reed Lamoreaux serves this role at Atos)
- Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer (Kiera Fernandez serves this role at Target)
- Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Officer (Wil Lewis serves this role at Experian)
- Chief Equality Officer (Leslie Strong serves this role at Sandboxx Corp)
- Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion (Susan K. Reid serves this role at Morgan Stanley)
- Global Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer (Dennis Brockman serves this role at Starbucks)
- Global Head of Diversity and Belonging (Melissa Thomas-Hunt serves this role at Airbnb)
- Chief Diversity and Social Responsibility Officer (Channing Jones serves this role at CSG)
- Chief Culture Officer (Joyce Lee serves this role at Alorica)
- Global Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer (Reginald J. Miller serves this role at McDonald’s)
- Chief Equality and Recruiting Officer (Tony Prophet serves this role at Salesforce)
- Chief Culture Diversity Equity & Inclusion Officer (Ben-Saba Hasan serves this role at Walmart)
Note: You can find popular diversity job titles for other levels (beyond the C-suite) in our blog, The Top 20 Diversity Titles [with Descriptions].
Why I Wrote This?
My Ongig team and I share this research on the rise of the Chief Diversity Officer to help you optimize your own job titles and job descriptions. This supports our mission to help you attract diverse, top-tier talent. Check out Ongig.com to learn more.
Shout-Outs
- New: the chief diversity officer job description (by Kyrill Poelmans)
- Chief Diversity Officer Salary (by Salary.com)
- Diversity Best Practices Survey — Diversity and Inclusion Officers
