Executive Director

A big honcho at a business or corporation, in charge of making decisions and managing other people. Comes with lots 'o perks...and lots of stress.

An ED is not short for a male testosterone issue. Typically, this role is appointed by the board, often in a non-profit corporation. Other than that, they function more or less in the same way as a CEO.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What are CEOs, CFOs, and COOs?48 Views

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Finance a la shmoop... what are CEOs, CFOs and COOs lots of C's you know sort of

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like most of our high school report cards but it's a different story [Girl given a school report card with list of C grades]

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all right so the C here for all of these stands for chief not the C in

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big cheese and the O here for all of these stands for officer...

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But sort of in that vein cop ish like when you are one of these

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officers it's your watch your beat your patrol and all that the delimiter here

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is the middle letter so let's start at the top there E the E in CEO stands for

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executive and distinctively the CEO is hired by the board of directors who in

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turn is elected by the common shareholders the CEO is in charge of and [Woman CEO standing in her office]

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well pretty much everything basically executing on the mandate which is to

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make money over the long term for shareholders the CEO deals with both

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internal operational and financial issues as well as dealing directly with

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shareholders externally you know on the outside people ie those Wall Street folk [People working in Wall Street]

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and she is generally you know where the buck stop...okay

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moving on and that'll make some nice venison....Okay the CFO is

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hired by the CEO and while on bad days the F might stand for something else

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on a normal day the F stands for financial, the chief financial officer

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deals with the dollar numbers the bean-counting [CFO counting beans]

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from hiring and paying people usually via the head of human resources hired by

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the CFO to tracking profitability of divisions which the CFO usually does in

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concert with others in the company to you know dealing with Wall Street people [CFO holding a chicken wing]

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as the wing man to the CEO at rubber chicken lunches

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well if the company is

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gonna raise debt to go buy a competitor or sell equity from insiders in a

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secondary offering or use stock to acquire a tools company which will let

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it operate more efficiently well all of that goes through the CFOs highly [A cluttered desk of beans]

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cluttered desk all right so moving on then there's the COO and if you say

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it all together it sounds like a bird but it's not the middle O there stands

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for operating well other than in a company which just does surgery all day [a heart monitor in a surgery room]

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the operating officer doesn't actually do surgery rather she operates the

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company and usually that involves asking a thousand questions hopefully not all

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at once like that Fed Ex guy who had too much caffeine are we getting the best

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prices on the raw plastic we're ordering from war-torn New Zealand, are we making

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enough selfie helmets, and is your dad still disappointed with you for getting

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a C in accounting 101 back in high school

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mm-hmm? just keeping it real there pal... well we can't answer the first two

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and as for the last one well you're a COO oh you can probably afford a nice

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shrink now so go work out your issues [COO laying on sofa talking with psychiatrist]

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