A chief executive officer (CEO, American English), managing director (MD, British English),executive director (ED, American English) for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer (executive) or administrator in charge of total management of an organization. An individual appointed as a CEO of a corporation, company, organization, or agency typically reports to the board of directors.

The responsibilities of an organization's CEO (US) or MD (UK) are set by the organization's board of directors or other authority, depending on the organization's legal structure. They can be far-reaching or quite limited and are typically enshrined in a formal delegation of authority.

Typically, the CEO/MD has responsibilities as a communicator, decision maker, leader, and manager. The communicator role can involve the press and the rest of the outside world, as well as the organization's management and employees; the decision-making role involves high-level decisions about policy and strategy. As a leader, the CEO/MD advises the board of directors, motivates employees, and drives change within the organization. As a manager, the CEO/MD presides over the organization's day-to-day, month-to-month, and year-to-year operations.

An executive officer is generally a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.

While there is no clear line between executive or principal and inferior officers, principal officers are high-level officials in the executive branch of U.S. government such as department heads of independent agencies. In Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), the Court distinguished between executive officers and quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial officers by stating that the former serve at the pleasure of the president and may be removed at his discretion. The latter may be removed only with procedures consistent with statutory conditions enacted by Congress. The decision by the Court was that the Federal Trade Commission was a quasi-legislative body because of other powers it had, and therefore the president could not fire an FTC member for political reasons. Congress can’t retain removal power over officials with executive function (Bowsher v. Synar). However, statutes can restrict removal if not purely executive (Humphrey’s executor), but can't restrict removal of purely executive officer (Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926)). The standard is whether restriction "impedes the president’s ability to perform his constitutional duty" (Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988)).

Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos (/beɪzəs/, born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur who played a key role in the growth of e-commerce as the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, Inc., an online merchant of books and later of a wide variety of products. Under his guidance, Amazon.com became the largest retailer on the World Wide Web and the model for Internet sales.

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen. His maternal ancestors were settlers who lived in Texas, and over the generations acquired a 25,000 acre (101 km² or 39 miles²) ranch in Cotulla. Bezos' maternal grandfather was a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Bezos spent many summers as a youth, working with him. At an early age, Bezos displayed a striking mechanical aptitude – as a toddler, he tried dismantling his crib with a screwdriver.

Bezos was born to a teenage mother in Albuquerque. Her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. When Jeff was five, she remarried, this time to Miguel Bezos. Miguel was born in Cuba, immigrated to the United States alone when he was fifteen years old, worked his way through the University of Albuquerque, married, and legally adopted Jeff. After the marriage, the family moved to Houston, Texas, and Miguel became an engineer for Exxon. The young Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade. As a child, he spent summers at his grandfather's ranch in southern Texas, "laying pipe, vaccinating cattle and fixing windmills."

Peter Voser (born 1958, Switzerland) is, since 1 July 2009,CEO of Royal Dutch Shell plc. He started his career at Royal Dutch Shell in 1982, working in a number of finance and business roles in different countries. In 2004, he was appointed Shell’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

From 2002 until 2004 Voser had been CFO and an Executive Committee Member of the Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Group of Companies.

Voser is active in a number of international and bilateral organisations, including the European Round Table of Industrialists and The Business Council. He became a Director of Catalyst in 2010, a non-profit organisation working to build inclusive environments and expand opportunities for women at work. In 2011, he joined the Board of Directors of leading Swiss healthcare research company Roche.

Voser is married to Daniela and has three children. In September 2012 he will take over the position of the Chairman of the St. Gallen Foundation for International Studies from Josef Ackermann.

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Barbara Byrd Keenan is the fifth and current Executive Vice President of the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), a position she has held since 2003. Prior to that, she had served as President of the Community Associations Institute and Vice President of the International Association of Hospitality Accountants.

A native of Delaware, Keenan earned her degree from Old Dominion University in Virginia. After graduation, she went to work as Executive Vice President for the International Association of Hospitality Accountants (IAHA) which won awards for educational programming, promotion, marketing, and publications.

In 1990, Keenan joined the Community Associations Institute in Alexandria, Virginia as President. While as President, she turned the organization around from a struggling, almost bankrupt organization with 10,000 members to one that was financially sound with 17,000 members before she left for IFT in 2003.