We looked at industry data and talked to Chief Design Officers from Cisco, citizenM, JPMorgan Chase and Zoom about their new role and its impact on the businesses.
Content:
● Current State of the Industry
● Who is Hiring Chief Design Officers?
● Chief Design Officer Skills & Responsibilities
● Getting to the Top
● Chief Design Officer Impact
A Chief Design Officer (CDO) is a C-suite executive who leads design strategy and vision across an organisation. They help business leaders understand how design can make the company more successful and ensure design thinking influences company-wide decisions.
According to LinkedIn, about 548 companies worldwide now have a Chief Design Officer position. Looking closer at established companies (those with 200+ employees), 150 have created this role, and the numbers keep growing. Tech companies are leading the trend with an average of 34 Chief Design Officer positions. Retail follows, averaging 28 CDOs, with real estate following with 23.
Chief Design Officers are spread across companies of all sizes:
● Big players with over 10,000 employees, like Nike, Cisco and JPMorgan Chase, have an average of 36 CDOs.
● Large companies (5,000–10,000 employees), including Zoom and Logitech, have an average of 11 CDOs.
● Mid-sized companies (1,000–5,000 employees), such as citizenM and Roblox, have an average of 33 CDOs.
● Smaller companies (500–1,000 employees), with Duolingo among them, average 26 CDOs.
● The smallest company size (200–500 employees), featuring companies like Strava, leads with an average of 44 CDOs.
We talked to Chief Design Officers at Zoom, Cisco, citizenM and JPMorgan Chase to find out what changes when you move to the C-suite - from learning new skills to taking on different responsibilities and adapting to a completely new environment.
A Chief Design Officer’s responsibilities go beyond execution and leading design teams. It’s about shaping the company’s future by working across every department and showing how design can solve their challenges.
Claudia Abt, CDO at citizenM, reflects on this: 'As I moved to C-level, I stopped reporting to design and started reporting to the business. Now, my first team is a group of people who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and why I care so much about certain things.'
Throughout a traditional career path, designers usually rely on fundamental skills that make them great at their craft like visual design, research, empathy, creative problem-solving and facilitation. While excelling at these skills is effective in producing outstanding products, it alone isn't sufficient to reshape the company's strategy or boost revenue. As a Chief Design Officer, you are expected to understand finance, legal, business strategy and marketing to have productive conversations with the rest of the leadership team.
Travis Isaacs, CDO at Cisco, shares: 'I had to learn a new vocabulary and a new set of tools to understand what are the needs of the business, who my first team is and who that person is who will listen.'
Mark Kawano, CDO at Zoom explains: 'I do have to spend a lot of time thinking about the business side of things. What is our strategy? Do I understand it clearly? Where does design fit into each of these areas? What matters to me is how I can help them win as a business. That's what a lot of people should be thinking about when they're at that most senior head of design role.'
The path to becoming a Chief Design Officer takes time. A review of 150 LinkedIn profiles of Chief Design Officers from companies with over 200 employees reveals that most individuals in this role have at least 15 years of design experience, including more than 10 years in leadership positions. The findings highlight:
● 39% of CDOs earned their position through internal promotion
● 45% of CDOs stepped up from design leadership roles at other companies
● 17% of CDOs brought previous CDO experience from other organisations
In Conclusion: There's no fixed path, but experience is key.
Janaki Kumar, CDO at JPMorgan Chase also adds that by showing empathy to customers, she earned a place at the boardroom table: 'I started to work in a small area. And then slowly my mandate grew as senior leaders, the CEOs of the organisation started to see how we are using empathy, understanding our users, building jobs to be done, doing storyboards and driving design outcomes based on customer insights. Slowly but surely you start to get a seat at the table.'
Most design leaders spend their days ensuring design quality, growing their teams and cultivating creative culture. Their scope typically stays within the design function.Most design leaders spend their days ensuring design quality, growing their teams and cultivating creative culture. Their scope typically stays within the design function.
What changes when design gets a seat at the top? Duolingo shows us clearly. After promoting Ryan Sims to Chief Design Officer in May 2024, their design team grew to become the company's second-largest department (14% of the workforce). The results? Daily Active Users jumped 54% in Q3 2024, with user retention climbing through carefully designed features like leaderboards and streaks. Their recent acquisition of two animation studios further shows their commitment to design-driven growth.
Travis Isaacs, CDO at Cisco shares, 'As a Design Leader, you bring a different human-centred perspective. This makes you special and unique in the boardroom.'
Stepping into the C-suite is more than earning a new title - it’s a transformation in how design impacts the business. As more companies create Chief Design Officer roles, they’re not just adding another seat at the table. They’re seeing their future differently, with design, empathy and innovation helping to lead the way.
Check out our programme for Design Leaders.
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