How To Become A Chief Diversity Officer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a chief diversity officer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

A chief diversity officer is someone in charge of an organization's efforts to ensure that employees and students have a comfortable place to work and learn. Your responsibilities include developing, managing, and incorporating actions to improve existing processes, creating plans to recruit a different workforce or student body, and raising funds for operating and strategic initiatives. You are also expected to identify where the organization is lacking in minority support, investigate and rectify employee complaints concerning harassment and discrimination. In addition, you should be able to support the strategic collaboration of departments executive and leadership teams.

As a chief diversity officer, you need a master's degree in human resource management and five to ten years of experience. You must also have a strong familiarity and understanding of legal matters, be able to develop inclusion initiatives, and have solid communication and compassionate nature. Your average annual salary is $92,569.

ScoreChief Diversity OfficerUS Average

Salary

7.5

Avg. Salary $95,991

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

10.0

Growth rate 6%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

1.6

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.65%

Asian 7.70%

Black or African American 3.78%

Hispanic or Latino 7.83%

Unknown 3.90%

White 76.14%

Gender

female 54.55%

male 45.45%

Age - 52

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 52

Stress level

10.0

Stress level is very high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.0

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a chief diversity officer

Explore chief diversity officer education requirements

Most common chief diversity officer degrees

Bachelor's

60.1 %

Master's

16.2 %

Doctorate

10.1 %

Start to develop specific chief diversity officer skills

Skills	Percentages
HR	13.83%
Strategic Plan	13.67%
Title IX	10.63%
Professional Development	10.35%
Training Programs	8.14%

Research chief diversity officer duties and responsibilities

Register for state and local payroll tax, and manage employees' federal and state taxes.
Manage the ethics reporting website and conduct investigations as appropriate.
Serve as subject matter expert (SME) on eLearning, blend learning, virtual world/learning environments, and gamification.
Implement EDI ordering and billing.

Get chief diversity officer experience

Generally, it takes more than 10 years to become a chief diversity officer. The most common roles before becoming a chief diversity officer include director of human resources, director team lead and human resources manager.

Prepare your chief diversity officer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your chief diversity officer resume.

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