The Peace Corps in the 1970s put out its most famous marketing campaign touting “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” In many ways today, American colleges and universities might adopt some version of that message when recruiting for chief diversity officers. 
Dr. Jay Lemons
Such roles are a hot commodity, with dozens of colleges and universities creating senior leadership positions in the last few years. Certainly, we have seen an increase in requests for proposals for chief diversity officers and the like, as well as a greater emphasis on consideration of diversity, equity and inclusion throughout the search process and the desire for candidates with a demonstrated commitment to DEI and the capacity to work across diverse constituent groups.
Candidates advancing into the chief diversity officer role come with a variety of backgrounds, experiences and titles. When mining our networks for applications and nominations, we are mindful to explore a broad spectrum of individuals from human resource officers, student affairs and even academic affairs, among other divisions.
For many, their official job descriptions and/or position titles often do not reflect the work they have been doing in the DEI space. We work with our search committees and hiring authorities to keep this in mind when developing the key criteria for the position and evaluating candidate materials.
Because the ability to serve as a thought leader, advisor and effective communicator across all campus stakeholders is vital to this role, those with marketing or communication backgrounds may offer potential. College and university athletic departments are also rich in examples of individuals who are informal DEI champions. As are libraries — where the flame of ‘education available for all’ burns bright in many places.
