Short answers, pulled from the story.
A chief executive officer is responsible for managing an organization's day-to-day operations, setting business strategy, leading employees, and reporting the status of the business to the board of directors. The CEO is the person ultimately accountable for all major business decisions, spanning operations, marketing, finance, and human resources.
The phrase chief executive officer is attested as early as 1782 in an ordinance of the Congress of the Confederation of the United States, where it referred to governors and leaders of the Thirteen Colonies' executive branches. The Oxford English Dictionary traced the acronym CEO to Australia, with a first attestation in 1914, and the first American use of the abbreviation to 1972.
In the United States, the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay was 20-to-1 in 1965 and had risen to 376-to-1 by 2000. The relative pay differs by country, and in some smaller countries it remains around 20-to-1.
In 2023, women held 10.4% of Fortune 500 CEO positions, up from 5% in 2018. That same year, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a grant to Korn Ferry to research strategies for increasing the number of women who reach the CEO level.
Research published in 2009 by Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate found that firms with award-winning CEOs subsequently underperformed in both stock returns and operating performance.
In 2018, Musk posted during a trading day that he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 per share and that funding was secured. The SEC investigated and charged him with securities fraud. Musk settled, stepped down as chair of Tesla's board, and remained CEO; both Musk and Tesla each paid a $20 million penalty to be distributed among harmed investors.