Definition of "chief executive" [chief executive]

• The President of the United States. (noun)
• A principal executive official, such as the leader of a nation's government or the governor of a state. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Anand Shukla, acting chief executive of the Daycare Trust, the national childcare charity, welcomed the change: "This gives parents a fighting chance of being able to get to work and take their children to the nursery for that seven-and-a-half hours, without having to top up the extra time from their own pay packet.""
• "Today, NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar will tell the organisation's annual conference in Manchester that NHS managers in some places have re-engineered services by agreement and that they are up for further reconfiguration, without which the £20bn target will remain a mirage."
• "Chris Ham, chief executive of the King's Fund thinktank, says 20 hospitals need big changes."