“Chief” means something important in the corporate world. The Chief Executive Officer sets a company’s tone, vision, and strategy, in addition to serving as its public face. The Chief Operating Officer is in charge of day-to-day operations, the Chief Financial Officer handles the money, etc.
The “C” in their titles denotes they’re the chiefs of their fiefs, answerable really only to the CEO, the board, or the shareholders. They meet in the C-Suite, sometimes literally but mostly figuratively.
So what the hell does a Chief Learning Officer do? I’ve watched corporate America for 30-plus years — from comfortably afar — but somehow the position of CLO had never crossed my desk. So I asked ChatGPT, which told me that the CLO is a “senior executive responsible for an organization’s learning, development, and knowledge strategy. Think of them as the C-suite champion of professional growth — making sure the workforce keeps adapting, innovating, and improving.”
That sounded like meaningless corporate-ese, so I asked Grok for a harder hit. It told me to “Think of them as the person who forces you to sit through those mind-numbing e-learning modules but with a fancier title and a corner office. Their job is to keep the company’s brainpower from flatlining while pretending it’s all part of some grand strategic vision.”
This is why Grok is my usual go-to over ChatGPT.
If, like me, you thought the idea of a Human Resources busybody having a C-level position was already too much of a drag on a company’s core functions, I’m reasonably certain after today’s brief research that, whatever it is the CLO does, it’s probably worse.
In the case of Ford’s CLO, Barrett Evans, his function seems to be harassing an elderly guy in a wheelchair for watching Fox News and then bragging about it on social media. Here’s the first part of his post, which I believe (but not 100% sure) is from Facebook:
Elderly passenger on my flight from San Diego yesterday enjoyed Fox ‘News’ for the entire ride. Deplaning and I notice he and his wife getting into their airport wheelchairs to be pushed to next gate. My filter was malfunctioning…
‘Love to see you supporting DEI.’
‘Not me!’ ‘Yes – you. That wheelchair, and the human pushing it, are provided at no direct cost to you – rather by a subsidized cost attributed to every passenger in this airport. Provided to level the playing field – for you.
I won’t recount all the details and humorous responses here because my Twitchy colleague Sam J. already crushed it, and I’m not about to bust into her wheelhouse.
For what it’s worth, wheelchair accommodations are legally mandated by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Even before then, airlines generally seemed happy to accommodate almost any paying passenger. The point here is that Ford’s CLO doesn’t seem to understand that the D in DEI doesn’t stand for Disability. You’d think a guy with a seat in the C-suite would at least know the fundamentals.
The story also has one of those telling details that I almost missed the first time around. Evans’s social media account — posed in front of a Pride decoration — uses the handle “chivalryandchampagne.” My advice? Skip the bubbly, Barrett, and rediscover the chivalry.
But the broader point is a question: why the hell does a huge carmaker like Ford have a C-level professional nanny? The answer is that lefties, progressives, and other destructive forces in the universe magnify their power by assuming or creating positions of influence or authority. Think of the CLO as the USAID mole in the organization.
I’d also wager that no matter what the old man in the wheelchair might have thought about Barrett Evans, Ford’s rank and file think even worse of him.
Recommended: CBS News: They Were Stabby but Mostly Peaceful Child Sacrifices
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