Chairman

A Chairman is the presiding officer of a meeting, organization, committee, or other deliberative body. The use of the gender-neutral term Chairperson, or simply Chair, to avoid potential sexist assumptions with use of the term Chairman has been championed by social change since the late 1970s (See Sapir–Whorf hypothesis). The non gender neutral title of Chairwoman is sometimes used if the incumbent is female. The use of chair (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) as a verb (e.g.,"to chair [a meeting]" to describe being in charge of a meeting) dates from as early as 1658. In the case of companies and similarly-organised bodies, there are generally two types of Chairmen: non-executive and executive. A non-executive Chairman will sit on and chair the main board of a company and be a part-time officer who usually provides support and advice to a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). This position usually entails fulfilling a similar function on a number of ancillary board... full article at wikipedia