The Chief Experience Officer (CXO) is a senior executive responsible for shaping and elevating the overall experience of students, parents and alumni across the university. The CXO leads efforts to improve how stakeholders interact with the institution—academically, administratively, and culturally—ensuring every touchpoint reflects the university’s mission, values, and commitment to excellence.

This role combines strategy, service design, and cross-functional leadership to foster a more student-centered, responsive, and inclusive institution. Reporting to the University President, the CXO oversees the areas of Student Life, Enrollment Management and Marketing. Additionally, the CXO has autonomy to influence, collaborate with, and lead teams across divisions to ensure the delivery of a seamless, student-centered experience.

Key Responsibilities:

Student and Stakeholder Experience

Develop and lead a comprehensive institutional experience strategy across the student lifecycle (recruitment, enrollment, academic journey, campus life, and post-graduation).
Serve as the chief architect of cross-departmental efforts to enhance student, parents and alumni experiences through process improvement, service design, technology, and communication.
Collaborate with university leadership to align experience initiatives with institutional goals, enrollment strategy, and retention objectives.
Map and assess key experience “journeys” (e.g., prospective students, first-year experience, transfer students, advising, housing, graduation).
Identify friction points and opportunities for innovation across academic and administrative services. Work closely with Enrollment, Student Affairs, Academic Affairs, IT, Marketing, and Development and Alumni Engagement to ensure a unified and seamless experience across departments.
Ensure services are welcoming, equitable, inclusive, and responsive to the needs of diverse populations, including students, parents and alumni.
Introduce and facilitate university-wide initiatives that improve the service culture and user satisfaction.
Lead functional teams responsible for experience design, service improvement, and user engagement, specifically marketing, enrollment and student affairs, but possibly other cross-functional developments.
Develop an analytics framework that includes defining key performance indicators for the student experience, deliver findings to stakeholders and work with cross-functional teams to translate insights into actions.
In collaboration with the Office of Institutional Effectiveness, develop and oversee tools and processes for capturing feedback, including surveys, focus groups, service analytics, and user research.
Establish key experience performance indicators and report progress to institutional leadership. Establish regular program and service audits, ensuring continuous improvement based on evolving student expectations, new technologies, or policy changes.
Promote a culture of continuous improvement and accountability through transparent data sharing and collaboration. Establish regular program and service audits, ensuring continuous improvement based on evolving student expectations, new technologies, or policy changes.
Champion a campus-wide ethos of hospitality, empathy, and excellence in service delivery. Provide professional development opportunities to build experience-focused mindsets across departments. Division Leadership and Oversight.
Provide strategic leadership to the division of Enrollment Management & Marketing. Oversee developing, executing, and assessing enrollment and marketing programs and initiatives and ensure the University meets its enrollment and enrollment-related revenue goals.
Provide strategic leadership to the division of Student Affairs. Oversee administrative functions of Student Life, Public Safety, Counseling, Health Services and Friars in Residence, to deliver an inclusive, enriching, and supportive environment for students.
As division leader, provide mentorship and professional development to department supervisors, ensuring accomplishment of performance goals and high level of collaboration between departments to advance student success.

Annual Salary: $190,000.00 to $230,000.00

*The hiring salary above represents the University’s good faith estimate at the time of posting in compliance with the Albany County Salary Transparency Law.

Required Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in Business, Higher Education, User Experience, Design Thinking, Communications, or another discipline aligned with student experience leadership.
10+ years of progressive leadership experience within higher education, in the areas of enrollment management, marketing, student affairs and / or student success.
Experience leading cross-functional teams and fostering collaboration across diverse roles and units.
Demonstrated success leading institution-wide change or service improvement initiatives.
Exceptional skills in stakeholder engagement, facilitation, and systems thinking.
Experience using data and design thinking to solve complex user experience challenges.
Experience using customer/student experience methodologies, including journey mapping, experience measurement, and other service design tools. A background screening is required

Preferred Qualifications:

Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration, MBA, Organizational Leadership, or related field.
Experience in an executive leadership role in a higher education institution.
Familiarity with CRM and student engagement platforms.
Demonstrated success creating customer / student experience strategies with measurable impact on student satisfaction, engagement or retention.
Track record of building experience strategy from the ground up, including the successful launch, implementation and assessment of new systems, frameworks, or initiatives.

Siena University

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Chief Experience Officer (CXO)