Companies with a VP of UX

One of Donald Norman's most interesting commands in his interview with Peter Merholz, of Adaptive path, is this: "Start being Vice Presidents".

I chuckled since it's not as if collectively all UX designers are thumbing our noses at the idea.

"Yeah I got another VP job offer. It's so annoying."
"Tell me about it. This executive recruiter followed me to lunch yesterday & paid for it while trying to sell me on his small, highly profitable start-up"
"Crazy"
"Yeah"

Then it struck me: who has a VP UX today?

Google, duh.

I wasn't so sure about Apple. It's harder to tell. Ex-Apple executive, Don Lindsay was tapped for a VP UX position at Research in Motion. In any case, Apple has a laser beam focus on UX through their design process, it certainly sounds like UX is ingrained in the culture. In any case, they both encourage creativity, UX design, testing, and metrics.

So what companies put UX on the same platform as Engineering, Human Resources, Finance, etc?


Vice presidents in User Experience
I tracked down over 500 VP UX's using linkedIn search but the following handful seemed the most significant as many of these companies are thought leaders & highly profitable businesses.

Wells Fargo

Sarah Bellrichard Vice President, User Experience Research & Design at [LinkedIn]


Google
Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products & User Experience [Google's bio | LinkedIn ]

TiVo
Margaret Schmidt, Vice President of User Experience Design and Research [ Harvard Business Publishing article]

Palm
Matias Duarte Vice President of Human Interface and User Experience [UX Week 2009 interview | LinkedIn]