the.com/chairperson

means A gender-neutral term for the person who presides over a meeting, committee, or organization.

from Built from 'chair' — itself a stand-in for the seat of authority since the 17th century, when 'chairman' first named whoever occupied the literal chair at the head of a meeting — plus the neutral suffix '-person,' coined in the 1970s as part of a broader push to scrub unnecessary gender from job titles (chairman/chairwoman becoming chairperson, spokesman becoming spokesperson, and so on). The word drew plenty of ridicule at the time as bureaucratic overreach, but it stuck, and 'chair' alone is now often used as an even shorter, equally neutral option.