The years 2020 through 2021 have been exceptionally turbulent in the United States. We have experienced a world-wide pandemic, extensive racial justice protests, a bitter presidential election, and more. All include race, gender, socioeconomic, and other social identity implications. All have impacted our institutions of higher education. At the intersection of these sit higher education's chief diversity officers. The purpose of this multiple case study is to explore and describe the integration, experience, and impact of the chief diversity officer (CDO) in institutions of higher education through this time of emerging crises. This study used this moment of unprecedented disruption and change to ask: How is the CDO role integrated, experienced, and functioning inside institutional responses and decision processes through these evolving crises? How are CDOs integrated when they are most needed? It investigated how considerations around the purpose of the role, the role definition, the experience of the role, and the evolution of the role met the demands of the moment. The increasing acceptance of the role, the challenging nature of its task, and the controversies over the role made it even more critical to study the impact of CDOs in practice. The study approached these questions through paradox, systems theory, and coupling. The study explored highly complex organizational, cultural, and personal situations with matrices of changing relationships and dynamics. It looked at new territory related to paradoxical dynamics in the role. Therefore, it required a descriptive approach to begin to understand these areas. The specific form of this qualitative study was a multiple case study, against a backdrop of job description and hiring analysis. It focused on a collective examination of five cases. Case data came from interviews with these CDOs, along with related role and institutional information. Analysis looked for themes around role positioning, impact, relationships, restrictions, paradoxes, involvement in administrative decision-making, experiences, and learnings. The main findings reinforce both the complexity and potential of the role. CDOs had quite varied experiences of inclusion in decision-making, from early and deep inclusion to almost complete exclusion. Some experienced role re-centering as campuses worked with racial justice protests. Through the course of the crises, CDOs in this study developed stronger and more supportive relationships with their surrounding communities. Nuances in the important CDO-president relationship were noted, related to that relationship's effect on the president, and to the possibility of too much dependence on this relationship. CDOs appear to provide a loosely coupled channel between central decision-making and stakeholders/communities, for input into and feedback from an institution. CDOs do experience a nexus of paradoxical tensions, some of which are significant stressors. Increasing awareness of these may help both CDOs and stakeholders cope better. This study contributes an increased understanding of the position of the CDO in institutions of higher education. It also contributes to the literatures of loose coupling, paradox, and relatedly wicked problems. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]