The Chief Information Officer (CIO) plays a crucial role for the governance of IT, by assuring the strategic value of IT and driving and supporting new business models. To investigate this function a new holistic research tool the CIO Leadership Mosaic was developed to incorporate the most relevant dimensions of the CIO role. We apply a leadership-oriented view, allowing understanding how CIOs cope with rapid change in their environment. The theory-based mosaic was applied in a qualitative survey among CIOs from the Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, to test the CIO Leadership Mosaic and to gain insights into the work of CIOs and their success factors for an effective IT governance. As a result three cross-dimensional characteristics of CIOs from Silicon Valley are identified: innovation, ecosystem and leadership. These results are starting points to a holistic view on the CIO profession based on the CIO Leadership Mosaic.