Overseer

An Overseer is the leader of a Vault-Tec vault.

Background
Some overseers were aware of their vault's purpose as an experiment and helped coordinate it. Overseers were chosen in a variety of ways, with initial leaders chosen before the war, and subsequent overseers afterward. In Vault 11, elections were held each year to choose a new overseer, who in turn would be killed as that year's "sacrifice."

The overseer's role and extent of their authority varied from vault to vault. In one vault an overseer might serve in an advisory capacity, while another vault might have an overseer with absolute control of every aspect of its residents' lives. Dr. Stanislaus Braun distributed sealed orders to each vault's overseer in the weeks before the Great War. According to a letter addressed by Dr. Braun to the original overseer of Vault 101, disclosing the contents of those sealed orders to the vault's residents or deviating from the experiment were grounds for termination of employment from Vault-Tec.