My VP wants someone with no experience to work on SEO for the website, is this a good idea?

Hey everyone, first time posting, really need some help here.

I work at a tech start up so naturally everything is pretty fast paced. I reached out to a couple of my friends in the field for some advice and their no. 1 tip was do not mess with the SEO unless you have a lot of experience, to which I fully agreed. My VP/ manager and I sat in on a call with a digital consultant and she said by no means should someone work in SEO with little experience.

Fast forward, a pretty hot headed co manager on the marketing team wants to use SEO and dive into it. He's done a presentation, and it's the second biggest project he's working on.

I've been strongly vocal to both him and to my VP that he shouldn't be involved with SEO as he has 0 marketing experience (as does the VP).

My question is, am I being too harsh? Should he be allowed to take control of the SEO?

Please help!!