This International Women's Day, I want to reflect on the journey of a woman CEO who has long been an inspiration to me: Mary Barra, the #CEO of #GeneralMotors.
To begin with, in the landscape of the US automotive industry, where dominance is historically male-centric, Mary Barra stands out as the first #woman in history to lead a major global automaker.
What's particularly unconventional about her ascent to this position is her deep familial ties to General Motors. Her father's worked for four-decade on the GM production line in Michigan and Barra grew up near the GM factory all her life, and she even pursued an engineering degree from a vocational college run by GM.
Barra's journey within GM began as a #CoOp student, inspecting GM panels at the age of 18. Over the years, she transitioned through various roles, spanning engineering, manufacturing, and management, before eventually becoming an executive in 2009.
Her elevation to the #CEO position in 2014 was supported by Dan Akerson, the interim CEO at the time, who recognized her leadership potential despite her #unconventional background.
Right during that time, there was this massive #safety scandal involving ignition switches on the older GM cars broke down and GM had to recall all of these cars, and her whole first year was dealing with this massive #corporatecrisis.
This defect was linked to more than 120 #deaths, and she was made fun of everywhere! This is like the worst, the harshest spotlight you could think of as a rookie CEO.
But she handled it with such grace! She quickly changed the culture of the company, and when everyone expected her to say "Okay, well let's put this whole chaos behind us," she said, "I never want to put this behind us, in fact, I want to keep this painful experience permanently in our memories."
From there, the cars have gotten so much better during her tenure, and that led to profitability from 7-8 billion before she took over to 12-14 billion, and she's beaten Wall Street for #profitability.
Even before Musk, she took bold initiatives to create more capacity to build #EVs in the US. She even spearheaded the $1 billion purchase of the startup Cruise, which was trying to build #selfdriving cars back then.
But then due to a lot of challenges around GM electric vehicles, Tesla took over the market and things haven't been going well for Barra. Nevertheless, she remains steadfast in her vision for GM's growth, particularly in the realm of electric and driverless cars, leveraging the lessons learned from her tenure to drive the company forward. :)
