The first female CEO of a global automaker, Mary Barra has succeeded Dan Akerson as General Motors has named Product Development Chief and CEO. GM also said that Dan Ammann will assume responsibility for managing the company’s regional operations around the world as their new President; he was formerly the company’s Executive Vice President and CFO. This will be pivotal in GM’s car sale’s struggle in the auto industry, especially since Barra and Ammann both have excellent reputation.
Barra joins several prominent women having the same role as she does including Hewlett-Packard Co.’s Meg Whitman and Ursula Burns of Xerox Corp., Ginni Rometty at IBM Corp., Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo Inc. and Marissa Mayer at Yahoo! Inc.; Barra is exceptional as she is the first female CEO of a global automaker and they make up the few women who have risen to run major U.S. Corporations.
Barra landed her first job as a plant engineer at Pontiac Motor Division, where her father worked for 39 years but before that she actually began with GM in 1980 as a student at General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan. There were few women and even fewer 18-year-olds.
Mary Barra started her career on a factory floor as an intern more than 30 years ago but now she will be joining GM’s board of directors. Her job includes fostering collaboration and wringing costs out of the supply chain and she has been in charge of product development and quality of all GM cars and trucks for 22 months. She gained full freedom to take on domestic and Japanese manufacturers whose price competition threatens profit after the U.S. government sold its stake in GM; being a daughter of a Pontiac die maker she took the helm that her father once did for the company.
GM’s car sales has recently gone down due to the economic turn down but Barra has been behind the force that drives up sales since before she even became the new CEO.
Akerson called Barra “eminently qualified,” personable and held in high regard throughout the company.”She grew up in the company, worked on the factory floor, managed plants, and then managed the largest, most complex segment of our business, Global Product Development,” he said. Barra brought order and started to fundamentally transform the process while overseeing GM’s product development over the last three years.
After his wife was diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer about two months ago Akerson immediately pushed through with his succession plan by several months. Akerson was quoted as saying “It was not my intention for my days at General Motors to end this way, but when you think about life’s priorities, my family and my wife rank No. 1.” Effective from January 15th 2014 GM will accept Akerson’s retirement and several other top executive moves.
General Motors has high hopes this coming year of 2014 they will play an important role in the bounce back of the US economy. Their car sale strategy implemented by Barra and her team should be able to make an impressive breakthrough, GM said.
