How Mary Barra went from inspecting fender panels to becoming CEO of General Motors, a male-dominated industry
A successful career and education enabled Mary Barra to earn her place as CEO of the most important automaker, in the midst of an industry still dominated by men.
The CEO of GM: Mary Barra joined the company at 18 and became Chief Executive Officer
Barra is a GM insider in every sense. Her father was a die maker at a Pontiac plant for nearly 40 years. Her first car was a Chevy. And she got her first job at General Motors at the early age of 18, when she joined a company program that helped pay for her college tuition—where she dreamed of what she would later achieve: earning a business doctorate from Stanford.
She spent half the year working for the company, initially inspecting fenders and hood panels at a Pontiac plant.
Barra has been with the company since she studied at Kettering University, then called the General Motors Institute, in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering.
There she started as a senior engineer at a Pontiac Fiero plant and was quickly recognized as someone with management potential. The corporation itself decided to support her and sent her to Stanford Business School.
Right after earning her master’s degree, she landed her first job as a GM manager, leading manufacturing planning.
Then came a series of increasingly visible roles, including executive assistant to GM’s CEO in the mid-90s, fixing a troubled internal communications department, turning around a major struggling Detroit plant, and streamlining data and efficiency in the company’s messy human resources division. That last role earned her a spot on GM’s executive committee.
During that time, Barra managed to avoid the toxic politics that had come to define GM’s internal culture.
Instead, her career at GM was always marked by a drive for efficiency, agility, and improved quality—things the company painfully lacked as it fell behind other automakers.
Her biggest test came in 2011: she was named senior vice president of global product development, determining the look, feel, and engineering of GM’s most important products—despite having little experience in vehicle design or development.
Nonetheless, her background in manufacturing and quality quickly showed, resulting in a notable rise in the quality and perception of GM’s vehicles.
Barra is a historic choice to lead the company and stands as an icon of someone highly qualified, ready to break the mold wherever necessary.
And while GM has transformed under her leadership and decisions, there’s still a long road ahead. A great job awaits this CEO—though it seems she’s not afraid of any challenge!