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Ms. Barra, 60, the daughter of a GM mold maker, grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, and began working as an intern at a GM plant at age 18, studying electrical engineering at the company’s technical school now called Kettering University. She earned a master’s degree in business administration from Stanford through a GM scholarship she. Since entering management, she has held senior positions in global manufacturing, human resources, product development and supply chain management.
In January 2014, Replaced Daniel F. Akerson She served as CEO and became the first woman to head a major automobile company. Ms. Barra mentored GM on a scandal involving an ignition switch failure linked to more than 100 fatal crashes. He then made a series of decisions that showed that General Motors, which had just come out of bankruptcy, was not the conservative, clumsy giant that consumers and investors had known for a century.
In a move that was once unthinkable, it has decided to withdraw from the European market, a slow-growing, low-margin region that GM has been hurting for two decades. GM sold its European operations to French Peugeot SA, which is now part of Stellantis. The sale included the Opel division, which had been owned by GM since 1929.
Getting rid of damaged businesses, which had been tolerated for years, “helped change the whole mentality,” he said. “The whole company was like, ‘Well, this is a new day.’”
Proud of developing its own technology for a long time, GM also purchased Cruise Automation, an automated vehicle starting system. In another precedent move, GM brought in outside investors, including Honda and T. Rowe Price, to share the costs and risks of spending billions of dollars on self-driving vehicles.
Along the way, Ms. Barra formed a close partnership with contemporary Mr. Reuss, who was a top job candidate in 2014. He also spent his career at GM and followed his own father, Lloyd Reuss. ex-president of the company.
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