Home Appointments CEO
CEO
General Motors
| Appointee | Mary Barra |
|---|---|
| Role | CEO |
| Organisation | General Motors |
| Domain | Corporate Leadership |
| Start | 15 January 2014 |
| End | Currently in role |
| Notes | First woman CEO of a major global automaker |
Institutional context
General Motors Company is one of the three largest US automakers (alongside Ford and Stellantis), incorporated in its modern form in 2009 following the predecessor's bankruptcy reorganisation. The original General Motors Corporation was founded in 1908. From 1908 through January 2014 every CEO was male — a span of 106 years.
Career path
Mary Teresa Barra (born 1961) earned a BS in electrical engineering from Kettering University (then General Motors Institute) and an MBA from Stanford. She joined General Motors as a co-op student in 1980 and held progressively senior operational positions across 34 years, including Vice President of Global Manufacturing Engineering and Senior Vice President of Global Product Development, Purchasing, and Supply Chain.
Appointment
General Motors announced her selection as CEO on 10 December 2013, effective 15 January 2014. She is the first woman CEO of a major global automaker.
Tenure
Active. Tenure included the immediate response to the Cobalt ignition-switch recall crisis early in her tenure, the divestiture of Opel and Vauxhall to PSA Group (2017), the announced commitment to an all-electric vehicle lineup by 2035, and the substantial restructuring of GM's North American manufacturing footprint.
Cluster context
Barra's January 2014 appointment continues the dataset's 2012-2014 corporate-leadership wave. Her appointment is the first first-woman CEO event at any major automaker globally — automotive manufacturing being a sector with relatively few first-woman events compared to technology or finance. Her continued tenure makes her the longest-serving first-woman CEO in the dataset's corporate-leadership domain.