Mary Barra in an official portrait from her 2022 appointment to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Photo: Benjamin Applebaum / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Mary Barra started at General Motors at 18, checking fender panels and hoods as a co-op student. In January 2014 she became the company’s chief executive, the first woman to lead a major global automaker. Her path between those points runs through factory floors, human resources, product development and, more recently, the company’s costly push toward electric vehicles.
From Royal Oak to the plant floor
Barra was born Mary Teresa Mäkelä on Dec. 24, 1961, in Royal Oak, Michigan. Her father worked 39 years as a tool and die maker at GM’s Pontiac Motor Division, according to her Wikipedia biography. In 1980 she joined GM as a co-op student, a job that helped pay for her studies at the General Motors Institute, now Kettering University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering there in 1985. GM later sponsored a fellowship that sent her to the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she received an MBA in 1990.
Over the next two decades she held a series of engineering and administrative jobs, including managing the Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant. That site, on the Detroit-Hamtramck border, later became central to GM’s electric vehicle plans.
Climbing to the top job
Barra moved into senior management in 2008 as vice president of global manufacturing engineering. In July 2009 she became vice president of global human resources. In February 2011 she was named executive vice president of global product development, where she worked to reduce the number of vehicle platforms GM maintained. Her duties grew in August 2013 to include global purchasing and supply chain.
GM announced in December 2013 that she would succeed Daniel Akerson as CEO, and she took over the following month. On Jan. 6, 2016, she also became chair of the board, succeeding Tim Solso.
Her early years in the job were shaped by the recall of vehicles with faulty ignition switches. GM issued 84 safety recalls covering more than 30 million cars in 2014, and Barra testified before a U.S. Senate panel on the matter. In November 2018, the company announced the closure of five North American plants and about 14,000 job cuts.
The electric vehicle bet
Under Barra, GM expanded its work on electric and self-driving vehicles, including the 2017 purchase of the autonomous-driving startup Strobe. The Chevrolet Bolt EV, which went into production in October 2016, was marketed as a mass-market all-electric car with a range above 200 miles. In December 2019 GM formed Ultium Cells, a battery joint venture with LG Chem.
On Jan. 28, 2021, the company announced a goal of ending production and sales of gasoline-powered light vehicles, including hybrids, by 2035, as part of a target of carbon neutrality by 2040. Progress has not been steady. In 2023 GM dropped its goal of delivering 400,000 electric vehicles in North America by mid-2024, with the company citing battery module scaling problems and weaker consumer demand than expected. In October 2024 it raised its investment in Lithium Americas, the developer of the Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada, from $650 million to $945 million.
Midwest manufacturing
The plant Barra once ran now carries a new name. GM retooled Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly for electric vehicles starting in 2020 and renamed it Factory Zero. The first GMC Hummer EV came off the line there on Dec. 17, 2021. The plant has since built the Chevrolet Silverado EV and, from 2024, the GMC Sierra EV and Cadillac Escalade IQ. Battery work has also stayed in the region, including a pack operation planned for Brownstown Township, Michigan.
In April 2024, GM said it would move its global headquarters from the Renaissance Center in Detroit to a new site at Hudson’s Detroit, with the move planned for 2025.
Outside GM, Barra has served on the Walt Disney Company board since August 2017 and was named to the Homeland Security Advisory Council in March 2022. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February 2018. She and her husband, Tony, whom she met at Kettering, have two children.
Sources: Wikipedia entries on Mary Barra, General Motors and Factory Zero.
Margaret Whitfield is the editor of The Evanston Edge and covers local government, development and neighborhoods.
