Mary Barra is the current CEO and chairman of the board at General Motors (GM), an automobile manufacturer that generates over $150 billion in annual revenues and consists of 185,000 employees located in facilities across six continents. In the role since early 2014, Barra has been instrumental in helping GM design vehicles that customers want at a profitable price, such as Buicks, Corvettes, Camaros, Cadillacs, Cruzes, Impalas, Lincolns, Volts, Tahoes, and Yukons; school and shuttle buses; police cars; ambulances; and pick-up and dump trucks. When she first moved into the CEO role, Barra had to deal with a highly visible vehicle recall due to faulty ignition switches and shut down GM's Opel line of vehicles in Europe to focus on more profitable vehicles in China and North America. She managed both of these challenges quite successfully and turned her focus to launching a line of electric vehicles (the Chevy Bolt EV) a year before Tesla, incorporating technology and connectivity in all GM vehicles and leading the way in automated driverless vehicles.

Barra grew up in Michigan and her father was a long-time GM employee. She joined GM at the age of 18 as a co-op student, where she worked in the company while obtaining her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the General Motors Institute (which later became Kettering University). She quickly moved through various roles at GM and obtained an MBA from Stanford University while on a GM fellowship. Later in her career, Barra was the plant manager at a major automobile manufacturing facility, held global vice president roles in manufacturing, human resources, purchasing, and supply chain, and was promoted to be the executive vice president of global product development, where she led teams developing the latest GM models and vehicles.

Barra has been instrumental in helping GM manufacture highly reliable, award-winning vehicles while returning to profitability (it had to take a multibillion-dollar government loan during the financial crisis in order to stay afloat). Because of her leadership, Barra was named by Fortune magazine as the Most Powerful Woman in Business in 2017 and Forbes magazine as the second Most Powerful Woman in Business in 2018. She was listed as the fifth Most Powerful Woman in the World in 2019 and was named as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time magazine. A member of both the Disney and General Dynamics boards, Barra ran into some trouble with U.S. President Trump when she announced GM would close five plants and lay off 14,000 employees at the end of 2019.

1. How would you rate Barra's potential and readiness to be GM's CEO when she was a plant manager?

2. How would you evaluate her performance as a CEO and GM's effectiveness as a car company?