The list of 2024 Automotive News All-Star Awards released over the weekend shows strong representation for General Motors. GM had five executives on the list, with the top award going to none other than GM CEO Mary Barra.
Mary Barra
Barra’s GM colleagues who also made the list include Senior Vice President of Global Design Michael Simcoe, Director of Diverse Media and Community Impact Tarshena Armstrong, Vice President of Global Chevrolet Scott Bell, and CFO Paul Jacobson.
“After debate and careful deliberation, we have selected General Motors CEO Mary Barra for that award,” Automotive News Director of Content and Commentary Omari Gardner said in a statement. “This is the third time we have honored Barra as an industry leader in her 10 years at the helm of GM – the other times being 2016 and 2018.”
Michael Simcoe
Automotive News praises Barra for her ability to adjust plans to a changing automotive landscape while remaining committed to a goal of zero emissions by 2035, all while GM’s stock climbs.
“Barra has steered GM through a tumultuous year for the industry with a steady hand. The company is weathering the EV growth slowdown while staying committed to a goal of zero emissions by 2035 in the face of public skepticism, but she has not been afraid to adjust plans,” Gardner said. “And GM has raised earnings guidance three times this year. Meanwhile, its shares have surged more than 60 percent this year – a remarkable feat given Wall Street’s reservations about GM’s crosstown rivals, legacy automakers in general and pretty much anyone with the audacity to take on Tesla in the EV game.”
Scott Bell
This is the latest of many accolades for Mary Barra, which include the top spot on Fortune’s 2024 Most Powerful Women list, the Women Business Collaborative Excellence in Gender and Diversity Award, and the Deming Cup Award from Columbia Business School. Barra is also an Automotive Hall of Fame inductee and a spot on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People list.
Comments
Obviously the bar is not too high to win one of these 🙄
Bring Lutz back.
Or someone who is a true car person!
Quality is concern this year and needs to be addressed now.
Look she has done well.
She has taken GM from Bankruptcy to stop that recently was over $60 a share in some of the most difficult times in the auto industry.
She has a portfolio of products that meet most demands and needs. She has built up the EV models that still will be needed but gas not sacrificed the ICE models.
She has focused on building better priced models like the Trax and the sister Buick models that are selling great.
She has overseen GM use Mixed materials to lighten vehicles but not kill profits like Fords trucks did with Aluminum.
GM has focus on models with the best return on investment.
It is sad they had to let so many go but things are that bad in the industry. Others have already let more than that go.
What other CEO let Chevy build a mid engine Corvette and let them put $1064 hp in it even in challenging times.
GM is focused on the core money makers and is ready for the regulation fight of emissions and mpg. No that is not fun or sexy but it is a matter if being an adult and being ready.
Ford is in really bad shape. VW along with all their brands is in trouble, many other brands are in bad shape too and will merge and partner to survive.
Today this is a serious game and even with big Hemi cars and Raptor trucks these other companies are in greater trouble.
GM losing all these people need to guard quality or they will be facing the issues Ford already is.
She has taken the stock to $60 a share by using corporate funds to buy it back instead of investing in new product.
She has hacked the portfolio- no Wrangler/Bronco competitor, no Mustang competitor, no Maverick competitor, no Ford Transit competitor to replace their ancient full-size vans
The “better priced” models are Chinese and Korean imports- may as well buy a Kia or Hyundai
Any hack can shrink a company by letting people go- the smart and successful companies actually grow their workforces.
No other CEO could build a mid-engine Corvette because it is a gm product and I personally like the previous generation better
Tigger,
According to a 2009 study by Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson. GM’s US market share was 62.6 percent in 1980, the year Barra hired on at General Motors. Helper was then the chief economist at the US Commerce Department, and Henderson was a management professor at Harvard. Their study captures GM at a peak having successfully outmaneuvered Ford and Chrysler in the race for downsized and more fuel efficient cars and only months before the disastrous reign of Roger B. Smith begins. It would also be only two years before Honda becomes the first Japanese automaker to set up shop on American soil.
While GM was riding high in 1980, today their US market share today is estimated to be only 16.9 percent; a 45 percent slide. Certainly all of that monstrous slide is not Barra’s fault but she was mentored by Smith and has continued the great shrinking of GM that began under his tutelage and was documented by filmmaker Michael Moore.
As you say, any fool can shrink a huge company and withdraw from markets and product categories to keep profits up. Cherry-picking only the most lucrative categories, like full-size trucks, so as to generate numbers to create the impression of success is pretty easy to do. But GM isn’t on a sustainable path; at some point, you’ve cut to the bone and there’s nothing left.
GM needs a leader that will begin to regrow the company and take back market share lost to the Koreans and Japanese. They need to be re-entering product categories, like small cars or establishing new categories and them dominating in them. The Cadillac brand, once synonymous with “the best”, has become a muddled mess under Barra with no clear image. It needs a complete overhaul. There is much work to do.
Sadly, I think Barra is just like Smith. He bet big on all-FWD cars and lost the premium market. She, on a all-EV strategy that grossly misjudged today’s market. They both had grandiose visions for GM as a tech leader forging into new frontiers rather than relentlessly focusing on the core mission of delivering the best cars and trucks for, as Alfred Sloan said, “every purse and purpose”.
👍
I have always thought-after the bankruptcy- a GM “lifer” should not have been appointed CEO for at least 20 years. Like a dysfunctional family, if all you are exposed to in an organization is failure and mediocrity, you begin to think that is the norm.
Today’s GM is not a failure or a mediocre company. They are better positioned than most of their competition to deal with the future market shifts and government regulation.
Sedan and hybrid customers fully disagree with you.
None of you posting comments on this website have the slightest idea about the constraints a CEO of a global automotive company is operating under. The easy way to show your frustration about a woman running a successful car manufacturer is to hurl insults and pick on bits of information, mostly false or incomplete. Anybody reaching that level is not stupid. He / she might make a bad judgment like any other man. The shareholders mandate to a CEO is to generate profit for them. If that goes along with gaining market share, they will do it. If they have to shrink the company, they will do it. Patriotism and private owned companies goals do not always align as proven by many other US companies.
The fact Barra’s a woman has NOTHING to do with it. Good leadership and bad leadership is not bound by race, gender, ethnicity, or orientation. We would be just as critical if GM was run by a middle aged white male. It is more misogynistic to give a woman special treatment because she’s a woman than it is to let her stand on her own two feet and absorb the consequences of her decisions- good or bad. To do otherwise assures we will never have true equality.
Mary Barra. What a piece of crap.
Ask ex lordstown, Baltimore and Warren GM employees what they think of her. She really screwed a lot of people by breaking contracts and agreements with the state of Ohio to line her pockets.
Greedy sob. Mary, explain how you can ‘earn’ over $11,000 per hour.
You can’t because you take it, not earn it.