When Mary Barra took over General Motors in January 2014, she became the first woman to head a major automaker. She had started on the factory floor at 18, and the company’s recall crisis arrived in her first year in the job.
Early life
Mary Teresa Barra was born on December 24, 1961, in Royal Oak, Michigan, to parents of Finnish descent. Her grandfather, Viktor Mäkelä, emigrated to the United States and married Maria Saarinen, a Finnish immigrant from Teuva; they settled in Mountain Iron, Minnesota. Their son Reino, known as Ray (1915 to 2006), married Eva Elizabeth Pyykkönen (1923 to 2004) in 1959, and Mary was their second child. Ray spent 39 years as a tool and die maker at GM’s Pontiac Motor Division. Her mother pushed hard for higher education for Mary and her brother, Paul.
Education
Barra earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the General Motors Institute, now Kettering University, in 1985. There she was inducted into the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi and into IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu. GM then sent her to Stanford Graduate School of Business on a fellowship, and she received an MBA in 1990.
Climbing the ranks
She joined GM in 1980 as a co-op student, checking fender panels and inspecting hoods to pay her tuition. Later she held a range of engineering and administrative posts, among them managing the Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly plant. In February 2008 she became vice president of Global Manufacturing Engineering. Global Human Resources followed in July 2009. In February 2011 she was named executive vice president of Global Product Development, and in August 2013 her remit grew to cover Global Purchasing and Supply Chain. GM named her to succeed Daniel Akerson as chief executive in December 2013.
A hard first year
In 2014, GM issued 84 safety recalls covering more than 30 million cars. Barra was summoned before the Senate to testify about the recalls and the deaths attributed to a faulty ignition switch. GM and Barra also faced suspicion that the company had paid for awards to burnish the image of its chief executive and the corporation. The recalls led to new policies encouraging workers to report problems they encounter, an effort to change the company’s culture.
Later years
Barra steered GM toward driverless and electric vehicles, including through the acquisition of Strobe, a driverless-technology startup. In 2017 she was the highest-paid Detroit Three executive, with total pay of $21.96 million. In November 2018 she announced that five North American plants would close and 14,000 workers would be laid off; President Donald Trump criticized the decision and threatened to cut the company’s government subsidies.
She joined the Disney board in August 2017, the 12th person and fourth woman elected to it. In February 2018 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and that September she received the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s Legend in Leadership Award. In March 2022 she was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. She sits on the Stanford University Board of Trustees and the Duke University Board of Trustees, and in 2023 she received a Larry Foster Award for Integrity in Public Communication. Barra is married to consultant Tony Barra, whom she met at Kettering, and they have two children.
