Mary Barra

Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors in two thousand fourteen. Ninety percent of profit came from combustion. Tesla had destroyed seventy percent of stock price. The market declared the company obsolete. Barra disagreed. She announced an all-electric future by two thousand thirty-five. She bet the company on a transition that had not happened. The commitment meant killing highest-margin products without supply chains. GM would burn cash pursuing reinvention. Markets hated it. Stock fell. But Barra understood what critics missed. GM made profits. Tesla did not. Those profits funded the transition. Barra restructured supply chains: battery sourcing from Korea and Canada, plants retooled to electric, networks retrained.