Mary Barra at GM and Jim Farley at Ford — the two excelling auto industry CEOs of the 2010s and 2020s. Barra's 12-year tenure, the ignition switch crisis, the EV pivot. Farley's Bronco relaunch, F-150 Lightning, the F1 return. The operating template Fortune 100 CEOs now copy.
124 deaths. A $900 million criminal settlement. And one of the most influential CEO-led crisis communications responses in modern American business. How Mary Barra testified differently than the CEOs at BP, Toyota, Wells Fargo, and Boeing \u2014 and what GM did right in the eight weeks that defined the recovery.
11% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women in 2025. Mary Barra, Jane Fraser, Lisa Su, Carol Tomé, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Sarah London. Up from 5% a decade ago. The CEOs running things, the pipeline that still breaks, and the $300B annual GDP cost.