GM CEO Barra elected to Disney board
LOS ANGELES — Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, has been elected to the Walt Disney Co. board, joining the leaders of Nike, Starbucks and Twitter to bring the total number of board members to 12.
Disney announced Thursday that Barra’s appointment is effective immediately.
Barra’s appointment comes as Disney continues its search for a successor to CEO Robert Iger, who this year extended his contract with the company to 2019.
The Disney board also includes Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, as well as Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook. Other directors include Mark Parker, who heads Nike, and Or in Smith of Starbucks.
Barra began her career at GM in 1980 when she was still a student. She rose through the ranks of the Detroit-based company and became CEO in 2014. She was elected chairman last year.
“GM has worked together with Disney on a number of projects over the years, and I look forward to helping contribute to the company’s ongoing success,” she said in a statement.
Among the recent projects that the two companies have collaborated on is the Test Track attraction at Epcot at Disney World in Orlando, Fla.
Barra and Iger both had been members of the White House’s strategic and policy forum, which recently was disbanded after members quit in protest of President Donald Trump’s statements concerning race-related clashes in Charlottesville, Va.
Iger quit his position in June over Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord.
As GM’s chief, Barra maintains a low profile. She is on the board of Stanford University, where she got her MBA, but doesn’t sit on any corporate boards since standing down as a director of General Dynamics Corp. earlier this year.
U.S. companies have been under pressure to increase the role of women and minorities on their boards and top management. With the addition of Barra, Disney’s board now features two of the highestprofile female executives in the country, since she’ll serve alongside Sandberg of Facebook. Susan Arnold of the Carlyle Group and Maria Elena Lagomasino, who runs her own financial advisory company, are Disney’s other female directors.