GM CEO Barra to lead the Business Roundtable
Mary Barra, who became the first top executive of a big three auto company when she took over at General Motors, will become the first female chair of the Business Roundtable, an organization that represents some of the nation’s most powerful companies.
Barra replaces Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who completes his two-year term as chair at the end of this year.
Barra, whose career at GM began in 1980, became CEO in 2014 and she has led the company’s aggressive push into electric vehicles. General Motors has set a goal of making the vast majority of the vehicles it produces electric by 2035, and the entire company carbon neutral, including operations, five years after that.
The companies that make up the Business Roundtable, including Walmart, Apple and Starbucks, employ 20 million workers, according to the group, and are worth more than $20 trillion, about half of the value of all publicly traded companies in the U.S.