Alicia_Boler_Davis
News reports on the drive of Alicia Boler-Davis to the Executive Suite at iconic American automaker General Motors focus on her role as a maker of history. As Ebony magazine put it in a feature describing Boler-Davis, who had just won a 2013 BEYA for Career Achievement,
“Making it in the auto industry is a tough climb for any executive is but when you’re black and female it’s doubly so. Which is why the success of [Davis], senior vice president of global quality and global customer experience, is so inspiring.”
But there is so much more to say here. It really is time for Americans to give up exulting over the achievement of a single Black American — or any other individual woman of color, that matter – in reaching high rank in the technology enterprise. It is long past time we recognize that, in tracing the arc of a climb like that of Alicia Boler-Davis, the picture that emerges shows that she and all the other women of color working in technology are rapidly changing the face — some might even say the heart — of American business.
Weight of numbers
Look at the numbers: A 2010 National Science Foundation report on “Science and engineers working in science and engineering” counted 108,000 black women, 84,000 Hispanic women, and 271,000 Asian women working in technology. Many observers, focused on percentages rather than the actual impact of those numbers, decry the small share of the engineering workforce that represents, compared to the nearly 2.8 million white male engineers out there.
But look again. Those 463,000 women make up a talent pool twice as big as the entire cohort of uniformed officers and enlisted warriors in the U.S. Marine Corps. Ten times the number of personnel in the U.S. Coast Guard. And no one ever underestimates the impact those warriors have on the security of the United States or, in particular, the behavior of America’s competitors on the world stage.
So it is also true for the women of color in American industry. The impact of their achievements in reshaping the product lines, re-making management perspectives as they go, and sharpening the focus on quality in corporations that compete head-to-head against competitors all across the globe cannot be understated, and should never, ever be underestimated.
Jumping off at the start
That said, let’s look closely at Senior Veep Davis’ career, exemplar that it is of the performance of women who are writing new chapters in the history of American industry.
Born in Detroit, Michigan, where as she says, “the auto industry was everywhere,” Davis, who describes herself as “always passionate about cars” as a youngster, got a chance to see automobiles being made when as a high schooler, she took a tour in a GM plant.
Her father had worked for the automaker for part of his own career, and it might even be said that young Alicia Boler-Davis, passionate about cars herself, was stamped with GM’s brand on that tour.
Education came first, but manufacturing was never far from her mind. At Northwestern University, she majored in chemical engineering, and after her 1991 graduation Boler-Davis joined pharmaceutical giant Upjohn as a manufacturing engineer in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Moving up, she joined Frito-Lay as a project engineer. And in 1994 she made the big move to GM, starting as a manufacturing engineer.
Always learning
Restless minds are never satisfied with the status quo. As might be expected, Boler-Davis had her hands full learning a new industry, but characteristically, she also went back to school. In 1998, having completed a Master of Science program in the management of technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She had already begun impressing her managers at GM, and as her official biography says, when she “expressed interest in an assignment inside a GM plant,” she “took on a role [in which] she was responsible for production, build, quality, training and safety of her people in the plants high-paced general assembly area.”
If that sounds like a big challenge for a young engineer, read on.
“Within six months, Boler-Davis caught the eye of plant leadership,” GM says, and she got promoted to utility supervisor, a role usually saved for the most seasoned of plant employees. She turned that group around in six months, and after two and a half years in that plant, Boler-Davis had moved up again, to Plant Planner, “responsible for all planning activities, implementing changes and working with program teams on product launches.”
Product launches?
How carmaker beat the pack
Ahem. It may be remembered that product launches are the Big Sha-Boom in the auto industry. Going all the way back to the early history of General Motors, when the company took over the Chevrolet brothers’ auto plants and introduced rivals to Henry Ford’s Model T — with buyers able to choose what color car they wanted to take home and put an end to the dominance of Ford products that were “any color as long as it’s black” — bringing out new products has been the way automakers everywhere stay on top in consumers’ minds.
Thus, it is no coincidence that the Detroit Auto Show, in the city where the U.S. Big Three are headquartered, is where automaker s from around the world show up to show off the products of their design and manufacturing prowess.
And here was Alicia Boler-Davis, not yet 40 years old, involved in launching the car models that meant profits or (shudder) market losses for General Motors.
Let’s put this another way. In her first decade working at the automaker whose budgets, supply contracts, employment rosters and wage outputs deeply affect America’s economy, Alicia Boler-Davis had already marked herself as a person of significance. A leader.
Running on the fast track
Soon, Boler-Davis got promoted again, to superintendant of the materials department, quality director for the Detroit/Hamtramck plant and general assembly area manager. “During her time” there, GM drily states, the plant won the J.D. Power Silver Plant Award for making cars with the second-lowest problem reports per 100 units produced in North America.
Didn’t we just say that women of color were changing the face of American industry?
GM transferred Boler-Davis — and her husband and children — to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in 2004, ten years after first hiring her. There, she managed Fort Wayne Assembly’s body shop and then its paint shop, and won plaudits for driving “significant” improvements in quality and cost performance.
Two years later, Boler-Davis was back in Michigan, where she became Assistant Plant Manager at Pontiac Assembly Center, overseeing operations for a plant running two shifts to make light-duty and heavy-duty pickup trucks. Not work for a woman? Tell that to the Marines. For GM, Boler-Davis was managing a $400-million annual operating budget, directing the activities of teams in production, the supply chain and quality control.
Driving, driving
Then GM gave Boler-Davis an even more critical post: Plant Manager at Arlington Assembly. The first African-American woman ever named Plant Manager, Boler-Davis provided strategic planning, direction and operational leadership for the automaker’s most profitable assembly plant. With a near $400-million operating budget there and 2,700 employees, Boler-Davis boosted efficiency by 12 percent. She also pumped up product launches, bringing out new sport-utility vehicles ahead of GM’s schedule.
Is anyone still talking about small percentages of women of color in engineering?
Next, Boler-Davis stepped up to run two assembly plants and one stamping plant in Lansing, Michigan. There, she led a multi-disciplinary staff of 3,750 employees responsible for producing 300,000 vehicles a year, this time with a $600-million annual budget. And just to keep busy, on Fridays, when the Lansing assembly works were not running, Boler-Davis dropped in on the stamping plant, GM says, “where she rotated performing line jobs in the facility, from loading parts [to] inspecting part quality. This is an example of her hands-on approach, commitment to learning and desire to connect with employees.”
Too bad the “Undercover Boss” program staff didn’t see her then.
Launching a critical new product
In 2010, GM tapped Boler-Davis to lead the Orion Project to bring back online a shuttered plant and launch the Buick Verano and Chevy Volt. These two vehicles were critical to GM’s effort to compete in small cars, a market Detroit had mainly eschewed. Here, Boler-Davis held the roles of Vehicle Line Director, Vehicle Chief Engineer and Plant Manager for the Orion and Pontiac Assembly plants. As GM says, this was the first time in automotive history that one person held dual roles in product development and manufacturing while overseeing the operations of two assembly plants.
Still climbing, Boler-Davis got promoted again, this time to U.S. Vice President of Customer Experience. And as if that was not enough, GM then named her Vice President of Global Quality activities, for another first. No other individual had ever held two vice presidential roles at General Motors at the same time.
Recall that we earlier noted her as a consummate restless mind.
J.D. Power underscored the trust GM placed in Boler-Davis when in 2013 it named General Motors the Original Equipment Manufacturer with the highest initial quality in the automotive industry, in a competition in which GM’s products won eight first-place finishes.
Laurels like that on Boler-Davis’ watch got her promoted yet again, to Senior Vice President, Global Quality and Customer Experience, leading a team of 1,400 people and reporting directly to Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra.
The Boss speaks
Note what Barra wrote to the Selection Panel about Boler-Davis:
“I have known Alicia for many years, and I am proud to attest to the quality and value of her work and her unparalleled performance as a role model within General Motors, the automotive industry and the community at large.
“Within GM, Alicia is a pioneer. . . . Her remarkable success [has] led to increasing responsibility until, in 2010m she was named plant manager of our Orion Township (Michigan) assembly facility, where we build the only sub-compact car assembled in the United States. She oversaw both the engineering and the manufacturing of the car — a huge assignment and another first for GM.
“Alicia’s penchant for making a difference extends beyond GM to the community at large. She is a Board Trustee for the Care House of Oakland County and a member of Links, Inc., a volunteer organization for women. She serves as the Leadership Liaison for the GM Women’s employee resource group, and is an active and avid mentor of fellow GM employees. In June 2014 she [delivered] the commencement address to Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“Personally, I have tremendous respect for Alicia and all that she had achieved, and it is an honor to recommend her for this award. She has accomplished much, she will accomplish much more.”
Alicia Boler Davis was named executive vice president, General Motors Global Manufacturing in June, 2016. Her responsibilities include manufacturing engineering and labor relations. She is a member of the GM Executive Leadership Team, the Opel Supervisory Board and the GM Korea Board of Directors. She reports to GM CEO and Chairman Mary Barra.
Prior to this assignment, Boler Davis was senior vice president, Global Connected Customer Experience since December 2014, where she led the company’s connected customer activities, including infotainment, OnStar and GM’s Urban Active personal mobility initiatives.