Road to Power - How GM’s Barra Shattered Glass Ceiling: Excerpt

(Bloomberg) -- Detroit’s Eastern Market is in a gritty partof town where farmers have been coming to sell produce to urbanfamilies for more than a century. Though just a mile or so fromGeneral Motors Co.’s buttoned-down headquarters, these blockscould be on a different planet. Colorful graffiti-coveredwarehouses alternate with rows of early 1900s brick buildingsthat now hold cafes and restaurants. Today the country’s largestopen-air market also draws bearded hipsters who are, slowly,bringing life to the formerly bankrupt city.

The symbolism of the place -- history and renewal -- isn’tlost on Mary Barra, who in January 2014 became the first womanto run GM. Instead of the chandeliered ballrooms of GM’s pastconfabulations, it was Eastern Market she chose as the site tomeet with her top 300 global executives in September. In arehabbed warehouse on Russell Street, not far from the Hamtramckauto-assembly plant she once ran, Barra drove home a message asunadorned as the surroundings: Get with the program, or get out.