The road to corporate success proves to be a straight but challenging path
A childhood interest in cars lead Grace Lieblein into a lifelong automotive career developing the cars of tomorrow and trailblazing a corporate path for Latinas and all women.
Cars have always held a fascination for 48-year-old Grace Lieblein, president of Mexico City's General Motors division. Growing up in the greater Los Angeles area, this daughter of a Nicaraguan mother and Cuban father wasn't just interested in how cool a car looked, how fast it could go or how loud the speakers could blare. Grace was more interested in what purred under the hood -- the engine.
Maybe it was because her own father worked at a General Motors plant that Grace knew that a car is nothing more than a shell without the powerful engine that makes it go. So, it wasn't that surprising to Grace's family when in high school she joined General Motors as a co-op student in the GM Assembly Division.
Grace Lieblein, president of GMM
Grace's time on the assembly line whet her appetite for learning more about the mechanics of how an engine was put together and so, with encouragement from her brother-in-law who was an engineer, she pursued a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and a master's in management.
It was a combination of her educational background and her willingness to accept new challenges that accelerated Grace's successful career at GM over the years, her one and only employer. In fact, it was while Grace was Global Vehicle Chief Engineer, where she oversaw the development of new products, that she was tapped to fill a role that no woman had ever filled.
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