Indian-American woman to become the CFO of General Motors

Dhivya Suryadevara, an Indian-American woman has been named the Chief Finance Officer of the largest US’ automaker, General Motors. She is currently the vice president of corporate finance and will succeed Chuck Stevens, the present CFO of General Motors on 1st September.

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Born in Chennai, Dhivya Suryadevara, 39, has been the vice president of GM since July 2017. She will now be reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, Mary Barra, 56, who has been the head since 2014. They both are the first women in their positions in the auto industry as no other global automaker has a female CEO and no automaker has a CFO and CEO who are both female.

Very soon GM will join the list of S&P 500 companies which include American Water Works Co and Hershey Co. with women serving as the CFO and CEO. Suryadevara earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in commerce from Chennai and moved to the US to pursue an MBA from Harvard University. She is a chartered financial analyst and accountant and worked with UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining GM in 2005.

Stevens, 58, is the CFO at GM since January 2014 and he will retire next March as a veteran of the company. He has been associated with the company for more than 40 years and will remain with the company as an adviser. He began in the Buick division in 1978 and was educated at the General Motors Institute which became and Kettering University. He played a key role in establishing the joint venture of GM with SAIC Motor Corp in China and was a crucial player in GM in selling the Opel business to PSA Group.