John Smith
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John Smith, a native of Kansas City, Missouri, enjoyed a forty-two year career with General Motors, beginning in 1968 when he started work at the Chevrolet-Kansas City assembly plant. For someone just a few days removed from high school graduation, the rigors of life on the line in an automobile assembly plant. . .even if only for the summer. . .provided John with important grounding for everything that followed.
After receiving an Industrial Engineering degree from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and an MBA from Harvard, John joined GM’s New York Treasurer’s Office in 1976. This group provided key staff support to the company’s top leaders and its Board of Directors, and offered John a top-down view of GM’s breadth and depth. Over the following years, John would lead GM’s joint venture vehicle programs with Toyota, Isuzu, Suzuki and Daewoo, help establish GM operations in Central Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and be part of the team that developed options for the company’s all-important China business. John would later serve as GM’s first global product planning leader, and be on the ground floor of many of the company’s alternative propulsion initiatives.
Prior to coming to Cadillac in early 1997, John was President of Allison Transmission following the collapse of a possible sale of that business in late 1993 to German car parts maker ZF. John and team developed and executed a turnaround plan for Allison that lead to a twenty-fold increase in its sale price a decade later. John retired from GM at the end of 2010 and has since served as consultant or company director for a number of public and private for-profit businesses. He and his wife Nancy have been involved in ongoing relief and social services work in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of 2010, principally in and around the city of Jeremie, in support of which they co-founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization named Jeremie Rising. All proceeds from the sale of Fin Tales will be contributed to Jeremie Rising.
After receiving an Industrial Engineering degree from General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) and an MBA from Harvard, John joined GM’s New York Treasurer’s Office in 1976. This group provided key staff support to the company’s top leaders and its Board of Directors, and offered John a top-down view of GM’s breadth and depth. Over the following years, John would lead GM’s joint venture vehicle programs with Toyota, Isuzu, Suzuki and Daewoo, help establish GM operations in Central Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and be part of the team that developed options for the company’s all-important China business. John would later serve as GM’s first global product planning leader, and be on the ground floor of many of the company’s alternative propulsion initiatives.
Prior to coming to Cadillac in early 1997, John was President of Allison Transmission following the collapse of a possible sale of that business in late 1993 to German car parts maker ZF. John and team developed and executed a turnaround plan for Allison that lead to a twenty-fold increase in its sale price a decade later. John retired from GM at the end of 2010 and has since served as consultant or company director for a number of public and private for-profit businesses. He and his wife Nancy have been involved in ongoing relief and social services work in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of 2010, principally in and around the city of Jeremie, in support of which they co-founded a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization named Jeremie Rising. All proceeds from the sale of Fin Tales will be contributed to Jeremie Rising.
Books By John Smith
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