Black Engineer of The Year
ALICIA’S TIPS FOR SUCCESS
1. Find your passion and pursue it.
2. Believe in yourself and your abilities; persist through any setbacks.
3. Put the work in; continue to learn and stretch outside your comfort zone.
Change Makers:
WORLD I M PA C T
4. Have the courage to challenge the status quo to fi nd new ways to achieve things you didn’t think possible.
5. Try to make a diff erence every day.
With young girls at a “Black Girls Code” STEM festival.
With GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra and Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, at an event GM hosted onSTEM careers for women.
Customer Experience, she led all of the “connected customer” activities, including infotainment, OnStar telematics, and launching GM’s Urban Active personal mobility
service, MAVEN. She and her team evaluated and worked to improve the company’s customer
touchpoints across the board. In June 2016 Davis was named to her current role leading GM’s global manufacturing. She oversees the global manufacturing, labor relations, and manufacturing engineering teams. She has the honor of reporting directly to Mary Barra and is driven to make sure the vehicles GM builds across the world are high quality—so they make her customers happy and are built profi tably so the company’s leadership and investors are happy too.
Career Tips and Advice Not one to boast about her success, Davis keeps it real
by working hard, a core value that was instilled in her by her parents at a very young age. She also attributes much of her success to the people
around her. She works to foster collaboration and create an environment where everyone can contribute, debate, and drive for results. Her lessons learned in “drawing the best” from others continue to pay off . She also admits to having a competitive streak and enjoys winning. Davis has another vital job at GM that doesn’t involve building cars and trucks. She is also the executive champion for
www.blackengineer.com
GM Women, an employee resource group with 3,600 members. That group’s mission is to help GM remain a great place for women to work, one where women can develop in their careers and succeed. “It’s a role I take very seriously,” she said. “I’m very
engaged in and supportive of the GM Women organization and the women at GM overall.” Mentoring is another passion for Davis. As a mentor, she
meets on a regular basis with about 15 mentees. “I’m really a sounding board,” she said. “We talk about
things they’re dealing with in their positions, things they’re aspiring to do, diff erent career paths, and how to handle diffi cult situations. I also share my thoughts on how to continue to develop in their careers, including taking classes or seminars.”
The busy executive also is an active promoter of STEM
education. Several times each year she makes time to talk to groups inside and outside the company about her journey and the life lessons that have served her well. Most recently she and Barra partnered with Facebook Chief Operating Offi cer Sheryl Sandberg on STEM outreach for young girls as well as working women. Regarding the latest feather in her cap, being honored as the Black Engineer of the Year, Davis is truly humbled. “I’m incredibly honored and feel I’m representing GM and all the great people who work here, but I also feel I am a role model for African Americans,” she said. “I want to be an inspiration for others to help them believe that they, too, can achieve their goals.” S
CONFERENCE ISSUE 2018 I USBE&IT 25
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