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Dhivya Suryadevara, 39, who has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras in Chennai, India and an MBA from Harvard Business School will take over as General Motor’s chief financial officer.
Suryadevara had been vice president, Corporate Finance, since July 2017 and was great in GM’s divestiture of Opel, acquisition of Cruise, investment in Lyft and more recently, SoftBank’s investment in GM Cruise. “Dhivya’s experience and leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we’ve delivered over the last several years,” said Barra.
Following her father’s death when Suryadevara was young, she and her two sisters were raised by a single mother. In an interview with Real Simple magazine, she recalled:
My mom had to raise three children on her own, which is difficult to do anywhere, let alone in India. She wanted to make sure there were no corners cut when it came to our education and to prove that we could have the same resources as a two-parent household. Her high expectations made us want to do better, and we learned that nothing comes easy. You have to really work hard to get what you want.
Suryadevara went on to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in commerce at the University of Madras, before moving to the US to attend Harvard, an experience that wasn’t easy at all at first.
“It was overwhelming,” she said in the interview. “I was very far from home, and there was definitely (a) culture shock.” At the time, she didn’t have much money either. So, while friends could go on school trips, she couldn’t afford them. “Everything was funded with student loans that I had to pay back. In those circumstances, you’re under a different amount of pressure to find a job,” she recalled. Suryadevara did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Quartz.
She began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving to investment banking at UBS. At 25, she joined GM as a senior financial analyst at the treasurer’s office, and she’s been with the company ever since, eventually becoming one of the youngest chief investment officers of GM Asset Management, in which she managed $85 billion worth of assets for the company’s pension plans.
Suryadevara is also a chartered financial analyst and a chartered accountant. In 2015, she was named one of Fortune Magazine’s 40 under 40. At the time, she revealed that her very first car had been a Buick Enclave.
In its June 13 statement, GM said Suryadevara had played an important role in the company’s sale of the Opel brand to French carmaker Groupe PSA, its acquisition of self-driving tech startup Cruise, and its investment in ride-hailing service Lyft, among other things.
At GM, she’s worked on corporate financial planning and investor relations, but her focus areas at the company have also included its efforts in developing autonomous vehicle technology. This received a boost in May with an investment of $2.25 billion from the SoftBank Vision Fund, where Suryadevara also played a part.
“Dhivya’s experience and leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we’ve delivered over the last several years,” said Barra in the company’s statement.
From 2015 to 2017, Suryadevara served as vice president, Finance and Treasurer, controlling GM’s purse strings, including everything from capital planning to capital markets and worldwide banking. She also managed GM’s $85 billion pension operations.
