What's Wrong With This Picture: Analyze This Edition

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

GM’s newest board member, UCLA Psychology faculty member Cynthia Telles, and her husband, former California Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg, addressing the 2000 Democratic convention. Telles has served on the boards of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (where she served with GM Chairman/CEO Ed Whitacre), as well as several banks. She has no Auto Industry experience, but at least she knows Ed Whitacre and has strong ties to the Democratic party. Or, as Ed Whitacre puts it in GM’s official release:

The addition of Dr. Telles to GM’s board of directors ensures that the company will continue to benefit from a diversity of perspectives and experience in our mission to provide consumers with the world’s best vehicles

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Daanii2 Daanii2 on Apr 14, 2010

    No offense to Dr. Teller personally, but she seems to have no qualification to sit on the board of a company like GM. So she did sit on other boards. What qualifications got her those board seats? She is a psychology professor, for God's sake.

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    • Porschespeed Porschespeed on Apr 14, 2010

      Exactly. BoDs are very clubby affairs. There was a point where they existed for oversight, but now they are merely cogs in the machine. If you get really bored someday, check out the spiderweb of interconnection among Boards of the Fortune 500.

  • Contrarian Contrarian on Apr 14, 2010

    Surely nobody is really surprised that Obama is politicising GM? Some may be happy and some annoyed - but nobody should be surprised.

  • Da Coyote Da Coyote on Apr 14, 2010

    "...diversity of perspectives and experience in our mission to provide consumers with the world’s best vehicles' Translation: She flunked basic calculus at college and then majored in psychology. She can do no creative work, but we needed her to complete our obligations to the most inept administration in US history. We are seriously thinking of hiring our second engineer early next year.

  • Shiney2 Shiney2 on Apr 14, 2010

    Sure - Obama personally selected her, and now she spends every weekend at the white house briefing him on their plan to turn all the cars and guns in America into sculptures of chairman Mao! I guess that is still better than letting GM fail and risk dragging the whole country into a depression. Frankly, I would rather see someone with a PHD in physiology at GM than another MBA whose only real training is in meeting planning and career path management.

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