Biography | Mary Barra — Knight Way Came Later; the MBA Was Written on Memorial Way

People treat the Knight Management Center as the Stanford address on her résumé. The fellowship years were earlier, and west of that courtyard. In 1988 General Motors sent her to the Graduate School of Business on a company fellowship. She took the MBA in 1990. Knight Management Center at 655 Knight Way did not open until 2011. The school she actually attended sat on the older GSB precinct around Memorial Way, on the northeast corner of the Stanford campus, thirty-five miles south of San Francisco. The degree was not a career change. It was a paid leave from a plant that expected her back. She returned to manufacturing planning, then to the jobs that still had a shop floor attached: communications, Hamtramck, vehicle manufacturing engineering, human resources, and finally global product development. Stanford is on the plaque. Flint and Pontiac paid the bill.