Season 5 Recap: Key Conversations Driving the Automotive Industry Forward

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I'm your host, Jan Griffiths, that passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves. Stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

This episode is brought to you by Lockton. Lockton redefines business insurance and people solutions with a personal touch. Their global team of 11,000 is driven by independence, not quarters, to tailor success for your business.

Discover the Lockton difference, where your goals become their mission. Independence—it's not just how you think, but how you act.

It is that time of year again. It's the time of year when I go back to Wales and walk those beautiful coastal paths and think about the business and the podcast. And I like to think about the gain rather than the gap. And if you haven't read the book The Gap and The Gain, I highly recommend that you do so.

So often, we focus on where we're going and what we haven't done. But what if we take the time to look back at the gain? What have we gained—and allow that to fuel us, to drive the momentum to move forward. I do that every year. I go back to my homeland, and I think about the business and what we've achieved in that one-year period.

Now, the podcast—wow, I cannot believe that The Automotive Leaders Podcast is now at 154 episodes. This is 155, and today we close Season Five. And what a season it was. We've had some great guests on this season. We've had authors—I always like to have authors who can contribute to the conversation about authentic leadership and moving us forward in our beloved auto industry.

We had Daniel Goldman, who is the recognized guru for emotional intelligence. And we've had Mike Colias, who wrote the book Inevitable. And if you haven't read that—and you’re in the auto industry—I recommend that you read that book. The way that Mike pieces together all the fragments of information that we know about our industry, carefully weaves it all together to tell the story of the EV... and then, at the end of it, you can answer the question yourself: Is it indeed inevitable? So, we've had two authors.

We've had Qiong Sun, who is VP and GM for TE Connectivity. You may know her also from Lear in her past life. She's certainly leading the charge in electronics.

And then, a bit of a wild card—we had Ahed Iqbal. He is head of automotive for TikTok. And you might think, TikTok... what? Well, you'll have to listen to that episode to find out. But he's a very talented young man, and he is certainly going places. And you might be surprised to find out which OEM he worked for before he went into TikTok.

We've had some OEM leaders on the podcast—Marques McCammon, he is the president of Karma Automotive; Craig Keys the Group Vice president of Infiniti. And if you haven't listened to Craig's episode, really absorb yourself into his story. He started his career with Nissan, working in a warehouse—he was in warehouse operations—and now he's the senior executive in charge of Infiniti in the Americas. Awesome, awesome guy.

Then, we've had some great CEOs of tier ones—Jon Husby, great example of authentic leadership. He's the President and CEO of ADAC; Hadi Awada, President of Global Mobility Coatings at Axalta. Pat D'Eramo, Chief Executive Officer of Martinrea. And then, of course, we closed out season five with a bang—with Mark Stewart, former COO of Stellantis and now CEO of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company.

And if you've ever thought about what kind of leadership traits—and what kind of leader—do you need to be to transform an iconic company like Goodyear, one that's been around for over 125 years, into the future... you'll have to listen to that episode, number 154, to find out.

This episode is sponsored by UHY. UHY and the Center for Automotive Research are digging into how suppliers quote and win with OEMs. The results drop at CAR MBS, September the 15th through the 17th at Michigan Central. Stay tuned.

And then we have Sig Huber from Elm Analytics talking about supplier resilience and supplier risk. Then also, with the tariffs, we had Glenn Stevens, who talked about the tariff situation from the supplier perspective and giving it very much a Michigan focus.

Now, with Glen's episode, we took the opportunity to translate that audio into Spanish, so it is actually Glen's voice and my voice, and we're speaking Spanish. And at Gravitas Detroit, we have perfected the art of taking audio in its original voice, using a combination of AI, human translators, and very careful audio editing to produce audio episodes—whether it's an internal podcast for you or external—in multiple different languages. In fact, we just did Ukrainian, believe it or not, the other day. So, I'm very excited about where the power of translated audio is going to take us.

Also, on the tariff side of the business, we had Jenae Ciecko. She is CEO of Copper Hill, and she gave us a perspective from a trade and compliance company.

We did some live recordings during this past season. We were fortunate enough to record from the Kettering booth at the Detroit Auto Show, which was a great experience. And I also recorded at MEMA. I didn't record live at mema, but I was so excited about the content that we had at the annual conference that I recorded an episode that night.

We also interviewed, in the world of academia, Dr. Robert McMahan, the President of Kettering University, and I learned a lot about Kettering. I didn't really understand their model—their academic model—but now I do, and I'm fascinated with it.

Of course, we then interviewed some students from Wayne State. As you know, I am on the advisory board for supply chain at Wayne State, and we interviewed Victoria Shubelyak and Andrew Stocke from Wayne State. It's good to get the student perspective.

So, we've had a really nice, rounded guest lineup for Season Five. And for Season Six, we are just lining up the guests and starting to record, and I couldn't be more excited about bringing you our next lineup of guests.

We are gonna take a short break, and then we're gonna be back on May 22nd. That will be our next published episode, and it will be the WRI episode—the Working Relations Index. That is the data that shows us what the suppliers think about the OEMs in terms of their relationship and how they handle the supply base. And my guests will be Dave Andrea—of course, the owner of the study from Plante Moran—Angela Johnson, who is replacing Dave (Dave is retiring after a fabulous career in the automotive industry), and Sig Huber. So, join us for that episode on May 22nd.

And I also have to thank our sponsors. Lockton has been a sponsor since the book launch, and if you haven't purchased AutoCulture 2.0, we'll put a link in the show notes for you to do so. But Lockton sponsored the book launch, and they also sponsor the Automotive Leaders podcast. Earlier this year, we have brought in another company into the sponsor fold, and that is UHY. And I'm very interested to see how that relationship will grow over time.

So, remember—stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.

This is a challenging time for us right now in automotive with the tariff situation, but we'll get through it. We get through everything else, and we'll get through it. I remain firm and true to my mission of authentic leadership. I will keep bringing you stories and conversations that contribute to the mission of transforming our beloved auto industry into a more authentic leadership culture and style.

I would love to hear from you as a listener. You can email me directly anytime—any comments that you have on our guests, the podcast, anything around authentic leadership. You can reach me at jan@gravitasdetroit.com. We'll be back May 22nd.

Thank you for listening to the Automotive Leaders Podcast. Click the listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice, and don't forget to download the 21 Traits of Authentic Leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you, and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.