Jennifer is the first President and CEO of Autos Drive America, the trade association representing the U.S. operations of international automakers. Her members build almost half the vehicles made in this country, and this year they’ve passed 50%. If you supply any of them, what they agree on matters to your business.
She took the job a week before COVID shut everything down, built the organization from scratch, and then the auto tariffs landed. In this conversation with Jan Griffiths, she explains how rivals with Japanese, Korean and German roots find common ground and how she brought the entire industry together on the USMCA renewal. She also explains why Chinese OEMs aren’t on U.S. roads today. Her leadership approach is simple, and it runs against how this industry has always operated: listen to every voice, lean on the experts, then make the call.
Episode Highlights:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Twelve rivals at one table
1:53 Why international automakers wanted their own voice
3:11 Starting up as the world shut down
5:25 Tariffs hit autos first
7:00 What holds competitors together
10:00 One voice on USMCA
11:40 Why Chinese OEMs aren’t here yet
13:55 Only a matter of time
15:22 Almost half of U.S. production
17:21 Listening is the leadership skill
21:22 Data that changes the conversation
23:02 Resilient, but planning in the dark
If this conversation hit home, share it with a fellow automotive leader and subscribe to the channel. We’re shaping the future of authentic leadership in the automotive industry.
#AutomotiveLeadership #AutomotiveIndustry #AuthenticLeadership
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The Automotive Leaders Podcast is hosted by Jan Griffiths, the champion for culture change in the automotive industry. From a farm in Wales to the C-suite of a $3 billion Tier-1 supplier, Jan built her career inside this industry. Now she's out to transform it.
Her argument is blunt. The pressure on this industry isn't letting up. The survivors will be the ones who reinvent how they work. Speed wins. Everyone else gets left behind.
Every episode, Jan sits down with the leaders driving that change. Real conversations about tariffs, supply chain shocks, EV uncertainty, AI, and the shift from command-and-control to authentic, human-centered leadership.
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