The news continues to get worse for Ford. Anne Stevens announced her departure today. To bad because she has the kind of background and emotional investment Ford needs to get back on track. According to Forbes:
In April, Chairman and then-Chief Executive Bill Ford, scrambled a scratch team to report directly to him under a new management structure resulting from the pending departure of Jim Padilla, who was the troubled company's president and chief operating officer. Stevens, who had overseen development of Ford's "Way Forward" plan, which called for eliminating up to 30,000 jobs and closing 14 facilities by 2012, was part of that five-member team.
Stevens, who used to dress as a boy and sneak into pits at the racetrack and only agreed to a date with her future husband because he asked her to go to the Maple Grove Raceway near her hometown of Reading, Pa., earned a degree in mechanical and material engineering in 1980 and took a job with Exxon-Mobil.
She joined Ford in 1990 as a marketing specialist in the plastic products division, and moved up the international manufacturing ladder to become the company's first female plant manager in Europe in 1995.
She returned to the U.S. in 1999 as a senior leader in manufacturing. When named vice president of North America vehicle operations in 2001, Stevens led Ford's North American assembly, stamping and tool and die plants.
In 2003, Stevens was named group vice president of Canada, Mexico and South America and, in 2005, was appointed as executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Americas.
Seems to me Anne is much better suited to run Ford than Alan Mullaly who spent 37 years at Boeing building airplanes. Maybe Anne is taking over Alan's job at Boeing? Which would make about as much sense as Mullaly running Ford.
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