She is a chartered financial analyst and accountant and MBA from Harvard.

An Indian-American woman, Dhivya Suryadevara has been named the Chief Financial Officer of the United States’ largest automaker, General Motors.

Dhivya, currently the Vice-President of corporate finance, will succeed Chuck Stevens, GM’s present CFO, on 1st Septembe, the company said in a statement.

Chennai-born Suryadevara, 39, has been GM’s vice president of corporate finance since July 2017. She'll report to chief executive officer (CEO) Mary Barra, 56, who has been head of the automaker since 2014.

Barra & Suryadevara are the 1st women in their respective positions in the auto industry, as no other major global automaker has a female CEO, nor a CEO & CFO who're both female.

GM will join a very short list of S&P 500 companies, including Hershey Co. & American Water Works Co., with women in the positions of CEO & CFO.

Suryadevara earned her bachelor’s & master’s degrees in commerce from University of Madras in Chennai, India. She moved to the US when she was 22 years old to pursue her masters in business administration (MBA) from Harvard University.

She's a chartered financial analyst & accountant, and worked at UBS & PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining the Detroit-based GM in 2005 at the age of 25.

“Dhivya’s experience & leadership in several key roles throughout our financial operations positions her well to build on the strong business results we have delivered over the last several years,” CEO Barra said in a statement.

Stevens, 58, has been CFO at the largest US automaker since Jan 2014 & will retire in March 2019 as a more than 40-year veteran of the company.

He'll remain with the company as an adviser until his retirement.

Stevens began at the Buick division in 1978 and, like Barra, was educated at General Motors Institute, which became Kettering University. He had a key role in GM establishing its joint venture in China with SAIC Motor Corp. & was a crucial player in GM selling its long-struggling Opel business to French automaker PSA Group.

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