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From L to R: Kent Hance, Ivan Gutierrez and Edward E. Whitacre Jr
Earlier this morning, egmCarTech reader Ivan Gutierrez sent me an email with a picture of him standing next to former General Motors CEO, Ed Whitacre and some other guy we’ve never seen. When we asked for more details, Ivan wrote us a pretty large paragraph on why Whitacre was visiting Texas Tech – it’s pretty interesting stuff so we decided to share it with you guys (with Ivan’s permission of course).
Here is what Ivan had to say:
Yeah he”s a Texas Tech Alum. The College of Engineering at Texas Tech is named the “Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering”. The other guy in the picture is the Kent Hance, the Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and close friends with Whitacre (they were fraternity brothers at TTU). I”m in Hance”s senior seminar class and every year Ed Whitacre comes down to Lubbock to be a special guest in his class. Today was just a small meet and greet, he”ll come to class with us on Wednesday. He mostly talked about his career both with Southwestern Bell/SBC/AT&T as well as with GM. He talked about how GM”s policy book was over 1000 pages. Ed Whitacre”s Policy was that “GM would Design, Build, and Sell the World”s Greatest Vehicles and that Revenue would surpass expenses”. He said he initially turned down the job offer several times before finally accepting. Since Ed was still living in San Antonio, he would travel to Detroit on Sunday and come back on Friday and he said he made the trip around 40 times. He spoke about how GM”s upper management was in shambles and that GM had no clear goal or vision; that GM executives were bogged down by paperwork which made getting anything done a long and arduous task. Whitacre wanted to streamline the company and he replaced most upper level management positions. He also mentioned that GM”s IPO is scheduled for sometime in November. And of course he said that he believed that Dan Akerson would be an excellent CEO at GM. Also he”s going to the TTU-UT game tonight. I was able to talk to him for like 30 seconds, I was kind of nervous and at a loss of words for what to say, I actually don”t even remember what I said. But it was a fun time and I got to take a picture with him so that was awesome. Before he left he gave us some Guns Up! Wreck “˜Em!!!!
Ivan Gutierrez
It seems like Whitacre is a pretty cool and down to Earth chap.
– By: Omar Rana