WARREN, Michigan — From the moment she started her career at General Motors Co., Kathy Gillespie never feared the unknown.
Instead, she sought it out. She wanted the difficult engineering jobs on systems covering the vehicle. She wanted to lead whatever programs came as an opportunity, from performance to electric vehicles. And top on her list: She wanted to be a chief engineer.
A year ago, she achieved that title for GM’s BrightDrop electric delivery vans. She’s now overseeing the launch of the Zevo 600 and Zevo 400 at the CAMI plant in Ontario. Gillespie, who’s never shied away from tough jobs, is up for the task of ramping up to an annual capacity of 30,000 BrightDrop vans this year. GM intends to reach 50,000-unit capacity by 2025.
It’s a heavy lift given the eyes on BrightDrop, GM’s newest brand that's poised to bring the automaker new customers and more revenue from the commercial vehicle space — a new target for automakers going electric. The Zevo electric delivery vans, part of a growing segment, are expected to bring in $1 billion in revenue in 2023 and $10 billion by 2030. GM expects BrightDrop to approach 20% profit margins by the end of the decade.
“I believe that their revenue target is very optimistic … but I believe that BrightDrop and the van fleet industry will be a significant piece of fleets and fleet growth moving forward," said Warren Browne, an auto supplier consultant and former GM executive who spent 40 years working for the automaker. "It's just the most logical."
BrightDrop says it already has more than 25,000 reservations and letters of intent for the Zevo 600 or 400. Its customers include FedEx Corp., Walmart Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Merchants Fleet and DHL Express Canada.
The pressure to hit the goals GM has established for BrightDrop is high, but Gillespie has a calm demeanor about it: “We're going to deliver,” she said in an interview last week. “Absolutely, we're delivering.”
Born to be an engineer
Gillespie is Michigan-born and raised, with a dad who worked for GM in finance and often brought home vehicles for the family to try out. The Corvette was her favorite.
“I was the girl that liked cars,” she said. “And I like to drive fun cars.”
It was in high school physics class that Gillespie realized her dream was to become an engineer, she said: “I loved physics. Physics is all about how things work. I like to learn about how things work.”
She decided to study mechanical engineering at Michigan State University, when she was often the only woman in class — but the disparity didn’t make her sit on the sidelines. By the end of her freshman year, she already had an internship lined up at GM.
“There were a lot of men in the field and not a lot of women, so it did feel like you had to work twice as hard as a woman,” she said. Gillespie proved herself and got hired by GM right out of college in the early 1990s, when times were tough for the auto industry.
She went in knowing she wanted to do her part to make vehicles better. She wanted to make technology like remote starting, heated seats and heated steering wheels because she remembered hating getting into cold cars as a kid growing up in Flushing near Flint.
Her career at GM began with powertrain cooling on Cadillac programs, and eventually, she got to work on the automaker's first adaptive cruise control system.
“I've always been drawn to working on things that interact with the whole vehicle,” she said. “So I've always wanted to work on things that are bigger-level systems or full-vehicle focused versus individual components.”
Seeing the new adaptive cruise control technology in use for the first time was “amazing,” she said. It was a technology that would change vehicles for the better.
“It's really exciting to see the work you do on the road and see people excited about it,” she said.
Gillespie kept building her resume. She signed up to go to Bowling Green, Kentucky, for the launch of the C6 Corvette to learn more about the manufacturing process. While there, she was head of the crucially important electrical team, overseeing work through difficult issues from wire harnesses to software.
“That experience was pretty foundational in learning how to work under pressure, under tight deadlines with a team and how to rely on each other to get things done," she said.
Gillespie kept taking on new jobs in different fields to push herself outside of her comfort zone. She worked on the Chevrolet Volt hybrid program as a high-voltage battery integration engineer. At the time, GM was struggling through bankruptcy, but leaders told her to stay focused on the program.
She was then tasked with developing a fast-to-market fully electric vehicle, and that’s how the Chevrolet Spark EV was born.
Gillespie wasn’t done with internal combustion vehicles just yet, and went back to work for Cadillac on the performance side with the CTS-V as program engineering manager.
After that, she was looking for an executive position and an opportunity came up to be the director of engineering on a team-leading interior trim. Interior was a new field, and Gillespie knew she needed the experience.
And then came the position she’d been waiting for: chief engineer.
Last year, while she was working in interior, Gillespie’s boss and mentor Margaret Oswald came to her with news that BrightDrop would be looking to hire for the top position.
“She knew I wanted to be a chief engineer. She used to be a chief engineer … she felt that I was ready. She felt that I had the right skill set, experiences,” Gillespie said. "She felt like that would be a good next step for me.”
Gillespie was definitely interested. BrightDrop was new. It was all-electric. It was a brand central to GM’s future.
“I thought it was a fantastic idea,” she said. “I thought it was a perfect market for an EV.”
Leading the BrightDrop team
Gillespie called Oswald first when she found out she got the job to lead the BrightDrop team.
Oswald was thrilled for her. Gillespie had the “technical aptitude” to be engineer. And she had experience in all parts of the vehicle.
“As her mentor, the one thing that I loved about Kathy is oftentimes when I mentor people they say they want to be a chief engineer, but it's oftentimes scary to continue to go off and learn new things and work in different departments and work with different technologies and with different people,” said Oswald, who’s now executive director of interiors and thermal cabin comfort in product development.
But, again, Gillespie never feared the unknown.
“That was one of the reasons why she was successful at getting to the chief role,” Oswald said. “She was never afraid to work in different areas and learn new things and put herself out there.”
Now, Gillespie is mentoring a team at BrightDrop where the stakes are high. Her job is to remove potential roadblocks so her team members can get their jobs done and deliver the product.
Bruno Bennati, program execution manager for the BrightDrop vans, helps Gillespie manage from the design of the parts to getting parts to the plant.
“One thing that I love about her is that she lets me try,” Bennati said.
But if Bennati feels like he’s failed in a meeting, Gillespie reassures him and tells him what to try next time.
“She lets me open my wings and try and fail,” he said. “Every time I have a question, I know she's there. We might not know the answer together, but we'll find it. (After) 30 years at GM, she knows someone that knows the answer.”
BrightDrop might have the startup mentality, but its connection to a legacy automaker’s manufacturing expertise sets it apart from fledgling competitors.
“It feels like the winning combination to me,” Gillespie said. “You have to be able to make decisions and move quickly. You have to be comfortable with some amount of unknown. The good thing is, we know what it takes to execute. We know we can execute with quality. The challenge is doing it faster than we've done before.”
Gillespie is embracing her job as chief engineer. And while she may not know what’s next, she said she knows she never wants to stop taking in the new: “I still believe that if you don’t go outside of your comfort zone, you don’t continue to grow. I want to continue growing and learning.”
