I’m an admirer and aspiring chronicler of bold, decisive leadership, particularly when an executive possesses the rare integrity to stand behind his convictions and would sooner step aside than steer his company off a strategic cliff. That is why Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda, a grandson of the company’s founder, is one of my corporate heroes.
Back in 2023, when Wall Street and the automotive press declared all-electric vehicles the inevitable future, Toyoda was under intense pressure to accelerate Toyota’s timeline for pure battery-EV adoption. He stepped down as CEO without capitulating to that pressure. Toyoda stubbornly maintained that consumer charging infrastructure was not ready, that a broad global market had not yet formed, and that hybrids remained the most practical, consumer-friendly bridge to an electrified future.
“A carmaker is all that I am, and I see that as my own limit,” Toyoda said at age 66, as he passed the baton. He noted that his successor had “a mission to transform Toyota into a mobility company,” adding, “I expect this new team to go beyond the limits that I cannot break through.”
Toyoda’s self-effacing limit has instead proved to be the ultimate competitive advantage. While GM and Ford chased tech-platform fantasies off a financial precipice, Japan’s humble “carmaker” was vindicated. Hybrids are now the fastest-growing segment of the new-car market, commanding a 19% share. Toyota, which pioneered commercial hybrid technology with the Prius in 1997, now generates nearly 60% of its U.S. volume from electrified powertrains. Demand for models like Toyota’s hybrid compact crossover RAV4 is so voracious that assembly plants cannot keep pace.
The payoff is historic. Toyota is gaining U.S. market share while General Motors, once the undisputed symbol of American industrial might, is losing it. GM CEO Mary Barra famously dismissed hybrids in 2019, flatly telling investors that “customers generally aren’t interested in hybrids” as she hitched GM’s future almost entirely to pure EVs.
Barra’s miscalculation has exacted a brutal toll, racking up roughly $11 billion in EV-related charges and write-downs for GM. Cox Automotive estimates GM’s vehicle sales through September will decline 6.2%, dragging its U.S. market share down to 16.7% from 17.4% a year ago. Unlike Toyoda, humility has never been one of Barra’s strong suits; in 2021, she predicted that she would “absolutely” be selling more EVs in North America than Tesla within four years. She didn’t even come close.
How did an executive based in Japan read American car buyers far better than the CEO of a century-old automotive icon once firmly anchored in the Motor City?
That wisdom did not originate in Toyota City. While Toyota’s global flag flies in Japan, its American playbook is engineered, planned, and executed by a seasoned domestic bench operating out of Plano, Texas; York Township, Michigan, near Ann Arbor; and Boston, Massachusetts.
Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) is as red, white, and blue as any domestic automaker. The critical distinction is that Toyota’s top managers possess far deeper automotive experience than much of the GM executive brass increasingly calling the shots from Silicon Valley, where Barra has leased nearly 340,000 square feet of luxury office real estate near Stanford to anchor GM’s critical future operations.
Management Diversity
Toyota is remarkably transparent, publicly detailing dozens of executives across its North American operations and related organizations. What immediately stands out is that the bench is genuinely diverse. Women and Black leaders do not occupy symbolic figurehead roles here; they run critical divisions in manufacturing, vehicle engineering, and finance. For years, corporate consultants argued that a diverse leadership team creates a company far more attuned to the everyday American consumer. Toyota’s surging market share appears to validate that point.
Consider Tellis Bethel, CFO of Toyota Financial Services and CEO of Toyota Financial Savings Bank. Bethel initially joined Toyota Financial Services in 2003, working in risk management with an emphasis on financial hedging. After leaving the company for a few years, he returned in 2010 and moved through leadership roles across the organization, including chief diversity officer.
Toyota didn’t leave him there. Bethel was promoted in 2019 to general manager of finance and business analytics, overseeing finance functions as well as analytics for sales and marketing. In 2021, he became vice president of voluntary protection products, overseeing a business that generated more than $300 million in annual operating income.
Then there’s Susann Kazunas, group vice president of manufacturing business operations and production engineering, responsible for Toyota’s North American production engineering, manufacturing strategy, new-technology development, and environmental and facilities activities.
Kazunas didn’t arrive at Toyota from Silicon Valley. She joined the company in 1998 at its Kentucky plant, working primarily in the stamping and weld shops, and ultimately rose to become president of Toyota’s San Antonio truck plant. Automotive News has recognized her among its 100 Leading Women and named her its 2025 All-Star for Manufacturing.
No Substitute for Experience
Diversity isn’t the only distinguishing characteristic of Toyota’s management bench. My review, with the help of ChatGPT, of 20 senior Toyota North America executives found a median company tenure of 30.5 years. GM, which promotes Barra as the dominant figure leading the company, understandably lists only eight corporate officers on its main leadership page. The median tenure of these GM executives is 4.8 years.
The most notable GM rookie is Bay Area-based Dr. Sterling Anderson, whom Barra lured from Aurora Innovation, the autonomous-trucking company he co-founded, which has never turned a profit. Anderson was named executive vice president, global product, and chief product officer in June 2025. GM reported his 2025 compensation at $40.28 million. He oversees the end-to-end product lifecycle for both gas- and electric-powered vehicles, including hardware, software, services and user experience.
Anderson’s résumé is overwhelmingly rooted in EVs, autonomy and software rather than the gas-powered trucks and SUVs that drive GM’s profits.
Toyota appears less enamored of the “superstar technology executive” model and no single executive has Anderson’s institutional power. Toyota distributes comparable responsibilities among longtime insiders. Its North American CTO, Keita Moritsu, joined Toyota as a body-design engineer in 1999 and is based in Michigan; vehicle-development chief Monte Kaehr joined as a design engineer in 1992 and is also based in Michigan; and connected-experience chief Charan Lota joined in 2000.
That’s 27, 34 and 26 years, respectively, versus Anderson’s roughly 16 months at GM.
Toyota’s Brainiacs
Admittedly, Anderson has formidable academic credentials, with a master’s degree and Ph.D. in robotics from MIT. If academic credentials float your boat, consider those of Dr. Gill Pratt, who oversees Toyota’s research institute in Boston.
Pratt earned his undergraduate, master’s and Ph.D. degrees from MIT, where he subsequently became a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Prior to joining Toyota, Pratt led the Robotics Challenge, Robotics Research, and Neuromorphic Computing research programs for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he served as a program manager in the Defense Sciences and Tactical Technology Offices from January 2010 through August 2015.
For all those credentials, Pratt can simplify and explain Toyota’s electrification vision so that even a layperson can understand. It’s a safe bet Toyota isn’t paying him anywhere near $40 million. Koji Sato received about $5.3 million in his final full fiscal year as Toyota CEO; Automotive News and Equilar calculated Barra’s 2025 realized compensation at $48.2 million.
Pratt is hardly the only brainiac in Toyota’s senior management. There’s Tim Ingle, CFO of Toyota North America, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, a Master of Science in Management, and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Ingle isn’t your run-of-the-mill bean counter. He has held numerous project planning, operations and corporate strategy roles since he began his career at TMNA in 2002.
Then there’s Christopher Yang, TMNA’s chief legal officer, whom I instinctively want to dislike because of his over-the-top credentials and accomplishments.
Prior to joining Toyota in 2011, Yang worked at the prestigious law firm Latham & Watkins, where he advised clients on mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, and complex cross-border transactions. Fluent in Japanese, Yang was seconded to GE Money Japan during his time at Latham.
Yang earned his bachelor’s degree in political science with high distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2003.
A lifelong practitioner of the martial art of kendo, Yang holds a seventh-degree black belt and currently coaches the U.S. Men’s National Kendo Team. He previously competed on the U.S. National Kendo Team for 18 years and is a former U.S. National Men’s Kendo Champion.
Yet another Toyota overachiever is Elizabeth Gibson, TMNA’s general counsel and chief sustainability officer. Before joining Toyota in 2006, Gibson practiced entertainment and intellectual property law in Los Angeles. Gibson’s law degree is from the University of Michigan.
Charan Lota, TMNA’s connected-experience chief, also has Michigan credentials, holding a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and having completed the University of Michigan Ross School of Business Strategic Leaders Program in 2016.
During his tenure at Toyota, Lota has received more than 35 design patents. In 2018, Design News recognized Lota as one of 14 engineers transforming the automotive industry.
From the Dealership Up
Finally, there’s David Christ, who oversees Toyota Division sales, marketing, market representation, guest experience and retention in the U.S. Christ joined Toyota in 1994, but his automotive career began closer to where customers actually experience the business: at a Toyota dealership in New Jersey, working in both the service and sales departments.
Over the ensuing three decades, Christ held a succession of regional sales and management jobs, as well as senior positions with Lexus and Toyota Financial Services, before assuming responsibility for the Toyota brand in the U.S.
Toyota’s commitment to developing employees over decades is more than corporate rhetoric. The company has a longstanding practice of protecting full-time manufacturing jobs during downturns, famously avoiding layoffs of permanent plant workers even during the Great Recession and the production disruptions following Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
By contrast, GM under Barra’s leadership employs a controversial HR practice known as forced ranking, or more bluntly, “rank and yank,” under which 15% of employees are expected to fall into the “Does Not Meet Expectations” or “Partially Meets Expectations” categories. A recent lawsuit filed by Tuan Le, a 27-year veteran GM engineer, alleges that GM’s forced-ranking model discriminates against older employees.
When veteran Toyota employees review their messages at 5 a.m., they likely have nothing to fear. At Barra’s GM, that’s when employees with decades of experience have learned they no longer have jobs.
Photos: Toyota, unless otherwise noted