A Q&A with former GM CEO Rick Wagoner ahead of his commencement speech

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Rick Wagoner first met Michael Rao when Wagoner was the CEO of General Motors Corp. and Rao was the president of Central Michigan University. Years later, after Rao had taken over as president at Virginia Commonwealth University, he reached out to Wagoner, who had grown up in Richmond and graduated from J.R. Tucker High School, and asked him if he would be interested in joining the university's Board of Visitors.

Wagoner was reluctant at first, busy with other obligations that included serving as the chair of the Board of Trustees at Duke University, his alma mater. However, he said, "Mike is a very insistent guy."

Wagoner eventually joined VCU's board in 2013 and started a relationship with the school that has deepened in the years since. Wagoner served two terms on the board through 2021, and he and his wife, Kathy, became staunch supporters of the university. That includes taking on leadership roles on two fundraising campaigns - the Make It Real Campaign for VCU that ended in 2020 and the Unlocking Potential campaign that is currently underway - and creating the Wagoner Family Endowed Scholarship in the School of Business. More recently, they made a commitment to the new Institute for Free Enterprise at VCU.

Wagoner will serve as the keynote speaker at VCU's universitywide commencement ceremony on Saturday, a role he previously handled in 2011. Wagoner enjoyed a 32-year career with General Motors. He retired in 2009 after six years as chairman/CEO and several years prior as president/CEO. His previous roles with the company included leadership positions in North America, Europe and Brazil.

Ahead of this year's speech, VCU News spoke with Wagoner on topics ranging from his youth in Richmond to the rise of artificial intelligence and the fulfillment he has found in his second career working with startups.

What has been your connection to your hometown of Richmond over the years?

We moved to Richmond when I was in first grade so I did all my schooling there. It was a great place to grow up. It was a good-sized town, and J.R. Tucker had grades 7 through 12 in those days, so I spent six years in school there and I got a really good education. I still get together once a year with some of my high school classmates for a few days to play golf. I have a lot of fond memories of growing up in Richmond.

My mom continued to live in Richmond until she passed away, and I have a younger sister who lives in Richmond, so as a result, I have kept fairly close ties with the evolution of the city. Then, when I was invited to join the board at VCU, I started to come back with some regularity and I got to know VCU really well, too. It's been amazing to see the progress of the city and particularly to see the role that VCU has played in it.

From J.R. Tucker, you went to Duke as an undergraduate and then to Harvard Business School - and finally to General Motors. What attracted you to the auto industry?

Frankly, I was attracted by the specific job assignment, which was to work in the GM treasurer's office in New York. I thought that would be a really interesting place to work, and it was.

GM's a big company, but that area was a meritocracy. You would get assignments and if you could do them then they would give you a tougher one. And you could move up a lot quicker than you might expect in a large organization. That opportunity appealed to me.

I initially thought that I didn't want to go to New York, but I subsequently learned that starting in New York is great because if you can live there you can live anywhere. We moved from there to Sao Paolo, Brazil, which is a big, intimidating city as well, but we thought it was easy compared to New York.

When we moved to Brazil, I had a fun job as a treasurer and then became the head of finance there because no one else wanted the job. So, at a young age, I got way ahead career-wise through no planning or anything. Just luck and hard work and things kept going from there.

How did those early positions and experiences build a foundation for you to move up the leadership ranks at GM and take on the very large responsibilities that you would have down the road?

In your early job assignments, in any company, you get a feel for the culture of the company. You learn about the business of the company and meet people and get to know people that you'll be working with. You also develop important work habits of being on top of things, getting assignments done on time and performing in an effective manner.

Taking the opportunity to learn what others are doing is something that I picked up during my first couple of jobs and that really helped me. As I ended up with bigger jobs at fairly young ages, I knew more about other areas that I hadn't actually worked in because I took a chance to talk to people in those areas.

For instance, I got a chance to learn a lot about every part of the business in Brazil when I was there. Brazil at the time was a closed market, and we were an integrated auto company on a dramatically smaller scale than GM in the U.S., so you could get your arms around it and it was a tremendous learning opportunity.

Ultimately, getting your job done in a high-quality way, interacting with people effectively and taking the opportunities to learn were the three most important things that I learned from my first assignments.

You eventually became GM's youngest-ever president and CEO at the age of 47. When you're running a high-profile company like GM that is so closely watched, you're in the spotlight at all times. How did you handle that aspect of the work?

I always tell people: There's nothing like being the number one person. It is quite a different feeling. Whether you're the president of VCU or the CEO of GM, I don't think people fully appreciate that feeling until they get there.

I think that moment happened for me when we moved back to Brazil after some time away and I became the president of GM Brazil. I was very comfortable because I had worked in Brazil for five years before and our two oldest sons had actually been born there. I knew the language, I knew the people, I knew the business, and I was comfortable doing the job, but it felt very different sitting in the big chair. I didn't find it hard - I found it fun - but it awakened me to, "Hey, this is a different kind of job."

When it eventually played out in the U.S., and I became head of our North American business and then CEO, I felt like I knew what I was getting into. I wasn't uncomfortable with it.

Some people who love those types of jobs love being out in the public. I would say I did that and was pretty good at it, but given the choice I'd have somebody else go out and introduce the new Cadillac. That's one of the things that I've enjoyed about my career after GM. I haven't had to be in the public eye the same way and haven't generally interacted with the press. It was a part of the job that I was comfortable with, but I don't miss it today.

Tell us about what you have been doing since GM.

It's been a fun second career. I'm still on a number of boards, and I do a lot of venture investing and work with startups. I keep learning every day, and I meet a lot of interesting people along the way, too. It helps keep me young.

The digital revolution started when I was CEO of GM, and it led to such major changes in the way business is conducted in general. The pace of change is accelerating, and if you don't keep up and stay in the game you can fall behind very quickly. Having these different business initiatives that I've been involved in has been a great way to keep up with it. I feel fortunate.

What are you seeing from that perspective with the beginning of the AI wave?

I'm involved with a number of businesses that are focused on using AI to make specific improvements in different business verticals, and I'm on the health system board at Duke, and the potential impact in healthcare is huge, of course. It's fascinating, and it's incredibly complex, too.

And I've been watching how it affects the auto industry, in particular. We're getting into autonomous vehicles and software-defined vehicles. These are really big changes for a very old and well-established industry. It's going to be interesting to see how the industry is able to react and how consumers are going to react, too.

After your retirement from GM, you got involved with VCU. What sticks out to you about VCU after more than a decade of being closely affiliated with the university?

What VCU does is unique. They have many students who are first in their families to attend college and many students who are Pell-eligible. VCU does a great job of opening its doors to smart, hard-working, motivated students, and they've done a better job than most of making sure those students move through the education process on a timely basis, get their degrees and launch their careers. That's such an important contribution, and there's something noble in that mission.

At the same time, VCU has done an extraordinary job of developing its reputation as a research institution, which not only benefits the students but helps to build the image of VCU and helps to attract a lot of people to Richmond, Virginia. That's a great two-track model.

Could you give us a preview of what you plan to tell the new graduates at commencement this year?

The first time that I spoke at commencement was 15 years ago, and the advice that I had for students was through the lens of having spent 32 years at a big auto company. Now, for the last 15 years, I've been more active in venture investing and dealing with startups, and so looking at my advice the first time around I'm going to consider if I'd still consider that good advice based on the changes in my own career and environment. I thought that would be a good way of looking at the way the world is changing for the students and the rest of us.

I want them to understand that whatever they're doing in their first job, it's extremely unlikely that they'll be doing that job in 10 years, and it's extremely unlikely that they'll be doing it at the same organization. The pace of change that we're seeing is so rapid right now, and it's nothing like the world that I graduated from college into.

It can seem scary and nerve-wracking, but I want them to know it's also an exciting time to be coming out of college. And I want them to know that they're well-prepared for it. They've developed the ability to study and learn and interact with others at VCU, and that's going to carry them forward in whatever they do with their careers.

Also, I've sat through other graduations. I know the most important thing about the speech is that it's short.