Adjunct Lecturer of Management and Organizations, University of Michigan
Cheri Alexander’s successful 33-year global corporate career began in engineering and culminated in her appointment as President of the GM University. She lived in 4 countries on three continents and spent time in 51 countries, which helped her develop multi-faceted abilities in Leadership, Managing Human Capital, Negotiations, Mergers and Acquisitions, Industrial Health and Safety, and Crisis Management. She was recognized for integrity and inspiration in her leadership throughout her career and received the prestigious GM Chairman’s Award twice.
For the last 15 years, Ms. Alexander has brought her expertise into the classroom where she teaches Talent Management, General Business, Critical Thinking, and Leadership at the University of Michigan. She has been nominated for multiple teaching awards during her time in the classroom. In the Fall of 2023, she will assume responsibility for the Ross School of Business International Program overseeing all BBA students studying abroad.
Prior to January 2021, she was the Chief Innovation Officer in the Ross Executive Education Department. She also teaches Leadership, Succession Planning, Mergers and Acquisitions, and HCM topics for Executive Education clients and Engineering. She worked with her colleagues to produce four popular online global learning courses on Coursera, including Leading People & Teams and Branding. She was invited to design a new Human Capital Management course that is currently in production. She is also a Certified Executive Leadership Coach and specializes in coaching C-suite Executives.
In addition to working in the Human Capital space, Ms. Alexander had assignments in Plant Management, Quality, and Engineering. As Plant Manager of a 6,000-person North American automobile factory, her team attained the highest levels of quality and employee satisfaction. She served as Vice President of International Human Resources for all units outside of North America and oversaw the building of and executed the staffing for plants in China and Poland. These plants were later determined to be the most efficient in the GM system.
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Ms. Alexander received a BS from the University of Michigan, as well as an MS in Industrial Health Engineering. She was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and completed her MS in Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Ms. Alexander has published work on Noise Induced Hearing Loss, work that set the stage for implementing the US noise standards, and completed her MIT thesis on the Relocation of Dislocated Automobile Workers. Her work is cited in three books, United We Stand (Wilbur and Weakley), Successful Mergers, Acquisitions, and Strategic Alliances (Gancel, Rodgers, and Raynaud), and Road to Power (Colby).
In addition to her work, Ms. Alexander is on the Board of the Inforum Center for Leadership, and served on the Boards of the Henry Ford Health System, the Potter Park Zoo, and European consultancy debunk-it, LTD in the past. She is dedicated to global education and often speaks on her favorite topics, “Being International” and “Global Superficial Homogenization – What it Means to be Global.”
