About our CEO
Gloria Lara was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Girl Scouts of Michigan Shore to Shore and assumed her role on September 1, 2010. The organization is the result of a national realignment of Girl Scout councils.
On August 1, 2008, the Girl Scouts of Michigan Shore to Shore was officially created from the merging together of Crooked Tree (based in Traverse City), Michigan Pine and Dunes (based in Muskegon), and Michigan Trails (based in Grand Rapids), and a portion of Mitten Bay (based in Saginaw). The council serves over 17,000 girls in western and northern Michigan, with the support of volunteers in 30 counties.
Gloria gained top-level experience in finance, marketing, sales and project management, and has held executive positions at IBM, Jervis B. Webb Company, Delphi Corporation, UT Automotive, TRW and Chrysler Corporation.
In her over twenty five years of industrial and consulting assignments, Gloria most recently served as a managing consultant at IBM, advising client executive and senior management as well as helping client companies drive change through process and technology innovations, including financial transformation and business process improvement and redesign.
In 1996, while at UT Automotive, Gloria founded and directed the Women's Advisory Committee (WAC) which focused on developing new product ideas for vehicle interior enhancements. Leading a diverse group of female employees, she developed a new idea-generating process, increasing the development of product ideas by more than 15 percent.
Gloria joined Chrysler Corporation in 1983 where she held various executive, product planning and financial positions. While at Chrysler, she took a lead role in the company's Honda study team, which analyzed Honda's strategy, operations, product development and corporate culture. The team and her successful efforts were profiled in The Critical Path, a book by Brock Yates.
In addition to her corporate experience, Gloria has nearly twenty years as a Girl Scout volunteer. She most recently served as a national board member for Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) and is a past board chair for the Metro Detroit Girl Scouts.
She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in business administration and accounting from California State University (Fullerton, CA) in 1981, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School (Boston, MA) in 1983.
A native of Los Angeles, Gloria now resides in Grand Rapids, MI with her husband. Their daughter, who was also a Girl Scout and a Mackinac Island Honor Scout, is currently a student at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. In her limited free time, Gloria enjoys gardening, watching auto races, salsa dancing and reading female detective mysteries. She is also a movie buff and a self-described “technology geek."
