Susan Docherty President and Managing Director, Chevrolet Europe
Susan Docherty President and Managing Director, Chevrolet Europe
Susan Docherty has been the president and managing director of Chevrolet Europe since January 1, 2012. She is based in Zurich, Switzerland, and oversees the growth of Chevrolet and Cadillac across Western and Central Europe. She will remain a member of the GM Korea Board of Directors.
She has served as GM vice president, International Operations Sales, Marketing and Aftersales, since May 24, 2010, where she oversaw the growth of GM's brands across the region while harmonizing Chevrolet's brand standards and helping lead GM's marketing efforts into the digital age.
Docherty earlier served as GM vice president, U.S. Marketing, from March 1, 2010, where she served as the single point for marketing, with a focus on improving the positioning of the Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac brands and consumer consideration of GM vehicles.
On December 4, 2009, Docherty was named GM vice president, U.S. Sales, Service and Marketing, where she was responsible for improving year-over-year sales performance, reducing incentive spend, and improving residuals as well as marketing and advertising for the company's vehicle brands. She was also responsible for GM's relationship with dealers and numerous Dealer Councils. Prior to that role, she briefly served as vice president of U.S. Sales.
She was named general manager of Buick-Pontiac-GMC (BPG) on June 1, 2008. Docherty was responsible for the sales, service and marketing for BPG with nearly 2,000 dealers. In this role, she led the launch of the 2010 Buick LaCrosse and 2010 GMC Terrain.
Prior to that position, Docherty was the regional general manager for the General Motors Western Region, based in Thousand Oaks, California, beginning in March 2006. Docherty oversaw sales, service, distribution, marketing and parts for over 1,000 dealers in 16 states for all GM brands. Her areas of focus included the launch of the Chevrolet Malibu and Cadillac CTS, and development of a strategy to promote GM's efforts on "Gas Friendly to Gas Free" with hybrids, hydrogen, electric and ethanol-based alternative fuel vehicles.
Before her assignment in California, Docherty served as the general manager of HUMMER. She led the marketing, sales, distribution and dealer relations of HUMMER globally. Prior to HUMMER, she was marketing director for Cadillac, responsible for conceiving, creating and launching the Escalade family of sport utilities.
She went to Cadillac after working four years in Europe, where she led a turnaround and right-sizing effort as the marketing director for GM's European organization. Based in Rüsselsheim, Germany, she was responsible for selling in Europe vehicles manufactured in North America.
Prior to her turnaround assignment, she was based in Zurich, Switzerland, as manager for International Marketing and Communications. She played a leadership role introducing and implementing brand management across GM's European and Asia Pacific operations. Additionally, she built a strong understanding of the sales, service and marketing functions through 10 years of successive promotions in field and home office positions in Canada.
In 2004, Docherty graduated from Stanford University as a Sloan Fellow with distinction. A native of Canada, she also holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree in business administration with a major in marketing and a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in economics from the University of Windsor.