Marissa West leads GM Canada at a pivotal time, as the automotive industry shifts to electrification. In this role, Marissa’s focus is supporting customers, dealers and employees as GM prepares for an all-electric future. Among Marissa’s key priorities are leveraging GM’s Canadian Technical Centre as a hotbed of innovation, and continuing to improve gender equity, diversity, and accessibility in the workplace and in GM’s vehicles.

In the 20 years she’s worked at GM, Marissa has held a variety of engineering roles in multiple departments. Most recently, Marissa was Executive Chief Engineer for GM’s Global Mid-Size Truck and Medium-Duty Truck programs. Before that, she was the Chief Engineer for the Next Generation Full-Size Truck programs, for which her team launched the 2020 GMC Sierra HD and the Chevrolet Silverado HD, two of GM’s best-selling vehicles.

To support GM’s vision of inclusive transportation, Marissa formed GM’s Accessibility Center of Excellence, which works across the entire organization using technology and innovation to unlock barriers to mobility.

Marissa is passionate about encouraging girls and underrepresented minorities to pursue education and careers in STEM. She sits on the Advisory Committee for the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan and frequently participates in various panels on STEM education and outreach to youth and minorities, including through partnerships with local highschools.

In 2018 Marissa was nominated for a Society of Women Engineers (SWE) award for “Advocating in Women in Engineering”.

She is an avid proponent of improving diversity representation in her field and in 2022 she was a collaborating author with the Society of Engineers (SAE) International on a book entitled “Doing the Heavy Lifting: Insights from Women Leading the Commercial Vehicle Industry”.

Marissa’s community efforts often involve her children, including coaching her daughter’s cross-country team and running STEM segments for the Girl Scouts.

Marissa holds a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University. Additionally, she has completed Positive Leadership and Design Thinking executive training through the University of Michigan and the Transformational Leadership Executive Education Program at Stanford.

She lives in Toronto with her husband Bob and their four children.