Kenneth Morris

Senior Vice President, Product Programs, Safety, Integration and Motorsports, General Motors
BSME 1989

You could say that Kenneth Morris was destined to be a corporate vice president. In his senior design class at Purdue, he was tasked with developing a system that could help NASA more efficiently and repeatably remove the hatch from a space capsule in the event of an emergency.

“I led our team, and at the wrap-up with NASA, our professor looked directly at me and said the results he had seen convinced him that some of us would end up being vice presidents for our companies someday.” This was an impressionable, meaningful moment.

That prediction came true in 2014 when he became vice president of global product integrity at General Motors (GM). Morris, who has been with the company for 35 years, joined GM directly after graduating from Purdue. In his first job as a brake systems engineer, it was clear to him that the mechanical engineering curriculum had trained him well. He remembers working through some issues with a car’s park brake system. In a discussion with the chief engineer, while the car was up on a hoist, he admitted to Morris that he didn’t understand how the system worked.

“I went back to my desk and drew up a free body diagram of the forces, and it actually got me a fair amount of recognition from him and the rest of the leadership!”

Over the years, Morris built his vehicle expertise as he climbed the corporate ladder. Passionate about vehicle development, he was the lead engineer for the original CTS, which marked Cadillac’s return to rear-wheel drive vehicles. During this time, he initiated GM North America’s usage of the famed Nürburgring motorsports complex in Germany for testing. He has held GM’s highest driving certification since 1998, accumulating more than 2,000 laps on the Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit, as well as thousands of development laps at Virginia International Raceway, Road Atlanta and Road America.

Since 2014, he has been promoted to three other vice president roles — most recently as senior vice president of GM’s product programs, the integration of these product programs as a vehicle system, product safety, and GM’s motorsports. He is one of only 20 GM corporate officers and serves as chairman of the board of GM Defense.

Morris gives back to his alma mater as a member of the Purdue Mechanical Engineering Advisory Council and served on the Purdue Engineering Advisory Council for three years. He has spoken at several Society of Automotive Engineers engagements and hosted President Mung Chiang and the Michigan Alumni Group at the GM Heritage Center.  In 2017, he was awarded the School of Mechanical Engineering’s Outstanding Alumni Award.

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