Greening GM
10/02/08 — In the fall of 1975, a young General Motors engineer named Larry Burns loaded up his customized Chevy and headed to Berkeley. The Michigan native came west for doctoral studies in transportation engineering. “It's an area that has served me quite well,” he says. Today, Burns is in charge of next-generation cars and other leading-edge technology for the world's largest automaker. “I wake up every day focused on reinventing the automobile,” he says. A 2007 New York Times article called him “the most visible executive at the American auto companies on green issues.”