Kathleen Ligocki is still happy to work in the automotive industry, even with the current downturn.

Ligocki, who graduated from Indiana University Kokomo in 1978, is CEO of GS Motors, based in Mexico, and has worked in the automotive industry for 30 years.

This year, she became the first-ever graduate of an IU regional campus chosen for the university’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award, the university’s highest honor reserved solely for its alumni.

She previously received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the IU Kokomo Alumni Association and an honorary Ph.D. from IU Kokomo.

She was selected for outstanding career achievements and significant contributions to her community, state and IU.

Ligocki has held executive positions at United Technologies Automotive, Ford Motor Co. and Tower Automotive. She is a founding member of the Women’s Leadership Forum and a director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico. Ligocki serves as a mentor in the Innovation Symposium, a course for outstanding students at IU Kokomo.

Ligocki said she’s glad she attended a regional campus, saying it’s a different experience than going to a big residential campus.

“The idea you’d be personal friends with so many of your professors after 30 years, most people can’t say that. I can really say some of my professors at IU Kokomo deeply influenced the direction of my life”

Ligocki said in her current job, she is a long-term consultant with a Mexican conglomerate that is like a combination of Best Buy and an ABC Warehouse, targeted at Mexico’s emerging middle class.

She said the store started with televisions and furniture, then expanded into tires and motorcycles. A few years ago, it got into automobile sales, thinking it would be easy, then found it was harder than expected and hired her to help.

She plans to be in Mexico through the end of the year to build a local management team before returning to Detroit.

Ligocki said she hadn’t planned to work in the automotive industry. After she graduated from Haworth High School in 1974, she was a liberal arts undergraduate, with plans to be a lawyer.

She worked a series of jobs after she completed her degree at IU Kokomo, but was not making enough money to pay for graduate school.

Despite having told her father she would never work in the car business, Ligocki interviewed for and was hired as a foreman at Plant 9 at Delco, by a human resources manager who said “I don’t know why the hell you’d want a job like this,” but he needed to hire “a diversity candidate who is unemployable, and that’s you.”

She took the job planning to work two years, and has stayed in manufacturing since that time.

“You either love manufacturing or you hate it. You either thrive on working with all the people and the pressure and the chaos, or you want to do something else. I fell in love with it. I kept thinking I was going to leave and do something else. Once you’re in the car business, it’s in your blood. You can’t get out.”

Despite the current troubles in the car business, she believes there will still be a car industry, and encourages people to consider careers in the industry.

“I wouldn’t be afraid at all. The car business, every 10 years, goes through some kind of restructuring. The companies that are restructuring now will be healthy in a couple of years if they do the right thing.”

She said people interested in working in the car industry should not expect to find the traditional factory job right out of high school.

“You need to go to college. It’s great if your parents and grandparents were able to have great lives making money in a factory [but] the unskilled well-paid jobs are going to continue to decline. This generation of kids needs to have a college education and they need to commit to lifelong learning.”

• Danielle Rush is the Kokomo Tribune education reporter. She can be reached at (765) 454-8585 or danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com.