Rodney Black is currently serving on the ITA Initiatives Foundation Board as Treasurer and serves on the Business School Advisory Board for Baker College.

Rodney is a retired General Motors executive with 34 years of experience in Manufacturing, Manufacturing Engineering, Engineering Operations & Systems and Operational Excellence. He has worked and lived in Michigan, Virginia, Tennessee, and Germany while with GM. In addition to his volunteer work, Rodney is currently working as an executive consultant in the automotive industry on a part-time basis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA, both from the University of Michigan.

While working for GM in Pontiac as Engineering Operations Director he was a key member of an executive leadership team that was charged with determining where to focus volunteer hours and available funding in the local community. ITA was chosen as a target school based on its mission and proven success of providing a quality STEM based education for students who demonstrated a desire to learn and excel. GM had historically struggled to find suitable home-based talent, so were forced to recruit heavily outside of the city. Rodney and other leaders reasoned that by focusing volunteer activities, financial resources and offering intern opportunities to ITA students and graduates in the GM Propulsion Systems Labs and in Product Engineering they would help the kids, grow the community, and assist GM and local industry find good talent close to home. Rodney served on the ITAIF Board while working for GM and chose to remain on the board after retirement as its Treasurer, recognizing the importance of the ITA mission.

Rodney and his wife currently live in Oxford, Michigan. They split their time between Michigan, Huntsville Alabama where their two sons, daughters-in-law and five grandchildren live, and Center Hill Lake in Smithville Tennessee where the family regularly gathers to play.