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MPWMary Barra

GM CEO Mary Barra joins the Emmys’ #SmartGirlsAsk Twitter movement

Kristen Bellstrom
By
Kristen Bellstrom
Kristen Bellstrom
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Kristen Bellstrom
By
Kristen Bellstrom
Kristen Bellstrom
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September 20, 2015, 5:13 PM ET
Photograph by Ben Baker for Fortune

General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Fortune‘s Most Powerful Woman of 2015, is blossoming into a social media maven.

First, Barra joined the #ILookLikeAnEngineer tweetstorm. Then, with some encouragement from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Barra got on Facebook. Now, she’s become one of the few CEOs to join the #SmartGirlsAsk movement.

#STEM education is vital. My #SmartGirlsAsk question: If you could build or invent anything, what would it be? https://t.co/xSDLDsd9Gc

— Mary Barra (@mtbarra) September 19, 2015

The hashtag is the brainchild actor and comedian Amy Poehler, who, just in time for Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards, teamed up with the Television Academy to launch a social campaign designed to call attention to vapid questions usually asked of female celebs on the red carpet. Actors, directors, showrunners and fans quickly got on board, tweeting a stream of smart, provocative questions for Emmy attendees. Plenty of big names—including Shondaland honcho Shonda Rhimes, journalist Katie Couric and, yes, Hillary Clinton—have also contributed queries.

Barra’s #SmartGirlsAsk question—”If you could build or invent anything, what would it be?”—seems appropriate from the head of a Fortune 500 automaker, STEM proponent and engineer. But will it be one of the queries that makes it to the red carpet? We’ll have watch and see.

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Kristen Bellstrom
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