ANALYSIS: Profile - Harris: GM’s internal combustion engine/Steve Harris runs one of the largest PR departments in the world at General Motors, but he still finds time to visit his mother every week. That’s just the kind of guy he is. John

Back in the late 1960s, California native Steve Harris was a journalism student at the University of Southern California, working toward a career in newspapers. But as graduation neared, he heard about a two-year program at General Motors that would allow him to travel the world. Two years of being paid to see the sights sounded good, so he took the job thinking he’d save enough money to buy a small-town newspaper and pursue his reporting dreams. That’s not quite the way it worked out.