Mike Smitka

Emeritus Professor of Economics at Washington & Lee University

Mike Smitka joins us at TU-Automotive Detroit 2020 as a chairperson. 

Mike Smitka is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Washington and Lee University, where for 30+ years he taught courses on the Japanese and Chinese economies and ran a seminar on the global auto industry. He has followed the automotive since since his Yale PhD research, which was on the supplier-customer relationship in Japan. For the past 26 years he has been a judge for the Automotive News PACE awards, which recognize supplier innovations, and is on the steering committee of the GERPISA auto industry research network. He has written two books on the auto industry, the most recent co-authored with Peter Warrian.