As the youngest of four siblings, Kim Adams House was the one who held the flashlight for her father — sending light into tight spaces while he worked on his cars. “My father was the consummate handyman, and cars were no different,” House said, “but he had a special love for autos. He took incredible pride in his cars and maintained them meticulously.
“So I came by my passion for the auto industry authentically,” said House, who spent 10 years as head of Jeep advertising and now is head of licensing, merchandising and multicultural marketing for all brands at Stellantis.
She said her parents were pivotal to her personal growth. “My mother was strong, and courageous,” she said, “and my father never took anything for granted, and never took himself too seriously. He gave me the gift of humility. But they both gave us kids the belief that we could do anything.”
Detroit-born and bred, House earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan, then an MBA from George Washington University. “I worked a bit elsewhere but knew my roots were here in Detroit, and I found my way back,” she said.
She started her auto career with a stint in finance and then marketing at General Motors, where she began to notice Chrysler’s vehicles. Her appreciation for the company’s designs “led me to take a serious look at the company,” she said. She landed an interview and was hired as brand manager for the Jeep Wrangler in 1999.
At that time, there were few women and people of color in the industry’s brand management. “I remember being in the midst of many engineers, who called me the ‘Jeep Queen,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. Those engineers took her off-roading in the Utah mountains in Jeeps. “I would be told to climb one mountain and do it — only to be told I was doing another,” she said.
House spent nearly two decades on the Jeep team. “I’m proud that I was part of the leadership team that framed the overall narrative and took the brand’s sales from 300,000 units in 2009 to 1.8 million globally. That was not a single person responsible but a real team effort. We had to be fearless in what we were doing and in the process we shaped the narrative of one of the iconic brands in the world.”
House was a key player when Jeep was named Marketer of the Year in 2011 by Advertising Age, and when its “Portraits” commercial won the Super Clio Award for the best ad in the 2016 Super Bowl telecast. She was head of advertising when the brand hired a relatively new band, X Ambassadors, and used its song “Renegades” to help introduce the Jeep Renegade in 2015. “It was so fun when the vehicle reached No. 1 in its segment at the same time the song hit No. 1 on the charts,” she said.
“During my career on Jeep, one of the things we worked on was dimensionalizing the brand—allowing a brand like Jeep to resonate around the world, across countries and ethnicities. It was our mantra to consumers: We don’t make Jeep, you do.”
House said she is a living example of the value of diversity. “Of course, it wasn’t spoken in the same context back then. But I entered the doors of many conference rooms where I knew I would be the only black person. But still, that door was open for me,” she said. “For my part, I had to make the commitment to remain in the room where the decisions were made.”
Was it difficult? House, who exudes positivity, only said, “Any time you are in a very competitive environment — and the auto industry is a very competitive industry — for sure there are going to be challenges.”
When she mentors young people, House said, “I tell them, ‘If you’re here just to talk about your career, you’re knocking on the wrong door.’ You have to take care of yourself and balance your physical, spiritual and emotional self, too.”
She stresses the importance of “your personal brand,” the need to embrace failure and finding a passion to commit to.
“You have to find your voice,” she said. “Dare to be different; don’t just color between the lines or live in the center of the bell curve. Remember it’s OK to have the dissenting voice; and often when you are a minority, you are going to be the dissenting voice. It’s those many voices and perspectives that provide new and different thinking based on their life experiences. There is no way one person’s perspective can represent the totality of the human experience. We know diverse companies are richer.”
“Diverse workplaces create companies that can change the world.”
