General Motors expands board to 13 with appointment of UCLA medical school prof

GM names Calif. medical school professor to board

DETROIT — A California psychiatry professor has been appointed as the 13th board member at General Motors Co., the automaker said Tuesday.

The company said Dr. Cynthia Telles, who joins the expanded board, has been a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles medical school psychiatry department since 1986.

Telles, 57, is director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute Spanish-Speaking Psychosocial Clinic and serves on the boards of Kaiser Permanente and the Hispanic-owned Americas United Bank in California, GM said in a statement.

“The addition of Dr. Telles to GM’s board of directors ensures that the company will continue to benefit from a diversity of perspectives,” GM Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr. said in the statement.

Telles previously served on the boards of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. and Sanwa Bank in California. She also recently was named to the White House commission on Presidential Scholars.

GM board members are paid $200,000 a year to help guide the Detroit automaker.

The company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year freed of much of its debt, but it still owes money to the U.S. government, which kept it alive with $52 billion in aid.

Last week GM said it plans to repay the $6.7 billion loan portion of its debt by June. It already has repaid about $2 billion.

GM reported last week that it lost $4.3 billion between July 10, when it emerged from bankruptcy protection, and the end of last year. But the company has said it could be profitable for the full year in 2010.

After repaying the loans, GM would still owe the U.S. government $45.3 billion. That will be repaid when GM makes a public stock offering, which could come later this year.