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Graham 4th-Grader Writes General Motors' CEO Who Responds With Letter, Model Corvette

For a class assignment, the E.M. Holt 4th-grader had to write a letter to an important public figure.

GRAHAM, N.C. – An Alamance County 10-year-old girl is all smiles after knocking a class project out of the park.

Students at E.M. Holt Elementary were given a class assignment to write a public figure. If you had to guess, you're probably thinking the students chose celebrities. Mainly because, in today’s era of influencers and social media, little girls all over the world look up to celebrities and models.

However, when 4th-grader Brianna White decided to write her letter to an important public figure, she went through the glass ceiling.

With a little help from her father, Chris White, Brianna decided to write her letter to the first woman CEO of a major automaker, Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors (GM).

RELATED: Women CEOs still a rarity, but pay tops that of men

“[The] teacher asked that we help find a famous person or CEO of a company, or someone to write to, to try to get a response from,” said White.

“I showed it to my teacher and we started writing a rough draft,” Brianna said . “Then we put it in the official letter, and then we sent it.”

That simple hand-written letter changed 10-year-old Brianna White’s life and touched the CEO's heart.

Her father, who works for a local Chevrolet dealership, thought the GM CEO could be a good role model for his daughter.

“Being a woman, and being a CEO and being the first female CEO of the big automakers in Detroit, Michigan, I knew she could relate to her,” White explained. “And that one day, if she kept on heading in the right path and doing well in school like she’s doing, that she could do something like it was well.”

After mailing the letter to Detroit, Brianna received a personalized response from Barra and a model of a silver Corvette.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear at all because my dad said if you got a letter back it would be big,” she added.

It was much more than the form letter the 10-year-old expected.

“As she was reading it, you could tell,” White said. “She smiles a certain way and when she creates those dimples in her cheeks, it’s important!”

“I was like ‘Oh, my gosh!’” the 10-year-old remembered. “I was happy.”

Brianna’s dad was right: not only does his daughter hope to become a businesswoman someday, but also hopes her first car will be a GM vehicle… A Corvette, perhaps?

“I wanna become like a business owner of something,” she added. “I wanna be something like her one day.

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