Hass Khalife, 34

Global Director, Marketing Technology Strategy and Solutions

General Motors Co., Detroit

California), but my wife and I decided to move home to raise our kids and be closer to our families.”

In March 2022, Khalife joined Detroitbased General Motors Co., where he works at the automaker’s Warren Technical Center as global director, marketing technology strategy and solutions. Today, the former entrepreneur feels “like a kid working in a candy shop,” because in addition to assisting with new product launches, he and his 50-person team create custom digital content for individual customers.

“We personalize a customer’s experience with one of our apps, in emails, and on our websites,” says Khalife, who grew up in a family of engineers, many of whom worked for GM. “Based on your past history, we’ll send you content based on your age, driving habits, preferences, and other relevant information. You may even see a different home page than other people — again, based on your preferences.”

By modernizing the way GM markets to its customers in a privacy-first, personalized, and real-time manner, Khalife and his team “deliver personalized content that’s intentional, so it gives you a reason to engage with us.”

Mario Kiezi, 31

Employees: 167,000 • Revenue: $156.7B College: University of Michigan–Dearborn

Mario Kiezi has many memories of the days when, as a 10-year-old, he would roam the corridors of the 1.5 million-square-foot Oakland Mall at 14 Mile and John R roads in Troy. His family owned an ice cream store in the mall in the early 2000s.

Kiezi’s acquisition of Oakland Mall last spring capped his career.

“We didn’t have babysitters, so I went to work with our family after school,” Kiezi recalls of his early days at the mall. “I would wander around Oakland Mall seeing the businesses, arcades, and fun places. I observed my family do business.”

Kiezi, founder and president of MKiezi Investments in Troy, says those experiences sparked his early interest in retail.

“People shopping for clothes in the mall is still viable, but it isn’t the future,” he asserts. “The future is sensory entertainment and family experiences. I promised myself I would wait one year before making any major decisions, so I could learn and understand the property and our guests.”

One year later, in March, he unveiled Choco Town, a chocolate-themed village wonderland — and the first of the sensory entertaining concepts he plans to introduce. It fills part of the mall’s former Sears space.

“When we opened it, I was kind of nervous. I didn’t know if people would come or not,” he says. “Then l was amazed to see families and kids running in the mall, running to the Sears entrance — such joy. I realized how easy it is in that location to bring families back to the mall, so my whole emphasis now is to bring in entertainment and sensory entertainment for families.”

Kiezi says culling ideas from his 7,000 social media followers is part of his strategy. “Some of (their suggestions) will be implemented into the mall,” he says. “Sometimes those ideas lead to further research, and we tweak them, and then we’ll implement them in the mall.”

Kiezi says he enjoys connecting with young people on social media.

“I often go live for up to two hours, and answer rapid-fire questions. I get 5,000 people who show up in a two-hour period,” he says. “You’d be surprised what a Shark Tank culture there is in the community. Today’s kids, they don’t want to be Spiderman. They want to be a businessman.”

Norm Sinclair

Nick Leja takes business diversification seriously, and it shows in his approach to owning and operating franchise businesses. The Novi resident is a full or partial owner in Detroit-area franchises of Disc Replay, Plato’s Closet, My Salon Suite, European Wax Center, and Superior Fence and Rail.

It’s quite the array of enterprises. Whereas Disc Replay buys and sells video games, movies, and electronics, Plato’s Closet deals in resale clothing and accessories for teens and young adults. My Salon Suite and European Wax Center are more focused on personal pampering for customers, and Superior Fence and Rail, as the name suggests, is in a different realm entirely.

Despite the differences, there’s a common theme among the enterprises. “I like learning to run different companies and different styles,” Leja says. “With Superior Fence and Rail, everything we’d done before was brick-and-mortar retail, so I wanted the challenge of running more of a service-type business.”

He also gravitates to businesses some would characterize as boring. “I look for the kinds of businesses that aren’t super flashy and trendy,” Leja says. “While

Frankie something like crypto, which is very trendy, might come and go, people are still going to need fences 10 years to 20 years from now.”

His various business ventures have helped Leja develop a philosophy about management that has to do with what kinds of employees deserve his attention.

“It used to be, if I had a team of people who were rowers — employees who were working to move the ship forward, who come to work and have a positive atti-tude — I used to kind of leave them alone,” Leja says. “Then there are the employees who … come to work and spread problems. I used to spend all my time trying to motivate them, and it’s a waste of time. It’s very hard to motivate them, and my rowers were disenchanted.”

Now he takes the opposite approach, spending more time paying attention to the positive employees. It works so well that his management philosophy has inspired two books: a short story called “The Dark Fairy,” which was published in 2022 and teaches individuals and teams how to be heard and understood, and the upcoming “Journey to Enya: A Story About Managing Teams.”

Dan Calabrese