"We Got You"

Imagine walking into a new leadership role on day one, ready to build something, and having two people hand you their keys and walk out before you even sat down.

That's exactly what happened to Carol Kitts on her first day as service manager at a Nissan dealership. She recognized two of the employees waiting for her, a service advisor and a parts manager she'd worked with before at a different store. In her mind, that familiarity should have made things easier. Instead, they quit on the spot, refusing to work for a female service manager.

She held herself together in front of a team that was watching to see what she'd do next. Don't cry. It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay.

Then something shifted. Other advisors stepped forward. They'd heard about her reputation. They were excited she was there. "We got you," they told her.

Two people had just made it clear they didn't think Carol belonged in that role. But this isn't really a story about the ones who walked away. It's about the ones who stayed, and what Carol built with them once she stopped trying to prove herself to people who'd already left the room.

Finding Her Place in Automotive

Carol's path into the industry started at 18 or 19, working at what used to be Checker Auto Parts. A dealership GM who came in as a customer noticed something in her and suggested she'd be great as a salesperson. Curious but cautious, she kept her parts store job while she tried it out at a Kia dealership. She sold three cars on her first day.

Yep. That caught my attention too.

Eventually she moved to a Toyota store after hearing about its culture and people, and left the parts store behind for good. She loved sales, the customers, the team. Then 2008 hit. With the market crashing and sales income swinging wildly, Carol went looking for something steadier. Her team suggested service.

"I found my passion there," she says. "Absolutely love service."

She started as a service advisor and worked her way up through assistant manager and beyond, spending almost 11 years at that Toyota store. Along the way, a pattern emerged that would define her career: people who recognized her potential before she fully saw it herself. Carol credits the mentors at that dealership with watching her grow and pushing her toward the next level, again and again.

The People Who Stayed

By the time Carol walked into that Nissan service department, she wasn't new to the industry. She'd earned her stripes through years in service and built a strong reputation for CSI. None of that stopped two former colleagues from quitting the moment they learned a woman would be running the department, a scenario plenty of women in automotive will recognize even if the details differ.

In that moment, Carol made a decision. "I don't care how hard I have to work. I don't care how much I have to work," she told herself. "I'm going to level up this store."

The department itself needed almost as much rebuilding as the team's confidence in her. Keys were missing. Cars were scattered without a clear system. Processes were broken across the board. So Carol started from the ground up. She implemented daily huddle meetings with her advisors. She walked back to the technician bay, brought breakfast, and sat down to build relationships and gather ideas instead of just handing down directives.

"They gave it all for me," Carol says of the team that stayed. "They gave it all."

A major Nissan airbag-sensor recall tested that new foundation almost immediately, requiring the team to manage a flood of customer appointments alongside every car already on the lot. They handled it together, synchronized, each person doing their part. Within the first year, the store climbed to the top three in the district for service sales and returned to the top spot for CSI.

What could have become a story about rejection turned into something else entirely: a demonstration of what a team can build once its people decide to believe in each other. Carol still holds onto friendships from that department today.

When Other People Believe Before You Do

Nissan wasn't the last time Carol had to grow into her own confidence. A move into a performance manager role with Cox Automotive's Xtime team changed the shape of the work entirely, trading face-to-face relationship building inside one dealership for coaching close to 200 dealerships at once, often over the phone. The training alone was intense, built around mock calls where a colleague played the role of a difficult GM just to see how she'd hold up. She wondered, honestly, whether she was cut out for it.

Then she started actually working with dealerships and realized she already had what the job required. "It's all in your mind," she says now. "I had this knowledge. I work at the stores. I build teams. I know what works, what doesn't work, and it's just showing them."

A bigger test of that same question came later, when Carol found herself circling the idea of applying for a GM position without actually doing it. She kept quiet about it until she mentioned it to one of her mentors. His response wasn't gentle encouragement. It was a direct challenge, one question after another: Did she have the skills? Did she care about the work? Was she a hard worker? Hadn't she already been through GM school?

"I had these people fully believing in me," Carol says, "and it's like, why am I not believing in myself?"

She applied. She got it. And she walked away with something more durable than a title: "I don't really have to prove anything to anyone. I know who I am and what I bring to the table."

Building the Next Chapter Around What She Loves

Carol's career kept climbing from there: corporate trainer, fixed operations director, BDC oversight as her company grew from three stores to thirteen, GM school, and eventually an open point in Fairfield, California, that she moved across the country alone to launch.

But achievement alone stopped being enough. Carol had plenty to show for her work, yet she wasn't fully happy, and she started asking what was missing. "I need to start truly living my life," she realized, "not just working."

Importantly, the answer wasn't to leave automotive behind. It was to return, more intentionally, to the part of the job she loved most. "Fixed ops is my baby," she says simply.

Carol describes praying about what came next, not knowing the shape of it yet. Then a former dealership contact called. Then another opportunity came. Then another. She reads those calls as God laying out her next steps, one at a time, while recognizing that each one still required her to say yes. That path became Carol Kitts Consulting, her own fixed operations business.

Redefining Success

Ask Carol what success looks like now, and the answer isn't a title or a number anymore. It's contentment. It's happiness.

Her business matters, but it isn't the whole picture. Success today includes owning her own time, staying involved in her community, supporting other women, and doing nonprofit work alongside the client relationships she's built.

"It's my entire life coming together into one piece," she says.

Becoming One of the People Who Stays

After more than 20 years in the industry, Carol's answer to what she wants to give back is immediate: she wants to help elevate other women in automotive.

She knows firsthand what a strong mentor can change, because she had several throughout her career, people who helped her see capabilities she hadn't fully claimed for herself yet. Now she tries to do the same. "I try my best to really help them see their value," she says.

She talks about coaching conversations, about helping women reach the next level, and about the thing she keeps coming back to: helping them believe in themselves and what they bring to the table. "It's still a very much male-driven industry," she says, "even though we're little by little moving, like, 1% at a time."

Her advice to any woman weighing a promotion, a leadership role, or a career change she doesn't feel ready for is direct: cancel the outside noise, know that you have what it takes, and say yes anyway. "The worst thing that can happen is you don't get it," she says. "But you tried."

Full Circle

Years ago, Carol Kitts stood in a service department trying not to cry after two people walked out on her. The ones who stayed told her, "We got you." Mentors kept doing versions of that same thing throughout her career, seeing capability in her before she fully saw it in herself.

Eventually, she learned to say it herself: "I know who I am and what I bring to the table."

Now she wants to help other women get there too. Sometimes saying yes to the next opportunity starts with believing you belong in the room. And sometimes, before you can believe it for yourself, it helps to have someone standing beside you who already does.

Sometimes the people who stay change the story.

Interested in having someone in your corner as you navigate your own automotive career? Learn more about the Women In Automotive mentorship program.