Celebrating Ursula Burns, the First Black Female CEO to Head a Fortune 500 Company
Photo Credit: CNN Money
Black History Month 2018 is nearly over. Today, let’s celebrate one more role model — Ursula Burns. You may know Ms. Burns as the former CEO of Xerox, a position she held from 2009 to December 2016.
Being a Fortune 500 CEO is an elite feat that’s remarkable for a woman in her own right — there are just 27 of them as of January 2018 — but even more so for a black woman. In fact, Burns was the first black woman to serve as a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Burns earned her master’s degree from New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and immediately began working at Xerox as an intern in 1980. She interned for about a year before becoming a full-time Xerox employee. It was a long journey from intern to CEO, one that took roughly 30 years with her first ten years spent in junior posts.
In 1991, she became an executive assistant to the chairman and CEO at the time. By 1999, she became vice president for global manufacturing. The next year, she became senior vice president of corporate strategic services, a position that had her working closely with Xerox’s future CEO, Anne Mulcahy, the woman she would later succeed (a female CEO replacing another female CEO in the Fortune 500 was another first).
In the early 2000s, she was promoted to president of business group operations before being named president of Xerox in 2007. By 2009, she had finally made it to the top of the top, being named CEO.
Over the years, Burns has been listed on Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women in the World list as well as Forbes’ World’s 20 Most Powerful Women in Business list (coming in at #5 at one point).
Burns is currently chairwoman for VEON and will be joining the board of Diageo, the beverage company behind Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnny Walker, Baileys, and other alcoholic beverage brands, in April 2018.
As another Black History Month comes to an end, we’re looking forward to what the future has in store as barriers continue to fall and glass ceilings begin to crack.