Ursula Burns, an American business executive.
- Currently Burns is the Chairwoman of VEON, a multinational telecommunication service. She is also a senior advisor to Teneo, an international C-suite advisory firm and investment banking platform. With plans in 2018 to join the board of Uber and the beverage company, Diageo, Burns shows no signs of slowing down.
- She was the former CEO and Chairman of Xerox, from 2009-2017, making her the first black woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company.
- Her resume doesn’t stop there, she was a leader of the STEM program of the White House from 2009 to 2016, as well as the head of the President’s Export Council from 2015 to 2016.
- She grew up in New York City housing projects, and went on to earn her Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from New York University Tandon School of Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Columbia University a year later. Since then, she has received additional honorary degrees from 9 universities.
- Burns started at Xerox in 1980 as an intern, which eventually led to an entry-level engineering job.
- In 2015, as CEO, she helped Xerox generate $18 billion in revenue.
“I realized I was more convincing to myself and to the people who were listening when I actually said what I thought, versus what I thought people wanted to hear me say.”
-Ursula Burns