31 January 2011

Ursula Burns’ Path to Success in the Fortune 500

Ursula Burns speaks at the World Innovation Forum in New York City in June 2010.

By Mark Trainer
Staff Writer

Washington — There are four African Americans serving as chief executives in the Fortune 500, Fortune magazine’s ranking of the top U.S. companies. Among this small group of trailblazers, Ursula Burns of Xerox Corporation has the distinction of being the only black female to serve as the chief executive of a Fortune 500 company.

Burns spent her childhood in the Baruch Houses, a low-income public housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. “[My mother was] a single woman raising three kids on next to nothing who showed me courage and gave me inner strength,” Burns said. In 2009 she told a YWCA gathering, “I can still hear her telling me, ‘Circumstances don’t define anyone.’ She used to say to me all the time, ‘Where you are is not who you are. Where you are is not who you are.’”

During the journey from where Ursula Burns was to who she is now, she leaned heavily on this advice and followed her own instincts even when they clashed with the prevailing advice.

When teachers in her Catholic high school steered her toward a traditional career in nursing, the teenage Burns went to the library instead and looked up the top-paying fields in math and science, the areas in which she excelled. This research led her to mechanical engineering by way of Polytechnic Institute of New York and graduate school at Columbia University. While at Columbia, Burns undertook a summer internship at Xerox, the beginning of her long tenure with the Connecticut-based document systems company.

“I joined Xerox as an engineering intern and never really had my sights on anything beyond the engineering side of the business,” said Burns, who leads a company that had revenue of $22 billion in 2010. Her first years with Xerox saw her work rewarded with promotion to middle management. “I was very content with my career choice, comfortable with what I knew and what I was learning … until a chance encounter with a Xerox executive steered me in a new direction.”

In 1990, asked by the vice president of marketing and customer operations to participate in a teamwork panel, Burns took offense at another participant’s opinions on women in management positions and vehemently expressed her disapproval. The vice president, Waylon Hicks, appreciated her point of view.

Ursula Burns serves as vice chair of the President's Export Council.

“My boldness caught [Hicks’] attention. He asked to meet with me and later offered me a position as his executive assistant — a mentoring opportunity to work side-by-side with him to better understand how the business is run,” she said.

Not long after that, she became executive assistant for Xerox’s then-chief executive officer (CEO) Paul Allaire, “getting an up close and hands-on feel for the day-to-day activities of senior-level management. From there I saw a path for me in management that took me outside my comfort zone but gave me a whole new sense of confidence in the value I could bring to the business.”

Her next step was vice president and general manager of Xerox’s color and facsimile division and vice president of Corporate Strategic Services. In 2007, she was named president and, in 2009, then-CEO Anne Mulcahy announced Burns as her successor, the first black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

What has set Burns apart from many other top executives is her professional trajectory: a strong foundation in mechanical engineering rather than the more usual business-school track. “While I transitioned into management, my engineering background was and continues to be the foundation of everything I do at Xerox,” Burns said, “from leading product development to understanding how to make technology and our services work better and smarter for our customers.”

Christopher Metzler points to Xerox’s recognition of the breadth of Burns’ experience within the company as a good model for other companies appointing CEOs. Metzler is an associate dean for human resources at Georgetown University in Washington who has provided advice to multinational corporations on discrimination and diversity. “If we had a rigorous process that said, ‘In order to be a successful CEO, you must have the following 10 competencies,’ and if we developed those competencies to begin with, then we’d have a deeper bench from which to choose,” Meltzer said.

Too many companies, he believes, choose a CEO based on a vague idea of whom the board feels comfortable with, rather than who is most qualified, making for a less diverse and less well-trained selection. The decision to promote Ursula Burns was different. “Ann [Mulcahy], who was the CEO at Xerox, basically said, ‘Okay, I’m comfortable with Ursula because —’ and she was able to list what the ‘because’ was: She’s run a business unit. And not only has she run a business unit, she’s run it successfully. She understands how the organization functions. What Ann did, which is unlike what so many other CEOs do, is to articulate in business language what this ‘comfort’ is,” Meltzer said.

“I’m known for being frank and speaking my mind,” Burns said. “That’s a good thing as long as I’m also spending time to listen. The critical component is the alignment of people around a common set of objectives. Diversity is a key factor to this strategy. We’ve created an inclusive environment where everyone is given the chance to learn, to lead, to embrace challenges and to succeed.”

While she singles out her mother as the predominant role model in her personal development, she gives the example of Vernon Jordan — the lawyer, civil rights activist and former presidential adviser — as a role model in her professional life. “He has shown that wisdom, respect and patience can be powerful. We all have people like this in our lives. These relationships shape our existence — and they remind me that, in so many respects, I truly am my race and my gender. There is no denying either. They define my heritage.”

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)