Power. It transforms industries, moves organizations forward, and breathes life into new ideas. It’s why diversity at the highest rungs of an organization is so important to the growth and evolution of industry. A Harris Interactive survey conducted for The Executive Leadership Council in 2008 of 150 senior corporate executives showed that 82% of them believe that having minorities in senior roles is good for business, and 75% believe that diversity at that level also drives innovation. Unfortunately, access to such power has eluded many women in corporate business–women who undoubtedly have the talent and the training, but perhaps missed important cues, operated in isolation, or lacked the necessary mentorship and sponsorship to help highlight their achievements. These challenges, among others, have kept black female representation to a mere 1% of C-suite executives and corporate officers.
The watershed event in July 2009, however, may have signaled the beginning of a new era. Ursula M. Burns was named CEO of Xerox Corp., becoming not only the first African American woman to run one of the largest publicly traded companies, but also being placed among the world’s most influential chief executives, male or female.
Now Burns has achieved another distinction. She headlines Black Enterprise’s latest roster of movers and shakers: the 75 Most Powerful Women in Business. Although in a class by herself, Burns is in good company with top corporate executives who control billion-dollar budgets and manage thousands of employees at leading public and private companies, as well as BE 100s CEOs who lead some of the nation’s largest black-owned businesses. As such, the women featured on the following pages have done more than shatter ceilings–glass and concrete–in male-dominated industries. These executives and entrepreneurs are positioned to change global commerce, from revolutionizing technology and media to transforming retail and finance. Their emergence represents the dawning of a new day.
When Ursula M. Burns was promoted to senior vice president at Norwalk, Connecticut-based Xerox Corp. in 2000, she received a grave diagnosis from her doctor. He told her to enjoy the new position because it was going to be temporary. “You’re going to kill yourself,†he warned the overweight, out-of-shape executive. Recalling her death sentence, Burns remarked, “He didn’t have to say it twice.†Immediately, she changed her diet and started running, eventually becoming competitive enough to race in 5K runs.
Burns is quite adept at fixing problems and changing the course of dire situations. An engineer by training, she thrives on such challenges. Over the last two decades, she developed a reputation at the
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS! Join us for the landmark 10th Annual Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit hosted by State Farm, March 2—4, 2015, at Fort Lauderdale Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Fort Lauderdale, FL. This exciting, one-of-a-kind executive leadership summit is designed to train, equip and encourage women to become industry leaders, learn career strategies, and discover proven work—life balance techniques. Register Now! https://blackenterprise.com/wps
company as a technologically focused, customer-oriented change agent. And she needed to draw on those skills when Xerox faced its own life-and-death struggle.
In May 2000, then-CEO Richard Thoman, the first “outsider†to head the organization, was forced to retire after a 14-month tenure that resulted in a fourth quarter profit drop of 52%. Stock prices had fallen 60%. The company had already cut 10,000 jobs since 1998 and predicted another 5,200 layoffs. When retired CEO Paul Allaire reclaimed the position, he promoted Human Resources Chief Anne M. Mulcahy to president and COO and Burns to senior vice president of corporate strategic services, managing the massive manufacturing and supplier chain operations. The stage was set for both women to rise to unprecedented levels of power.
In August 2001, Mulcahy was installed as CEO and Burns’ role was expanded to include global research and product development. But as sales continued to slide and the stock price nosedived 75%–from its high of $64 a share to $7 a share–their focus was to stop the hemorrhaging. Burns was charged with reducing costs by a staggering $2 billion in operations, including $200 million in manufacturing. “[Anne] had so many other things to focus on. The employee base was nervous, our customers were really unhappy, our investors were panicking. While she was focusing on other things, she just gave me a mandate to fix this thing.â€
By September of that year, Burns was named president of worldwide business services. By October, she had outsourced their largest manufacturing projects to Singapore-based Flextronics International, breaking with corporate culture. In the end, 5,000 jobs were transferred to Flextronics, and 1,000 were cut. Analysts applauded company executions and reported the shift would shave roughly $250 million in costs and provide flexibility to develop other products.
It was this innovative, take-no-prisoners approach that propelled her rapid ascent. As president of business group operations, she managed day-to-day operations and developed competitive new platforms such as the DocuColor iGem3 Digital Production Press, an enhanced, environmentally friendly business copier. By 2007 she was named president of the entire company, responsible for marketing, human resources, IT, corporate strategy, and global operations. The company’s revenues and share price rose in lockstep with each advancement. In fact, by October 2007, Xerox was able
to reinstate its quarterly dividend payout to shareholders for the first time in more than six years. That same year, Burns was also elected to Xerox’s board of directors, a clear sign she was the heir apparent to the chief executive.
In July 2009, she achieved a business milestone: Burns, 51, became the first African American woman to hold the position of CEO at an S&P 100 corporation, a $17.8 billion giant
with operations in more than 160 countries and a payroll of 57,000 employees. What made her appointment even more momentous is the transition represented the first time a female executive was replaced by another woman at the highest corporate level.Now, her focus is building the company into an indomitable force in the $132 billion business technology market through a combination of acquisition and organic growth. And judging by her latest moves, there’s no question that Burns will demonstrate why she is one of the most powerful CEOs on the planet.
Making All the Right Connections
For someone who didn’t plan for such ascension, Burns’ timing has been impeccable. Several factors–including her technical expertise–helped position Burns, says Katherine Giscombe, vice president of Women of Color Research for Catalyst, an advocacy organization for the advancement of women in business. “Her mechanical engineering background has been key,†she maintains. “This type of technical degree opens the door to a broader set of career opportunities.â€
Burns agrees. “One of the things that Xerox taught me was that it was really important to be great at something, for two reasons,†she explains. “People have to actually know that you can do something; you earn the position of being a generalist by being a really good specialist, an individual contributor. The other is the amount of things that get thrown at you in a day when you lead an organization, you have to have a place that you can rest a bit. And for me it happens to be in engineering and in labs.â€
Giscombe also notes the number of roles Burns played within the organization provided her with an intimate understanding of Xerox’s broad range of business operations. Mulcahy’s mentorship proved vital to her rise as well. Says Ancella B. Livers, executive director of the Institute for Leadership Development & Research at The Executive Leadership Council: “Ursula had a great strategic
relationship with Anne Mulcahy. She had an opportunity to be a part of important business conversations, to be seen as a strategic partner. That’s huge.â€
Burns confirms that part of Mulcahy’s strength was in orchestration. “[I] was totally empowered. She knew to not play the guitar, but make sure that the guitar was played well. It was perfect training for me.â€
Burns has traveled a great distance from her roots on New York City’s Lower East Side. The middle of three children raised by a single mother, she went to work for Xerox as a 19-year-old summer intern in 1980 while studying mechanical engineering at Polytechnic University of New York University in New York City. “From the day I walked in, I was trained by Xerox to believe that what I did was real and had real impact. It was, ‘Here’s a problem; can you solve it?’†she says of her annual summer internships. “So therefore I got confident.â€
After graduation, she was hired as a consultant and worked 100 days a year before gaining a full-time engineer post. Holding two degrees in mechanical engineering (she later received a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) and a passion for the work, she could have easily remained on the technical side, if she hadn’t been exposed to several key mentors–one of whom she married. Before they started dating, her husband, scientist and 43-year Xerox veteran Lloyd Bean, helped her with the “basic blocking and tackling of entering a company,†she says. “He also helped me to look up a little bit and realize it’s not only the labs.â€
Within several years at Xerox, Burns gained two significant assignments that would help define her as a promising executive who could handle more than just lab work. In the ’90s, she served as executive assistant to two senior executives, Wayland Hicks, the company’s executive vice president who oversaw marketing, sales, service, and all field operations, and then CEO and chairman Paul Allaire when he took the helm. “Working for these two people got me publicly known inside the company,†she explains. “Before that I was not really exposed.â€
Xerox was also undergoing a major transformation. Allaire, a former financial analyst, focused on reorganizing what had become a function-driven bureaucracy into an outfit with smaller,
entrepreneurial business units. It was during this period that Burns ran her first business operation. As vice president and general manager of facsimile–a digital color and black-and-white copier business of the Office Documents Product division–Burns oversaw the smallest, least profitable, and “the least impactful business to manage.â€
The newly minted manager was charged with making the fax business profitable and to introduce color technology. To communicate her strategic thrust, she developed an elaborate presentation for the CEO. Allaire’s response: “Make it profitable or close it.†Recalls Burns: “The clarity of the statement was amazing to me. It focused very clearly [on] what the objective was–something I learned that people need. And it made it easy for me to do my job better.â€
Growing up professionally in one organization, Burns admits, helped her better understand its corporate culture and performance expectations. She says, “It’s important to figure out a way to be a strong individual, an advocate, and a team player for the rest of the group, and know when to stand back a little bit when it’s required of you to do so.â€
Defining Her Own Style
Burns is a true engineer–curious, results-oriented, and precise in direction, time management, and language. She’s also sharp-witted with a biting sense of humor and holds an affinity for fashion, particularly shoes, belts, and textured hose. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen is among the very few business books
Her mother died at age 49, just as Burns was beginning her career. She deeply misses the woman that bestowed her with strong character and an unyielding work ethic. “Amazing woman; very clear, very unconfused and unambiguous,†says Burns, the mother of a 20-year-old son studying nuclear physics and math at MIT and a 17-year-old daughter in love with creative writing.
Having been integral to Xerox’s turnaround, Burns is now focused on how to meet a whole new set of business challenges. Analysts predict revenues to increase only 1% this year and 3% in 2011. But even as her team must contend with a volatile global economy through 2010, she’s confident about her organization’s sound structure. To keep the company competitive, she recently completed the $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services, the largest such transaction in the company’s 104-year history. Thomas W. Smith, analyst at Standard & Poor’s, says the addition of this
provider of business process outsourcing and IT services will enable Xerox to broaden geographic territories through its global sales network while increasing revenue flow.
Her prowess has placed her in demand in the boardroom and at the highest levels of government. “One of the many things I admire about Ursula is her clarity of vision,†offers Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and CEO of American Express, one of the corporations on which Burns serves as a board member. “If you want people to follow, you need to give them a sense of where you are leading them. Ursula knows where she wants to lead and she articulates it exceptionally well. That’s one of the things that make her an inspirational leader.†In December, these attributes led President Obama to tap her for the White House campaign for excellence in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education.
Reluctant to embrace publicity, Burns is squarely focused on the business at hand. “It’s all about the company,†she insists. “If you make the company great, if people say this is a great place to work, it’s a great place to develop technology, it’s a great place to present value to customers, then you can actually become famous. If you’re trying to become famous, then it’s almost surely going to be a disaster. But if you want to be associated with greatness, it’s about being associated with greatness, not about [you] being great.â€
CELEBRATING 10 YEARS! Join us for the landmark 10th Annual Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit hosted by State Farm, March 2—4, 2015, at Fort Lauderdale Harbor Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, Fort Lauderdale, FL. This exciting, one-of-a-kind executive leadership summit is designed to train, equip and encourage women to become industry leaders, learn career strategies, and discover proven work—life balance techniques. Register Now! https://blackenterprise.com/wps