Who Was the First Black Woman Fortune 500 CEO? Ursula Burns at Xerox

The Achievement

On July 1, 2009, Ursula Burns became chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation, making her the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. She was also the first woman to succeed another woman as CEO of a Fortune 500 company, taking over from Anne Mulcahy, who had steered Xerox through a near-bankruptcy earlier in the decade.

Burns had spent her entire career at Xerox, starting as a summer engineering intern in 1980. Over 29 years, she moved from the lab floor to the executive suite, holding positions in product development, manufacturing, and corporate strategy. Her ascent was not the result of outside recruiting or boardroom maneuvering. She built her career one rung at a time, inside a single company, which made her story both unusual among Fortune 500 CEOs and deeply resonant.

Growing Up on the Lower East Side

Ursula Burns was born on September 20, 1958, and grew up in the Baruch Houses, a public housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Her mother, Olga, was a Panamanian immigrant who ran an unlicensed daycare out of their apartment and took in ironing to earn extra money. Her father was largely absent from her life.

Olga Burns was determined that her children would escape poverty through education. She worked multiple jobs to pay for Ursula and her siblings to attend Catholic school rather than the local public schools, which she considered inadequate. The investment paid off: Ursula excelled in math and science and earned a scholarship to the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (now NYU Tandon School of Engineering), where she studied mechanical engineering.

After earning her bachelor's degree, Burns joined Xerox as a summer intern in 1980. That internship became a permanent position. She went on to earn a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University in 1981, attending classes while working full-time at Xerox.

Three Decades at Xerox

Burns's career at Xerox followed a path through the technical and operational side of the business. She worked in product development and planning, gaining deep expertise in manufacturing processes and engineering. She was not on a fast track; for the first decade, she was an engineer doing engineering work.

Her trajectory changed in 1990 when she was assigned as executive assistant to Wayland Hicks, a senior Xerox vice president. In this role, Burns gained exposure to corporate strategy and high-level decision-making. More importantly, she caught the attention of senior leaders who saw her potential for broader leadership.

Over the next decade, Burns moved through a series of increasingly senior positions. She led Xerox's office color and fax business. She became vice president of global manufacturing. She took charge of the company's document systems and solutions group. Each role gave her broader responsibility and deeper understanding of how a large, complex corporation operated.

In 2000, when Xerox was in financial crisis, Burns was one of the executives who worked alongside Anne Mulcahy to restructure the company. The two women developed a close working relationship, and Mulcahy came to see Burns as her eventual successor. In 2007, Burns was named president of Xerox, putting her in the direct line of succession.

Leading Xerox Through Transformation

When Burns took over as CEO, Xerox faced a basic strategic challenge: the world was moving away from paper. The company that had defined document reproduction for half a century needed to find new revenue streams or slowly decline. Burns's response was to push Xerox aggressively into business services and outsourcing.

In 2010, Xerox acquired Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) for $6.4 billion, the largest acquisition in the company's history. ACS was a business process outsourcing company that handled tasks like toll collection, healthcare claims processing, and government services. The deal transformed Xerox from a hardware company into a diversified services company, with services eventually accounting for more than half of total revenue.

The transformation was not painless. Traditional Xerox employees and investors were uncomfortable with the shift away from the company's core identity. Revenue growth was modest, and the stock price underperformed the broader market during much of Burns's tenure. Critics argued that the ACS acquisition diluted Xerox's brand without delivering the promised synergies.

After Xerox

Burns stepped down as CEO of Xerox at the end of 2016 when the company split into two entities: Xerox Corporation (focused on document technology) and Conduent (the services business built from the ACS acquisition). She remained chairman of the Xerox board briefly before departing entirely.

After leaving Xerox, Burns continued to serve on major corporate boards, including those of ExxonMobil, Uber, and Nestlé. In 2017, she published a memoir, "Where You Are Is Not Who You Are," reflecting on her career, her upbringing, and the challenges of being a Black woman in corporate America. She has also been active in philanthropy, focusing on STEM education and economic opportunity for underrepresented communities.

The Significance

Burns's career is significant for several reasons beyond her racial and gender firsts. She demonstrated that a person could rise to the top of a Fortune 500 company from within, spending an entire career at one organization. In an era when CEO candidates were increasingly recruited from outside companies, Burns's internal promotion was a counterexample that valued institutional knowledge and operational expertise.

Her story also highlighted the particular barriers facing Black women in corporate America. While Black men and white women had each broken into Fortune 500 leadership before Burns, Black women faced a double barrier. As of the mid-2020s, the number of Black women who have served as Fortune 500 CEOs remains in the single digits, making Burns's achievement still more the exception than the rule.

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