The first Black woman to head a Fortune 500 company doesn’t want to ‘wait 20 more years’ to see more diversity in corporate leadershipUrsula Burns became the chief executive officer of Xerox in July 2009, and she admits that she is still irked by the media coverage at the time. As the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, her promotion was historic—not least because she was succeeding another woman, Anne Mulcahy.
“I wanted the stories to go one step further, to try to understand why it’s so rare,” Ms. Burns, 62, said over the phone from her home in Manhattan. “I wanted them to ask, ‘How did it happen at Xerox?’” The answer, she says, is that the company had been making diversity a priority for over half a century by the time she became the boss. As Ms. Burns explains in her new memoir, “Where You Are Is Not Who You Are,” out June 15 from Amistad, Xerox was based in Rochester, N.Y., when the city was torn by race riots in 1964. Joseph Wilson, the company’s founder, responded by swiftly hiring Black laborers and suppliers. Xerox also recruited minority scientists and engineers, including Lloyd Bean, Ms.
Vernon Jordan, a civil-rights leader, joined Xerox’s board of directors in 1974 and was soon mentoring Ms. Burns, who arrived in 1980 as an intern while studying mechanical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic . Ms. Burns says that Xerox was “very diverse,” at least comparatively. When she returned full-time in 1981, after earning her master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, “I was the only Black engineer in my hiring class, but I was one,” she said.
Four decades later, Ms. Burns—who left Xerox in late 2016 and now serves on the boards of Exxon, Uber and M.I.T., among others—is distressed by how few women and people of color have joined her at the top. Just five Fortune 500 companies have Black CEOs, and the number will drop to four when Kenneth Frazier, Merck’s CEO, steps down later this month. A record 41 women now run Fortune 500 companies, but that is still less than 10%.
It is so hard, because of our cultural differences. Let’s be honest,most White folk aren’t raised around the gang banging, thuggish, hard core rap lifestyle like most Hispanic and Blacks are. Wanna see more color In corporate leadership? Deal with that first!
RT : The first Black woman to head a Fortune 500 company doesn’t want to 'wait 20 more years' to see more diversity in corporate leadership
It’s seems the media can stop their dishonest narrative about opportunities in America. Opportunities are alive and well in America.
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When are we going to close the college degree gender gap? (57% of graduates are female)
She hires based on race? Sounds racist ….. 🙄
Hopefully she was the best candidate and didn’t get it because of her immutable characteristics. Thats the end product of “dicersity, equity, and inclusion” - a cover story for discrimination
🤣🤣🤣🤣
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