From the Projects to the Printing Empire

by Leigh Graham · 2009-05-28 12:00:00 UTC
Topics:

Ok, I've got to give it up with these alliteration attempts.  Hee!

Norm Betts/Bloomberg NewsBut this week is apparently all about rockin' women of color overcoming poverty and hardship to rise to the highest eschelons in their fields.

H/t Racewire, from the NYT:

"During a [Xerox] shareholders’ meeting on Thursday, Ms. Mulcahy revealed that she would retire as chief executive in July but remain chairwoman. Her handpicked successor is Ursula M. Burns, the president of the company. The management change had been predicted for years, making it one of the least tumultuous power changes in Xerox’s recent history. [snip]

According to Xerox, this is the first time a female chief executive has replaced another female chief executive at a Fortune 500 company. In addition, Ms. Burns is the first African-American woman to run a company this large. Xerox reported revenue of $17.6 billion in 2008.

I read an article about Mulcahy and Burns in Fortune a few years ago (I think their annual women in business issue) that described them as co-directors, more or less, with, as the NYT piece above says, Mulcahy grooming Burns for this position.  In her bio at the NYT, we see how parental, educational and even corporate investment in Burns cared for her and equipped her for this pinnacle role:

She grew up in ''the Projects,'' a large low-income housing community on Delancey Street in Manhattan. ''There were lots of Jewish immigrants, fewer Hispanics and African-Americans, but the common denominator and great equalizer was poverty,'' she once recalled...her mother took in ironing and ran a day care center from home. Somehow, she was able to send all her children to Catholic schools. ''She felt it was the only way to get us good educations, and keep us safe,'' Ms. Burns said...Ms. Burns excelled at math and received an engineering degree from the Polytechnic Institute of New York. Xerox, through the graduate engineering program for minorities, paid for part of her graduate work at Columbia. That program included a summer internship at Xerox, and when she graduated in 1981, she joined Xerox full time.

A bright young woman with opportunities put in place for her to grab and enjoy.  In essence, that - plus hard work - is all it takes.  It sounds so simple when we put it that way, doesn't it?

Congrats to Ms. Burns - I'm curious how she and Judge Sotomayor and all of us who feel we've been given opportunities we might never have considered pay it forward.

Let us know what you do to give back.

Leigh Graham
PREVIOUS STORY:
Feeding the Hungry Healthy Food is Not "Snobbery"
NEXT STORY:
Is the NCAA Putting Student Athletes at Risk?

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.