The first Black female Ceo of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she's conquered being Black and a woman. "I am a black woman, I do not play golf, I do not belong to or go to country clubs, I do not like Nascar, I do not listen to country music, and I have a masters degree in engineering. I, like a typical New Yorker, speak very fast, with an accent and vernacular that is definitely New York City, definitely Black. So when someone says I'm going to introduce you to the next Ceo of Xerox, and the options are lined up against a wall, I would be the first one voted off the island." In 2009, when she was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Xerox Corporation, Ursula Burns shattered the glass ceiling and made headlines. But the media missed the real story, she insists. "It should have been ‘how did this happen. How did Xerox Corporation produce the first African American woman Ceo. Not this spectacular story titled, "Oh, my God, a Black woman making it."In this smart, no-nonsense book, part memoir and part cultural critique, Burns writes movingly about her journey from tenement housing on Manhattan's Lower East Side to the highest echelons of the corporate.
The first Black female Ceo of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she's conquered being Black and a woman. "I am a black woman, I do not play golf, I do not belong to or go to country clubs, I do not like Nascar, I do not listen to country music, and I have a masters degree in engineering. I, like a typical New Yorker, speak very fast, with an accent and vernacular that is definitely New York City, definitely Black. So when someone says I'm going to introduce you to the next Ceo of Xerox, and the options are lined up against a wall, I would be the first one voted off the island." In 2009, when she was appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the Xerox Corporation, Ursula Burns shattered the glass ceiling and made headlines. But the media missed the real story, she insists. "It should have been ‘how did this happen. How did Xerox Corporation produce the first African American woman Ceo. Not this spectacular story titled, "Oh, my God, a Black woman making it."In this smart, no-nonsense book, part memoir and part cultural critique, Burns writes movingly about her journey from tenement housing on Manhattan's Lower East Side to the highest echelons of the corporate.