    
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2044
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 10:54 am: | 
|
NEW YORK — Xerox Corp. is home to a lot of firsts. It invented the laser printer, the Ethernet data network and the computer mouse. Now it may become the first Fortune 500 company headed by a black woman.
Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy, 54, in April named Ursula Burns, 48, president with the expectation that she would move up when Mulcahy steps down, analysts say.
Burns, who grew up in a housing project in Manhattan, also became the only inside director besides the CEO.
Burns “is to business what Condi Rice is to government, in terms of someone who never grew up expecting to be a president of a major corporation,” said John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan and president of the National Association of Manufacturers, where Burns is a director. “It’s hard, regardless of color and gender, to reach the high level of responsibility she’s reached.”
Among the top 500 U.S. companies by revenue, only 12 have women as CEOs, including Mulcahy, PepsiCo Inc.’s Indra Nooyi and Avon Products Inc.’s Andrea Jung, said Ilene Lang, president of New York-based Catalyst, a research firm that specializes in women in business. None of the women CEOs is black. There are seven black male CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Xerox, based in Stamford, Conn., is also the only Fortune 500 company with women in the top two positions.
Burns, who has helped build Xerox into the world’s largest maker of high-speed color printers, rose last year to 27th place on Fortune Magazine’s top 50 Most Powerful Women in America from 48th in 2005. She’s the second-highest placed African-American behind Oprah Winfrey, who was ranked No. 8.
“We don’t have enough minorities who are in positions to become CEOs,” said Charles Tribbett, managing director of Russell Reynolds Associates, a New York-based executive search firm. “When you see an individual like Ursula who’s achieved that, we are all, as African- Americans, extremely proud of that.”
Burns will lead Xerox’s corporate strategy, marketing operations and global accounts, while continuing to run research, engineering, marketing and manufacturing of technology, supplies and related services, the company said. That frees Mulcahy to focus on customers and growth, said Bill Shope, an analyst at J.P. Morgan Securities.
“Her promotion lays out a clear succession plan that eliminates uncertainty inside the organization,” said Naveed Yahya, chief investment officer of Fischer Investment Group in Pittsford, N.Y. “Given what Xerox has gone through, one strength is its consistency of management.”
Burns grew up in the projects on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where her mother, Olga, single-handedly raised her three children by taking in laundry and running a day-care center at home.
Burns received a bachelor’s degree from Polytechnic Institute of New York and a master’s in mechanical engineering from Columbia University. She joined Xerox 27 years ago as a mechanical-engineering summer intern. Burns, who married Lloyd Bean, now a retired Xerox research scientist, has two children, Malcolm, 18, and Melissa, 14.
Burns and Mulcahy declined to comment for this story, Xerox spokeswoman Christa Carone said.
Since she became CEO in 2001, Mulcahy has cut $11.5 billion in debt and hired overseas companies to make Xerox products to cut costs. Burns led Xerox’s last two union negotiations in 2002 and 2005 as the company sought to shift manufacturing. She made the most of a tough situation by being open, said Gary Bonadonna, manager of a Xerox union, the Rochester regional joint board of Unite Here!
“She’s a straight shooter,” Bonadonna said. “She told people, ‘This is what we need to do to survive. We’re trying to save as many jobs as we can.’ ”
Burns has been credited with increasing Xerox’s sales of color devices, as the company brought to market 24 machines in the past two years amid competition from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Canon Inc. Xerox, which gets about three-fourths of its revenue from service and supplies such as paper, makes about five times more profit from a color sheet than from one printed in black-and-white...
http://www.buffalonews.com/146/story/74708.html?imw=Y |
Email This Page