Daily News - Money
BY Heidi Evans
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Saturday, May 23rd 2009, 4:00 AM
Betts/Bloomberg
Ursula Burns, president of Xerox Corp., will become the company's CEO this summer.
The new head of Xerox Corp. is a native New Yorker who grew up in a lower East Side housing project.
Xerox will be the first Fortune 500 company headed by a black woman when Ursula Burns, 50, takes the reigns this summer.
Burns replaces Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, 56, who told shareholders Thursday she would be retiring in July and had picked her lieutenant as her successor.
Burns climbed the corporate ladder at Xerox, beginning as a summer engineering intern in 1980 and rising to president of the printing giant in 2002.
As president, Burns oversaw a large chunk of the company's operations including overseas research and development, engineering, manufacturing and marketing.
She helped to build Xerox into the world's largest maker of high-speed color printers.
Last year, Burns ranked 10th on Fortune magazine's top 50 Most Powerful Women in America. She's the second-highest placed African-American woman behind only Oprah Winfrey, who was ranked No. 8.
Reached at their Rochester home Friday, Burns' teenaged daughter, Melissa, 16, called her mom "a great person, a wonderful inspiration."
"She has taken us back to the old neighborhood a few times," said Melissa, a reference to Delancey St. on Manhattan's lower East Side. "Apparently it's a lot better now than it was when she was growing up."
Burns, who attended Cathedral High School, was the middle of three children from two different absentee fathers.
In a 2003 interview with the New York Times, she described growing up poor in "the projects" - with "lots of Jewish immigrants, fewer Hispanics and African-Americans, but the common denominator and great equalizer was poverty."
Burns' mother took in ironing and ran a home day care center so she could send her kids to Catholic schools.
Burns, a math whiz, graduated from Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn with an engineering degree. She got a master's degree in mechanical engineering in 1981 from Columbia University.
Full Story: http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2009/05/23/2009-05-23_1st_black_woman_xerox_ceo.html
Showing posts with label Xerox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Xerox. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
At Xerox, a Transition for the Record Books
The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2009
By ASHLEE VANCE
After eight years of hard work turning around a company in disarray, Anne M. Mulcahy has managed to make her departure as chief executive of Xerox look effortless.
During a 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.
“For the better part of the past decade, she has been at my side helping to turn Xerox around and more importantly transform Xerox for a new era,” Ms. Mulcahy told the company’s shareholders about Ms. Burns.
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.
Xerox declined to make either executive available for interviews.
Tapped to head Xerox in mid-2001, Ms. Mulcahy took over a lethargic company that had lost ground to Japanese rivals like Canon and Ricoh. Abrupt management changes and a bungled reorganization of the sales force intensified the company’s woes to the point that analysts speculated it might have to file for bankruptcy.
In addition, Xerox had endured an extensive investigation of its accounting practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the chief executive, Ms. Mulcahy negotiated a settlement that put the accounting issues to rest.
Observers credit Ms. Mulcahy with helping Xerox recover by bringing its costs into line and strengthening its products. Xerox has created printers that compete better on cost and size, including the introduction this month of copiers that lower the cost of printing color documents. It has also continued to build services and technology for managing documents within large corporations.
“She has really completed a remarkable turnaround,” said Shannon Cross, the managing director of Cross Research, an equities research firm.
Ms. Mulcahy, 56, has spent 33 years at Xerox, working in roles that spanned sales, marketing and human resources. Ms. Burns, 50, is also a longtime Xerox veteran, having started as an engineering intern in 1980.
“They’re both insiders that sort of bleed toner, as it were,” said Steve Reynolds, an analyst with Lyra Research, which follows the printing and imaging industries.
As president, Ms. Burns has most recently been overseeing a large swath of Xerox’s operations. She has conducted meetings with investors and Wall Street analysts alongside Ms. Mulcahy as well.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/technology/companies/22xerox.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
Published: May 21, 2009
By ASHLEE VANCE
After eight years of hard work turning around a company in disarray, Anne M. Mulcahy has managed to make her departure as chief executive of Xerox look effortless.
During a 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.
“For the better part of the past decade, she has been at my side helping to turn Xerox around and more importantly transform Xerox for a new era,” Ms. Mulcahy told the company’s shareholders about Ms. Burns.
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.
Xerox declined to make either executive available for interviews.
Tapped to head Xerox in mid-2001, Ms. Mulcahy took over a lethargic company that had lost ground to Japanese rivals like Canon and Ricoh. Abrupt management changes and a bungled reorganization of the sales force intensified the company’s woes to the point that analysts speculated it might have to file for bankruptcy.
In addition, Xerox had endured an extensive investigation of its accounting practices by the Securities and Exchange Commission. As the chief executive, Ms. Mulcahy negotiated a settlement that put the accounting issues to rest.
Observers credit Ms. Mulcahy with helping Xerox recover by bringing its costs into line and strengthening its products. Xerox has created printers that compete better on cost and size, including the introduction this month of copiers that lower the cost of printing color documents. It has also continued to build services and technology for managing documents within large corporations.
“She has really completed a remarkable turnaround,” said Shannon Cross, the managing director of Cross Research, an equities research firm.
Ms. Mulcahy, 56, has spent 33 years at Xerox, working in roles that spanned sales, marketing and human resources. Ms. Burns, 50, is also a longtime Xerox veteran, having started as an engineering intern in 1980.
“They’re both insiders that sort of bleed toner, as it were,” said Steve Reynolds, an analyst with Lyra Research, which follows the printing and imaging industries.
As president, Ms. Burns has most recently been overseeing a large swath of Xerox’s operations. She has conducted meetings with investors and Wall Street analysts alongside Ms. Mulcahy as well.
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/technology/companies/22xerox.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
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