American chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the international document-management and business-services company Xerox Corporation, who was the first African American woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the first female to accede to the position of CEO of such a company from another female.
Burns was raised in a low-income housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side. She was the second of three children raised by a single mother who operated a home day-care centre and took ironing and cleaning jobs to earn money to pay for Burns to attend Cathedral High School, a Roman Catholic preparatory school. Excelling at math, Burns later earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering (1980) from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Brooklyn. In the same year, she began pursuing a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University and joined Xerox as a summer mechanical-engineering intern through the company's graduate engineering program for minorities, which in turn paid a portion of her educational expenses.
After completing a master's degree in 1981, Burns joined Xerox as a full-time employee and quickly gained a role in product development. From 1992 she progressed through various roles in management and engineering, and in 2000 she became senior vice president of corporate strategic services, a position in which she oversaw production operations. The appointment eventually afforded Burns the opportunity to broaden her leadership in the areas of global research, product development, marketing, and delivery, and she was named president of Xerox in 2007. Two years later she was named chairman and CEO. Burns was widely credited with increasing the company's development, production, and sales of colour-capable devices.
In 2009 U.S. Pres. Barack Obama selected Burns to help lead the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition, a national alliance of more than 1,000 technological organizations striving to improve student participation and performance in the aforementioned subject areas through legislative advocacy. The following year Burns was appointed to serve as vice-chair of the President's Export Council (PEC), a group of labour, business, and government leaders who advise the president on methods to promote the growth of American exports.
Jeannette L. Nolen
Source: www.britannica.com/blackhistory
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