Ursula Burns shattered two glass ceilings in 2009…

Burns is the first black female to hold the position of CEO in a Fortune 500 company and became the first women to succeed another when she replaced Anne Mulcahy as CEO of the Xerox Corporation.

‘Where You Are is Not Who You Are’ is Burns memoir, centring heavily on her time rising through the Xerox ranks and being groomed by the Xerox board to take the helm.

This lady is one smart cookie and not a person to mess with. Burns No1 focus is to get whatever job needs doing done in the best interests of the parties concerned and quickly.

It’s an interesting read for me as we have a company helping organisations with affordable and ethical office technology solutions, including printers and photocopier technology.

In the early days at Xerox, you could say Burns saved their colour printing division, as it was close to being canned, due to them not being able to make the financials work.

But Burns took control and developed a model which brought affordable colour printing and copying to the market. Which at the time probably saved Xerox from extinction.

Near extinction for Xerox on Burns watch happened again. Whilst CEO her biggest challenge was to transform Xerox from a hardware company to a global business solutions company.

It’s a similar transformation which Lou Gerstner achieved with IBM back in the 90’s. Which you can read about in his fantastic book ‘Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance.’ 2 reviews for the price of 1.

As you can imagine Burns had to overcome other challenges besides the normal business ones you’d expect, and for which, she has my greatest respect.

‘Where You Are is Not Who You Are’ gets 👍with⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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…thank you & see you next time.