Ursula Burns

Female

Black

Coarse public-record coding; race is a noisy, interpretive category.

Panamanian American

Maternal Panamanian heritage; recorded separately from race.

Second generation on her mother's side

Catholic

Attended Cathedral High, a Catholic girls' school. Practice beyond schooling is less clear.

not established

No family wealth or fallback in childhood. Once she was inside Xerox, though, the institutional path gave her a salary floor most of the venture subjects here never had.

A Xerox salary from age 22 onward. The risk was losing a job, not the roof.

The hardship was imposed, not chosen. There was nothing to fall back on.

Raised by a single mother, Olga, who ran a licensed daycare in the apartment and took in ironing and cleaning to pay tuition. Her father is largely absent from the record.

A parent worked for themselves, the strongest known predictor of founding.

The home daycare, run to pay for schooling.

2

One of three children, per memoir summaries.

Her mother's daycare, ironing, and cleaning work existed specifically to pay Catholic school tuition for the children.

Lower East Side public housing (reported as the Baruch Houses).

The specific project name comes from secondary profiles.

Cathedral High School, a Catholic girls' school in Manhattan, paid for by her mother's side work.

Anne Mulcahy, who became Xerox CEO in 2001, mentored her and handed her the CEO role in 2009.

Xerox. She joined as an intern in 1980 and never worked anywhere else on the way up.

22

Joined Xerox as a summer intern in 1980.

At a company event around 1989 she publicly challenged executive Wayland Hicks over a diversity remark. Rather than punish her, he made her his executive assistant. It was sponsorship, not mentorship: a senior person spending his own standing to advance her.

Executive assistant to Hicks, then to chairman and CEO Paul Allaire. Staff roles beside decision-makers turned her competence into visibility.

1

The whole climb, intern to CEO, was inside Xerox. She later chaired and ran VEON, after the outcome that defines her.

MS mechanical engineering, Columbia University (1981); BS, Polytechnic Institute of New York (1980).

None of note. The master's was paid by Xerox; the undergraduate degree ran through a New York State opportunity program.

Direct. Engineering degree straight into the company that funded it.

A Xerox graduate engineering program aimed at minority students paid her Columbia tuition and bundled it with a summer internship and, in effect, an employer. Tuition, entry, and network in one package.

0

No venture to fail. A single unbroken climb inside one company.

A Xerox salary throughout. There were no gaps to sustain.

51

Became CEO on 1 July 2009; added chairman in May 2010.

Corporate diversity pipelines of the early 1980s opened the door; she rose as Xerox moved from copiers toward services.

29

Roughly 1980 to 2009, intern to CEO, without leaving.

Technology and management

not established

No credible estimate. Aggregator figures range from tens of millions to an implausible billion. Not established.

22205362

Total FY2014 compensation from the Xerox proxy summary table: $1.1M salary, $15.5M stock, $1.98M incentive, plus pension and other. Her peak year.

Proxy statement

High salaried income with stock grants, not an owned, appreciating asset base. She was paid very well; she did not own the company.

First Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Later chair or director at Uber, ExxonMobil, Nestle, American Express, and others, and chair then CEO of VEON.

Capped

Blunt, Direct, Candid

Insiders

Before

Asset

The candor that could have ended her rise is the thing that started it.

The reputation accrued from behaviour rather than being manufactured.