Xerox Corporation chief talks business transformation
Ursula M. Burns, CEO and Chairman at Xerox Corporation, addressed a London Business School audience of businesspeople and students, discussing her journey to the top spot at Xerox and the company's widespread transformation under her leadership.
As part of London Business School’s Business Leaders Series, ‘Leading Business Transformation in Uncertain Times’, introduced by the School’s Professor Julian Birkinshaw, Ms Burns also shared insights about engaging employees in large-scale change and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany transformation.
Recently ranked fourth in the FT’s Top Women in World Business, Ms Burns joined the organisation as a mechanical engineering summer intern in 1980. Her roles went on to encompass product development and planning and leading several business teams. In 2000 she became Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategic Services. As President of Xerox, a role to which she was named in 2007, she looked after the company’s IT organisation, corporate strategy, human resources, corporate marketing and global accounts.
Named CEO in 2009 and Chairman in 2010, Ursula Burns is the only African-American woman to head up a Fortune 500 company. She has been at the forefront of the organisation’s transformation from a copier company to a large business process and document management enterprise, making Xerox Corporation more competitive in a digital age. Through Xerox Corporation’s recent acquisition of leading business process and IT outsourcing, Affiliated Computer Services (ACS), Ms Burns heads up a global workforce of 130,000 employees in 160 countries.
Ms Burns is the latest in a line of influential business leaders speaking at London Business School, including Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP; Matt Brittin, CEO, Google UK & Ireland; Xavier Rolet, CEO, London Stock Exchange; Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO, GE; and Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever Plc.