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It was supposed to be different by now.
When Ursula Burns quietly shut off the light to her office as Xerox CEO at the end of 2016, her departure also cast a light on a sad statistic: There are currently zero African-American women running Fortune 500 companies. Burns’ appointment to the top job in 2009 had been hailed as a milestone. Suddenly it looked more like an anomaly.
Her story is in many ways perfect for a pioneering figure. She grew up poor on New York’s Lower East Side, the middle child of a single mother who washed and ironed clothes for money. Burns’ strength in math got her scholarships and a summer internship at Xerox. The company invested in her early and often. She made it all the way to the corner office
