NEW YORK - Xerox Corp. is home to a lot of firsts. It invented the laser printer, the Ethernet data network and the computer mouse. Now it may become the first Fortune 500 company headed by a black woman.
CEO Anne Mulcahy, 54, on April 3 named Ursula Burns, 48, president with the expectation that she would move up when Mulcahy steps down, analysts including J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.'s Bill Shope wrote in notes on the appointment.
Burns, who grew up in a housing project in Manhattan, also became the only inside director besides the CEO.
Burns "is to business what Condi Rice is to government, in terms of someone who never grew up expecting to be a president of a major corporation," said John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan and president of the National Association of Manufacturers, where Burns is a director. "It's hard, regardless of colour and gender, to reach the high level of responsibility she's reached."
Among the top 500 U.S. companies by revenue, only 12 have women as CEOs, including Mulcahy, PepsiCo Inc.'s Indra Nooyi and Avon Products Inc.'s Andrea Jung, said Ilene Lang, president of New York-based Catalyst, a research firm that specializes in women in business. None of the female CEOs is black. There are seven black male CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
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