Xerox's Ursula Burns on Her Career Path and Changing Company Strategy

Burns’s mother told her, “Don’t get confused when you’re rich and famous”

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By Carol Hymowitz

August 8, 2013 at 9:56 AM UTC

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This article is part of the August 12, 2013 issue of businessweek.

Xerox's Ursula Burns on Her Career Path and Changing Company Strategy — Burns at the company’s new New York officePhotograph by Mark Peckmezian for Bloomberg Businessweek

How did you decide to go into engineering?
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. The three things that they focused on were reading, writing, and arithmetic. My goodness, this is a novel idea in this modern society. I was really good at all three of these things. I was particularly good at math. And when I went to my guidance counselor, who was a nun, we talked about what do you do for a career. One was nursing. Another one was teaching. And the other one was to be a nun. I realized that I had to look at what I wanted to do for myself. I went to the library and looked in the Barron’s Guide to Colleges and books about careers.