Burns, Ursula
1958-present · Contribution: 1980-2020
Became, in 2009, the first African American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company (Xerox) and the first woman ever to succeed another woman as a Fortune 500 CEO
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Category
- Business & Misc.
Impact on the world
Burns shattered the highest barrier in American corporate leadership, proving that a Black woman from public housing could run, and reinvent, a century-old Fortune 500 company from the engineering ranks up.
An alternative history
What Would the World Look Like Without It?
One contribution. Many possible consequences. No single-person origin story.
Imagine this selected contribution absent, not the person or the entire field. The areas below are reflection prompts related to this discipline, not verified chains of direct dependency.
Sources
- Book or scholarly workFind
Britannica
Exact source links open the cited record. Source lookups help locate legacy references whose original records did not include a direct URL.
3 more sources and references are available to members.
More in Business & Misc.
Ajao, Adeyemi
1981–Present
Co-founded Base10 Partners, the first Black-led venture capital firm to manage over $1 billion in assets
Allen, Byron
1961-present
Built Allen Media Group from a single bartered celebrity-interview show into a multibillion-dollar media empire spanning broadcast television stations, cable networks, The Weather Channel, and a controlling stake in BuzzFeed, making him one of the wealthiest Black media owners in American history
Allen, Eliza
c. 1840–1910
Only woman listed on the founding charter of the first chartered African American-owned bank in the United States
Awotona, Tope
1981-
Founded Calendly, a widely used scheduling software platform