Ursula Burns Quotes

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Ursula Burns

Profession : Businesswoman

Birth : September 20, 1958

As I've progressed in my career, I've come to appreciate - and really value - the other attributes that define a company's success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making.

Ursula Burns

Kids are pretty resilient. You don't have to be at every volleyball game. We can't guilt ourselves.

Ursula Burns

I realized I was more convincing to myself and to the people who were listening when I actually said what I thought, versus what I thought people wanted to hear me say.

Ursula Burns

Admiration takes on a whole new level when you appreciate just how complex it is to run a modern business.

Ursula Burns

My mother was amazing. I guess, in our community, if you wanted to get by you had to work hard. So she cleaned offices. She did everything that you could imagine. We were really poor. But she would say, 'Where you are is not who you are.'

Ursula Burns

I want to stop transforming and just start being.

Ursula Burns

Xerox manages the infrastructure of E-ZPass for a large number of states. So when you say E-ZPass, and get some bill from E-ZPass, or call and ask a question about E-ZPass, you're talking to a Xerox person.

Ursula Burns

Race and gender definitely came up, occasionally, in my life at work. But the bigger challenge that I had was age. I took roles earlier in my career than people expected, and so a lot of what I got was, 'Do you actually know enough to do this?'

Ursula Burns

I'm a black lady from the Lower East Side of New York. Not a lot intimidates me.

Ursula Burns

My perspective comes in part from being a New York black lady, in part from being an engineer. I know I'm smart and have opinions worth being heard.

Ursula Burns

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.

Ursula Burns

My mother raised us to think that if we worked hard, and if we put our end of the bargain in, it would work out OK for us.

Ursula Burns

If you go to Norway, Finland, Russia or Australia, you'll see Xerox or Fuji-Xerox people, not just the name on the door. We have human beings who live and work and serve customers everywhere around the globe.

Ursula Burns

Long time ago, people would make the Bible, right? The guy said it, somebody wrote it down. And then if you wanted another copy of it, another human being wrote another one. It took a long, long time. Somebody created this thing called mimeograph paper and so you said, 'OK, we'll do it that way.' And so you could get three of them.

Ursula Burns

Fresh out of college, you tend to join a company because it's a job. But, you tend to stay because it becomes a career; you start to feel at home. In the beginning of your career, you're focused on you: 'I like this place because I'm doing rewarding work; they take good care of me; the people are nice; there's runway for me,' etc.

Ursula Burns

Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.

Ursula Burns

I'm less concerned about whether being a good corporate citizen burnishes a company's reputation. That's just an added benefit. I believe it's a responsibility, and there is no negotiating on responsibilities.

Ursula Burns

My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.

Ursula Burns

CEOs resign when the internal dynamics of the company and the external dynamics of the company actually come together to say it is appropriate. When the internal dynamics ask you whether you have a replacement. I think the transition from CEOships have also become cartoonish.

Ursula Burns

Xerox is really good at managing documents, and we're definitely good at managing through a process.

Ursula Burns