In her memoir, Ursula M. Burns, the first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, shares her unique insights on American business and corporate life, racial and economic justice, and the obstacles she’s conquered being Black and a woman. From tenement housing on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the highest echelons of the corporate world, Burns writes about overcoming the barriers she faced, her thirty-five-year career at Xerox, and her work with President Barack Obama as a lead on his STEM initiative and Chair of his Export council. Burns offers a remarkable look inside the c-suites of corporate America, explores how corporate culture is destroying the spirit of democracy, and what business must do to center the lives of workers whose lives are being upended by technology.
Ursula M. Burns was the chair and CEO of VEON from mid 2019 to early 2020, a senior advisor to Teneo LTD, Nestlé, Exxon Mobil, and Ford Foundation among others. She is a member of the board of directors of Uber. She served as CEO of Xerox from 2009 to 2016, and as chairwoman from 2010 to 2017. In 2014, Forbes rated her the 22nd most powerful woman in the world. She was a leader of the STEM program of the White House from 2009 to 2016, and Vice Chair and then Chair of the President's Export Council for the Obama Administration. She lives in London and New York.
Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation, a $14 billion international social justice philanthropy. As a leading voice on the need to address inequality, he is a member of Governor Cuomo’s Reimagining New York Commission and co-chair of NYC Census 2020. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion designated social bond in US capital markets for proceeds to strengthen and stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19.
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This event will be recorded and posted to our JustMatters blog one week after the event, along with other previous Ideas at Ford events.Â