Speaker 1: Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic and this is next question.
Speaker 1: Ursla Burns has had an impressive business career that's often
Speaker 1: summarized by an historic achievement that when she became the
Speaker 1: CEO of Xerox back in two thousand nine, she was
Speaker 1: the first ever black woman to head a Fortune five
Speaker 1: hundred company, and as a side note, Ursula actually held
Speaker 1: onto that title exclusively until only this year, when the
Speaker 1: Fortune five hundred lists featured two black women. We'll get
Speaker 1: to the corporate world's painfully slow diversity progress later, but
Speaker 1: now the former Zerox CEO is adding another big first
Speaker 1: to her achievements. First time author. I'm not a writer,
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to even be one, and when this
Speaker 1: thing started I could not believe that I had committed
Speaker 1: to do this. She did commit to it and finished it,
Speaker 1: and her memoir called Where You Are Is Not Who
Speaker 1: You Are, is out now and it's fantastic. Unlike a
Speaker 1: lot of books written by business leaders, this one is
Speaker 1: about so much more than the corporate world. Ursula gets
Speaker 1: very personal, sharing her childhood growing up in public housing
Speaker 1: in New York City, her Catholic school days, her marriage,
Speaker 1: and yes her thirty year ascent to the tippy top
Speaker 1: of Xerox's ladder. In her prolog, Ursla admits writing this
Speaker 1: life journey was one of the most difficult things she's
Speaker 1: ever had to do, which, let's be honest, is saying
Speaker 1: a lot. So we started our conversation there. Why do
Speaker 1: you think it was so hard, Ursula? Because I did
Speaker 1: it right in the middle of a huge number of
Speaker 1: transitions in my life. Right one was the most obvious
Speaker 1: was this pandemic. So I started the book before the
Speaker 1: pandemic and then had to go back and re read
Speaker 1: it for the fiftieth time in the context of the
Speaker 1: pandemic and bring the book forward some of the messages
Speaker 1: forward to the pandemic time. There was one one big issue.
Speaker 1: The other is my husband passed away in January of
Speaker 1: two thousand and nineteen, very unexpectedly. I know, I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: or and I was in the middle of this thing
Speaker 1: as well. It was close to the end, and it
Speaker 1: really did. The book made it really difficult to kind
Speaker 1: of live in that moment because I had to, you know,
Speaker 1: living that moment. Looking back at all of the my life,
Speaker 1: my whole life, of which most of it was with him.
Speaker 1: It's Okay, it's really hard to kind of put it
Speaker 1: in context. It was just very difficult from that perspective,
Speaker 1: as I can't imagine, honestly having to do that and
Speaker 1: also deal with grieving and the fact that your husband's
Speaker 1: death was so unexpected, and you know, I found when
Speaker 1: my husband died, gosh, now twenty plus years ago, even
Speaker 1: trying to concentrate was next to impossible. So very, very,
Speaker 1: very difficult. You know, he's so exactly on point what
Speaker 1: you just said. How you know you don't think about
Speaker 1: I didn't. My mother died when I was twenty five,
Speaker 1: and that was a shock in my life, right and
Speaker 1: she was very young. She was forty nine when she died.
Speaker 1: And a parent dying is one thing, it's crushing a
Speaker 1: spouse dying. Even if my husband was twenty years old
Speaker 1: than I was, he was eighty years old when he died.
Speaker 1: His his death was unexpected. I mean it was literally
Speaker 1: even though he knew he was getting older. It was
Speaker 1: not something that I had brought into a context that
Speaker 1: I could think about at all. So when I had to,
Speaker 1: when I'm writing this book, he dies, and then I
Speaker 1: have to basically stopped writing it, primarily because it couldn't
Speaker 1: concentrate on anything, and the things that I had to
Speaker 1: concentrate on to write and to review it, we're so
Speaker 1: um horrible. From a contact standpoint, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: think about my mother's death. I didn't want to think
Speaker 1: about really great times, right because then I didn't want
Speaker 1: to think about really bad times. So basically have to
Speaker 1: kind of step away from the book for a long time,
Speaker 1: step away from writing and thinking about it. And then
Speaker 1: the third thing is we were going through a really
Speaker 1: tough political time where there was not a message that
Speaker 1: was coming from anywhere that was like peaceful. There was
Speaker 1: no there was no place to rest, like your mind.
Speaker 1: It was every time you every time I woke up,
Speaker 1: and if I read anything about what was happening in
Speaker 1: politics in the US, it just threw me into another
Speaker 1: noneother tail spin. So I had to take literally when
Speaker 1: they say time out, I had to take time out
Speaker 1: and just kind of move away and not think about it,
Speaker 1: and not think about my life and not think about
Speaker 1: how you're trying to kind of put it in the
Speaker 1: context of a book, because you said what you said
Speaker 1: was so you don't live your life in reverse, you
Speaker 1: live your life going forward. So you never think, you know,
Speaker 1: the day that passed right before you, which I retell
Speaker 1: days that happened before me in the book are not
Speaker 1: concept funchal when they're happening, so you don't think about
Speaker 1: them in that context. You just think about them, is okay,
Speaker 1: so another day. But when you retell them, you retell
Speaker 1: them from this perspective as if you knew they were consequential,
Speaker 1: and they aren't. And I'm an engineer, so everything was
Speaker 1: kind of illogical about the whole thing. And finally I
Speaker 1: got through with my goodness, thank goodness, I got through
Speaker 1: the whole process, and my The woman who helped me,
Speaker 1: help me write, her name is Linda Frankie. It's very
Speaker 1: very good. She was as good a because I did
Speaker 1: all little writing right, I tell her, you know how,
Speaker 1: you know how the process goes right, tells you back
Speaker 1: then you have to read it and put it in context.
Speaker 1: And I would dwell on certain things and try to
Speaker 1: become really precise. And she was just very good at
Speaker 1: at kind of moving me on. It's not letting you
Speaker 1: get too deep into the minutia. But but in addition
Speaker 1: to that, of course, you talk about the political scene.
Speaker 1: We have this massive racial reckoning with the Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter movement that intersected with the pandemic. So, uh, that's
Speaker 1: something that I think you've lived your entire life and career.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, did that change the tone of
Speaker 1: the book or did you? I know, you had to
Speaker 1: go back and make sure that you did it from
Speaker 1: the vantage point of where we are rather than where
Speaker 1: you were when the book started. Absolutely, and it did
Speaker 1: change the tone a little bit. My daughter keeps telling
Speaker 1: me that I have to watch to not be shrill
Speaker 1: because sometimes I get yeah, when I get into to
Speaker 1: not be shrill, because you know, sometimes you get to
Speaker 1: the point where you just are so engaged, so angry,
Speaker 1: so um emotional about the topic that you get really
Speaker 1: wrapped up into it and it gets um almost like
Speaker 1: a lecture. We'll tell your daughter that's a very gendered word, ursula.
Speaker 1: And I can't believe at her age she's telling you
Speaker 1: not to be shrill. I need to talk to her.
Speaker 1: My daughter is actually very um astute on these types
Speaker 1: of things. She's a writer. She used it to me
Speaker 1: for a very specific reason. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: way I raised the kids. I would get into it.
Speaker 1: But the point was that I had to kind of
Speaker 1: become emotional, but not be so emotional. And there at
Speaker 1: some points in the in the book, and some points
Speaker 1: even in the retelling, and when I was speaking in
Speaker 1: press around around the you know, George Floyd's murder around
Speaker 1: this whole time, how emotional and how troubling it was
Speaker 1: to me that we are, that we are at a
Speaker 1: point in this country. I'm at a point in my
Speaker 1: life where I have I have quote unquote arrived, Katie.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, literally, I have more money that could
Speaker 1: possibly imagine. I am engaged in places I never thought
Speaker 1: I would be. I have access to people that I
Speaker 1: couldn't even can't even imagine, I know, much less hang
Speaker 1: out with regularly. I'm very kind of set and I
Speaker 1: now and even for my whole life, I've been involved
Speaker 1: with kind of pushing it out and giving back. But
Speaker 1: I sit here, and I sat there and said, can
Speaker 1: you can I believe? Can Ursula Burns believe that this
Speaker 1: is two thousand and twenty and we're still talking about
Speaker 1: and dealing with and living with, very visually people who
Speaker 1: have total disregard for other people's lives, who and and
Speaker 1: and people who speak about it in leadership as if
Speaker 1: it were a transaction, you know, just it just happened. So, no,
Speaker 1: there's a bigger context to this, there is more emotion
Speaker 1: to this. There are people who are affected in this,
Speaker 1: and it has become ordinary. And that was to the point,
Speaker 1: was that, you know, George Floyd and his family, George
Speaker 1: Floyd suffered the ultimate and his family suffered. But I
Speaker 1: don't think that the the political leadership understood that the
Speaker 1: nation was struggling and that we, even though it wasn't
Speaker 1: our direct family, we black and white, young and old,
Speaker 1: were struggling, and instead of getting any kind of solace
Speaker 1: or comfort, we got unbelievable responses like, you know, why
Speaker 1: is this such a big deal? This whole context of
Speaker 1: well he was a criminal. There's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: unfeeling in the middle of a pandemic. In the end,
Speaker 1: so there was this like this kind of big gap
Speaker 1: of don't you know what we need as a nation?
Speaker 1: Don't you know what we need these people? Don't you
Speaker 1: know what we need as a world? And the answer
Speaker 1: was they The answer was no, I don't know, and
Speaker 1: if I didn't know, I don't particularly care. And do
Speaker 1: you think that things are changing? Our's law. I can't
Speaker 1: help but think as I look around that we are
Speaker 1: in the midst of a seismic cultural shift and attitudes
Speaker 1: about race, diversity, equality inclusion, that these things are being
Speaker 1: talked about in a way in my lifetime they have
Speaker 1: never been talked about. Praise the Lord, thank God. And
Speaker 1: do you see that too? Absolutely it is such. And
Speaker 1: I'm asked all the time, asked all the time whether
Speaker 1: or not this is a you know it's gonna last.
Speaker 1: So I always put it in the context of the
Speaker 1: of Hamiltons, and right, is it a moment or a movement?
Speaker 1: And we are It could be a moment if we
Speaker 1: let it be a moment if we just basically back off,
Speaker 1: we meaning citizens in the world, we just back off
Speaker 1: black and white, male and female, and just said the
Speaker 1: status quo, the way we were living before is generally okay,
Speaker 1: we'll just go back to that. Or if we that's
Speaker 1: the moment, the movement, which is what I feel, which
Speaker 1: is what I think you're saying you feel and see
Speaker 1: as well that the movement is We're not We're not
Speaker 1: able to forget everything and move backwards. We have to
Speaker 1: move forward. I don't know what that is going to
Speaker 1: look like at the end, but I know it's not
Speaker 1: going to be what it was before. If we keep
Speaker 1: our voices in the right tone and are really inclusive
Speaker 1: of a lot of people's ideas, we will actually make progress,
Speaker 1: not just changed, so it will be changed for the better.
Speaker 1: I am so optimistic about this happening. Generally atenistic, but
Speaker 1: I'm so optimistic about this happening because we, we people
Speaker 1: will not allow it to just swipp slip back. We
Speaker 1: will not allow the what I call the essential worker, Okay,
Speaker 1: the essential worker who became essential only when we wanted
Speaker 1: them to be essential. But before that, we didn't pay
Speaker 1: any attention to them. Most of these people, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: even pay them more than fifteen dollars an hour. We're
Speaker 1: know these essential workers became core and critical to our lives.
Speaker 1: Black people, under resourced people became visible to us for
Speaker 1: the first time, really, and I think it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good time and the book. Part of the journey
Speaker 1: of the book when I read it again in the
Speaker 1: final time, was I how do I say this? I
Speaker 1: started there, That's my life, That's who I was, That's
Speaker 1: who my mother was. For sure, she was a person
Speaker 1: an invisible person, and that I want to ask you
Speaker 1: about her because you have had such a fascinating life.
Speaker 1: Firstless so impressive. Your mom was an absolute saint, and
Speaker 1: she died, as you mentioned, at forty nine. She was
Speaker 1: an immigrant from Panama. I was so struck when you
Speaker 1: wrote about her biggest annual income was fort dollars and
Speaker 1: three a year. Yes, had three children. Um raised you
Speaker 1: all to value the importance of education. Your mom was
Speaker 1: a truly amazing woman. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: prompted me to ask you that that question now is
Speaker 1: that forty nine she died. If she had had access
Speaker 1: to better medical care, for example, you're convinced that she
Speaker 1: would have lived a much longer life. But talk about
Speaker 1: your mom for a minute, because what an unsung heroine
Speaker 1: of not only your life, but probably represents a lot
Speaker 1: of women like her. Yeah. I think that this is
Speaker 1: the backbone of America. It is the dream of America
Speaker 1: embodied in my mother. She did it. She basically came
Speaker 1: here with very little, like literally nothing. She had a
Speaker 1: high school education. She at the time had a husband,
Speaker 1: he was he left early. A mother never spent time
Speaker 1: thinking about or talking about what we did not have
Speaker 1: that was not part of our daily discussions ever, including
Speaker 1: my father. Never literally my aunt's told me about my father.
Speaker 1: So my mother was just this person who when I
Speaker 1: tell the story, when the when you look back, it
Speaker 1: seems like she was this perfect saint. She was a
Speaker 1: typical mother because she she cared about her children immensely.
Speaker 1: She sacrificed everything in her sphere for us. That's basically
Speaker 1: she lived for us. She had no idea she was
Speaker 1: gonna diet for you nine Obviously, she thought that if
Speaker 1: she raised good kids, and this is part of her spiritualism,
Speaker 1: her religion, that if she thought she raised good kids,
Speaker 1: that God would take care of everything. Else. She thought
Speaker 1: if she raised kids that worked hard and took care
Speaker 1: of themselves and big for her, took care of each other,
Speaker 1: that God would take care of everything. So she had
Speaker 1: these fundamental beliefs that a lot of you know, just
Speaker 1: regular good old fashion hard work, keep an eye on
Speaker 1: the people who are close to you. She struggled, And
Speaker 1: when I was about sixteen or seventeen, I realized my
Speaker 1: mother was really struggling. You know, when your kids you
Speaker 1: just figure this is the way everybody lives. My mother
Speaker 1: literally woke up early every single day, went to bed
Speaker 1: late every single night, and every day she had to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to have food for us on
Speaker 1: the table, to keep us physically safe, to get enough
Speaker 1: money to pay basic things. I learned later how much
Speaker 1: she bartered for just about everything. How she would go
Speaker 1: to my high school. I have to have discussions with
Speaker 1: my high school because she couldn't paid the tuition. My
Speaker 1: mother paid sixty five dollars a month for me to
Speaker 1: go to high school. That's six fifty dollars a year.
Speaker 1: She made four thousand, four hundred dollars. It's just unthinkable.
Speaker 1: But the reason why it wasn't unthinkable for me when
Speaker 1: I was growing up was that she didn't make it obvious.
Speaker 1: She just made us obvious to ourselves, if you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. We were it was all about us.
Speaker 1: He never complained. She never really didn't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you said at sixteen she was struggling, but but she
Speaker 1: never she never talked to you all of it. I
Speaker 1: realized that when I when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: because I went to a all girls, Catholic high school,
Speaker 1: basically a high school above our meetings obviously, but it's
Speaker 1: really great school. I mean high school in in the
Speaker 1: Midtown New York City Cathedral High School. And when I
Speaker 1: went there for the first time, I took I took
Speaker 1: the bus out of our neighborhoods. I was, what's six fourteen,
Speaker 1: I guess when I first went the first time, I
Speaker 1: took the bus out way up to quote unquote Midtown.
Speaker 1: I lived in the Lower Reside and that's where we stayed.
Speaker 1: We stayed there. That was our world. And when I moved,
Speaker 1: when I was going up and down on this bus,
Speaker 1: and I started to realize people live in these great
Speaker 1: neighborhood so this was pretty cool, and they had things
Speaker 1: besides bodega's and and the like. And then I went
Speaker 1: to school and met other children and their parents and
Speaker 1: realized just the look of my mother, the look how
Speaker 1: she dressed, how she looked. She was carrying a lot
Speaker 1: of weight. You could tell that she had a lot
Speaker 1: on her shoulders, even though it didn't you couldn't see
Speaker 1: it physically right obviously, but you could see it in
Speaker 1: her body. And that's when I said, whoa this is?
Speaker 1: This is taking a lot from her, And is that
Speaker 1: what inspired you to achieve and to really pursue excellence,
Speaker 1: Because clearly you're a highly intelligent person, you know, And
Speaker 1: you went to to college. You started, I guess in
Speaker 1: chemical engineer and then engineering, and then you transferred to
Speaker 1: mechanical engineering. You've got your masters and mechanical engineering. I mean,
Speaker 1: what inspired you to to be such a huge achiever? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my mom, it was about in the beginning, what perspective
Speaker 1: do you have? Right? I mean, I had no perspective
Speaker 1: on companies and hierarchies and c eos none. What I
Speaker 1: wanted to do is get a job that I that
Speaker 1: earned enough money. That's why I picked chemical engineering. This
Speaker 1: was very insightful choice about you know, I just went
Speaker 1: to a book. You're very practical, very practical. I need
Speaker 1: a job that could pay the most money after four
Speaker 1: years of college. We had no option but to go
Speaker 1: to college. But my mother said, basically no choice. I
Speaker 1: would always say how you're gonna pay for it? She said,
Speaker 1: don't worry about that's me. You take care of your business.
Speaker 1: I'll take care of my business. And so I looked
Speaker 1: it up and it was chemical engineering. I was gonna
Speaker 1: be a chemical engineer. Four years of college. You make
Speaker 1: the most money twenty five thousand dollars or whatever. It
Speaker 1: would have been dollars. That was I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, because I mean twenty five thousand dollars, we
Speaker 1: can change our life for twenty hours. It was that straightforward,
Speaker 1: that practical decision, no complications, literally dollars a year, four
Speaker 1: years of college that said. Of course I didn't go
Speaker 1: to four years. I went to five and a half year.
Speaker 1: I got my master's degree. And by the time I
Speaker 1: ended college, you know, my mother was to the point
Speaker 1: so sick, and I was dying literally a couple of
Speaker 1: years after that. So right when I could have started
Speaker 1: to switch it back and give it to her and
Speaker 1: make her life a little bit more comfortable, which Katie
Speaker 1: would have been easy to think about this right five,
Speaker 1: I could have made her life easier without too much complications.
Speaker 1: And I ran out of time, you know, I basically
Speaker 1: that's right out of time. And she so she she
Speaker 1: died in the hospital of that is, you know, the
Speaker 1: center the heartbeat of hospitals in New York. But this hospital,
Speaker 1: it was Bellevue, was so you know, let's overrun at
Speaker 1: that point. It was so cry would have taken care
Speaker 1: of all kinds of things that age was, you know,
Speaker 1: how it was at that time, and so she didn't
Speaker 1: get great care. I think that this is not that
Speaker 1: the people ignored her. It was just as I was
Speaker 1: not capable of pushing it. If my mother had gotten
Speaker 1: sick when I was older, I would have literally been
Speaker 1: able to her right advocate for her. And I just
Speaker 1: didn't even know how to do it much says that
Speaker 1: it was possible to do. You know, I had no
Speaker 1: idea when my husband was sick the first time, when
Speaker 1: he got ill, way before he died along collapse, when
Speaker 1: he went into the hospital. Literally I was the general, Literally,
Speaker 1: this is what's going to happen. This is that you
Speaker 1: guys can't. I want to know what's going on, who's
Speaker 1: going to see him, et cetera. If I had half
Speaker 1: of that, my mother would have surely been alive. Sounds
Speaker 1: like you you have a lot of I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're you feel a lot of guilt
Speaker 1: about huge amount of guilt. Huge amount of guilt. It
Speaker 1: took me a lot of time, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: cry on this to get over the fact that you can't.
Speaker 1: You can't live your life backwards to force right. If
Speaker 1: you would have known, you would have done it. Differently.
Speaker 1: But of course you didn't know, so you can't kind
Speaker 1: of keep winding back about, well, I should have done this,
Speaker 1: I should have done that. It wasn't that I knew
Speaker 1: what to do and didn't do it. I had no
Speaker 1: clue what I'm doing. That's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: now I pushed so hard for basic things that as
Speaker 1: citizens of the world we have to have. We shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to have somebody who who has time and energy
Speaker 1: and power and position to advocate for us to get
Speaker 1: things that are like the Pavlovs need right. Anyway, it
Speaker 1: took a lot of time for me to get past that,
Speaker 1: and even now I cry when I talked about it,
Speaker 1: because she should have been able to enjoy our success
Speaker 1: more more, not financially just being there. If you do
Speaker 1: financially that you could have been able to perfect her
Speaker 1: quality of life. And in a way you pay tribute
Speaker 1: to her ursula because your title is where you are,
Speaker 1: is not who you are, And that came from your mom.
Speaker 1: And my mother had these amazing Pemanian English translations sayings
Speaker 1: that were She said them all the time, and of
Speaker 1: course when you're growing up you think you know, can
Speaker 1: I hear this one more time. I'm gonna explode if
Speaker 1: she says this one more time. You know, leave behind
Speaker 1: max My name is Crystal, Maxine birth Um. God doesn't
Speaker 1: like ugly, so she said, that doesn't like ugly, and
Speaker 1: that meant you yourself can't be ugly, not things you.
Speaker 1: God doesn't like ugly, so you can't be an ugly person.
Speaker 1: She would say, leave behind more than you take away.
Speaker 1: That's how we'll measure whether or not you're successful. It
Speaker 1: is not about anything else by the whether or not
Speaker 1: you leave and every interaction more, Oh my goodness, on
Speaker 1: and on and on. She says, the world, don't worry
Speaker 1: about the world can't happen to you. You have to
Speaker 1: happen to the world. You know, all these all of
Speaker 1: these statements, is like, and now I say it in
Speaker 1: the book. Throughout my life, I lived with these statements
Speaker 1: in my head. I literally buried in my head. Didn't
Speaker 1: say them out loud all the time, but I literally
Speaker 1: think about them and was raised with them in my soul.
Speaker 1: And that's what. I'm not a perfect person by it,
Speaker 1: by any stretch of imagination if you know me, but
Speaker 1: I do you know, I actually spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time reflecting on whether, you know, what can I do
Speaker 1: better to make sure that I leave behind more than
Speaker 1: I take away, to make sure that I am happening
Speaker 1: to the world. I'm not sitting back and saying, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I wish it those people would make it better.
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time speaking and speaking out, particularly the younger people,
Speaker 1: is that we have to engage. We cannot count on
Speaker 1: others to take care of us. We have to take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves and we have to take care of others.
Speaker 1: And if we do it from that perspective and everybody
Speaker 1: does it, then people will people will be taking care
Speaker 1: of us. My entire journey, my entire success in life,
Speaker 1: every single intrivin is based on the fact that I
Speaker 1: had a great start in life and I had help
Speaker 1: along the way. The great start in life is necessary
Speaker 1: but not sufficient, right, So it got that, and then
Speaker 1: I had unbelievable just either support from people who I
Speaker 1: don't know, fellowship here or a scholarship here, or a
Speaker 1: job here, and people who I do know. I write
Speaker 1: about Vernon Jordan and as you know, he just passed
Speaker 1: away and he was my absolute shining light outside of
Speaker 1: my family was this man who decided that he was
Speaker 1: gonna take me under his wing, plain and simple. That
Speaker 1: was it. And out of nowhere starting in about there
Speaker 1: was this kind of guy in the background. You know,
Speaker 1: he's really big and he would always kind of be
Speaker 1: not too far away from un levable experiences. Which how
Speaker 1: did this happen? How did I get met President Clinton?
Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan's said come on, let's go, met Barack Obama
Speaker 1: for the first time before I said, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to a thing, are you free, Yeah, come on over.
Speaker 1: Just context connections by people who just said, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: take her with me. What do you think would have
Speaker 1: happened if if if you hadn't had the kind of
Speaker 1: mentors that you were so fortunate to have Ursla, from
Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan's to ken Chenalt, to all kinds of leaders
Speaker 1: who saw something special in you and said, we're going
Speaker 1: to take her under our wing and we're going to
Speaker 1: cultivate that spark and that passion that she has. I
Speaker 1: would have had a good life. The difference between a
Speaker 1: good life, earning a good living and an amazingly great
Speaker 1: life for me, what were these people? So I literally
Speaker 1: took my mother laid the foundation for me to have
Speaker 1: a good life. These people transformed that good life into
Speaker 1: a life where I write a book and people are
Speaker 1: going to read it, into a life where where George
Speaker 1: Floyd is murdered and I have a voice that people
Speaker 1: will listen to to try to help to amplify the
Speaker 1: issues that we are dealing with, and to amplify my
Speaker 1: ideas about some of the solutions, my ideas that are
Speaker 1: cultivated and gotten from from friends. What the difference between
Speaker 1: that and having a good life is our friends and
Speaker 1: support and and you can't literally shoulders to stand on
Speaker 1: and people to push you and encourage you and smack
Speaker 1: you when you're doing silly things, which everybody. My husband
Speaker 1: was one of these people as well, just who just
Speaker 1: basically said, just you know, stop settled down, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. That's what friends support.
Speaker 1: But could the kind of support that I got, That's
Speaker 1: what the outcome is when we come back. How Ursula
Speaker 1: led xerox in a world that no longer needs xeroxy.
Speaker 1: That's right after this, I was fascinated to learn that
Speaker 1: you really didn't deal with head on racism yourself until
Speaker 1: you got to college. But the reason why, Katie, is
Speaker 1: because we lived in an environment where we were all
Speaker 1: the same. I mean, so we'll got that at the
Speaker 1: Catholic school, for example, when you went there, not a
Speaker 1: lot of problems with race for me. My brother seemed
Speaker 1: to have had more um as I found out later,
Speaker 1: but for me it was it was not. I was
Speaker 1: a very um and I say this in the book
Speaker 1: I Lived Inside my Head. I was. I'm a very
Speaker 1: self contained person, genuinely an introvert. So I actually flew
Speaker 1: below the radar screen and money most of my life.
Speaker 1: I literally did what people said fairly compliant, obeyed the
Speaker 1: rules quote unquote by the route, obeyed the rules, performed
Speaker 1: fairly well. So I was I was more um. I
Speaker 1: was just easier to deal with. When I got to
Speaker 1: high school and then to college is when I started
Speaker 1: to to open up my mouth more. And obviously then
Speaker 1: people started to notice me more, and that was when
Speaker 1: I started to see things more. But I think that
Speaker 1: when I was, particularly when I was growing up, I
Speaker 1: saw a very little of this what we now call
Speaker 1: like and what what I saw overt rate racism, where
Speaker 1: people literally disregarded me and my accomplishments because I was
Speaker 1: because I had I looked a certain way. And Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the things that was good about that is
Speaker 1: that it was such bs you know it was I
Speaker 1: said it was a great, great foundation because it said
Speaker 1: it was so be it. It's it's it's debunking in
Speaker 1: my own heart. You know that when you see, uh black,
Speaker 1: when I see a black person, they're just regular people
Speaker 1: who can accomplish what everybody else can accomplish. And so
Speaker 1: I didn't kind of grew up in this whole stigma
Speaker 1: kind of a thing. I even grew up in a
Speaker 1: bad neighborhood. I talked about this, this this is a really
Speaker 1: bad neighborhood, and this thought, Okay, we let's live in
Speaker 1: a bad neighborhood. In hindsight, you realize, particularly when I
Speaker 1: left my neighborhood, that there were choices being made by
Speaker 1: funding officials, by leaders, that we could put less resources
Speaker 1: there because these people live there, will put more resists
Speaker 1: there because these kind of people will live there. But
Speaker 1: I didn't grow up with it in my face. It's
Speaker 1: amazing what you recognize in hindsight isn't ursula. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that this writing this book helped you kind of
Speaker 1: put those pieces together and recognize that that racism and
Speaker 1: prejudice against you know, listen, you have the trifecta black,
Speaker 1: poor female. I said, it's in the book. A guy
Speaker 1: told me this when I was in I think I
Speaker 1: was nice. So what a third or fourth grade I
Speaker 1: was in the class he had come to school. I
Speaker 1: went to a Catholic grade school. He came to school
Speaker 1: to speak about something I don't know. I don't even
Speaker 1: remember what it was. And I we were told to
Speaker 1: ask questions and we had all these questions arranged and
Speaker 1: I had to ask one of the questions. I asked
Speaker 1: the question. He responded. At the end, when we were leaving,
Speaker 1: we had to go up and shake his hand, and
Speaker 1: he said to me, you had such a great question.
Speaker 1: And I don't know exactly how he said it, but
Speaker 1: what he said to me was, you know, you're really smart,
Speaker 1: and it's such a great question. It's kind of too
Speaker 1: bad that you're you're black, and you're a girl, and
Speaker 1: you're poor, basically and literally. I I put that away
Speaker 1: in the back of my head for years and then
Speaker 1: remembered it when I got a little bit older and
Speaker 1: remembered it in such a way that that it struck
Speaker 1: me that, yeah, there was one of those two, one
Speaker 1: of those three things that was really a problem, the
Speaker 1: poor part, which is something that we can work to
Speaker 1: eliminate um throughout the world, abject poverty. And by the way,
Speaker 1: we were not We didn't have abject poverty, but we
Speaker 1: were like one level above it. I can't give people
Speaker 1: the understanding of the life that I grew up and
Speaker 1: we had. My mother had nothing, nothing, We lived in
Speaker 1: a horrible building. Walk into our apartment. It was a sanctuary.
Speaker 1: Didn't have a lot of stuff in it, but it
Speaker 1: was clean and organized. But anyway, this and I said,
Speaker 1: oh my god, it's black and and a girl. What
Speaker 1: is what he said? Black and a girl were not
Speaker 1: things that I would trade off, even if somebody said
Speaker 1: to me, you have an option to start differently. I
Speaker 1: kind of like both of those things about me. And
Speaker 1: how can that be a strike against you? And I
Speaker 1: realized as I got older that it actually was. It
Speaker 1: actually was, And the way the only way to turn
Speaker 1: that around is to use this this isolation that you
Speaker 1: feel if you're in a big crowd to your advantage.
Speaker 1: And I say this in the book when I started working,
Speaker 1: if there was a big meeting and all of the
Speaker 1: employees had to go, or the old of the engineers
Speaker 1: had to go, I guarantee you if I raised my hand,
Speaker 1: somebody would call me because the only person who looked
Speaker 1: like me in the room was me. Literally, when I
Speaker 1: started at Xerox, there must have been ten black women
Speaker 1: anywhere near engineering in the company. I can't, I don't.
Speaker 1: I meant no black women none. So you you transformed
Speaker 1: your differences into an advantage, to an advantage. But basically
Speaker 1: saying they're kind, I'm pretty good, I'm pretty smart. That
Speaker 1: kind of I kind of knew that. And if and
Speaker 1: I had an opinion about everything, my mother would say,
Speaker 1: always say you're you could be wrong and strong. I
Speaker 1: had an opinion everything even is always a bad opinion. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so I basically and I was definitely taught early
Speaker 1: to speak out to literally, I'm not sit down, and
Speaker 1: kind of just taught that your mom, my mom, my
Speaker 1: mom really pretty basics she said, if you have a
Speaker 1: point of view, she didn't quite say in these words,
Speaker 1: speak up. Nobody's gonna be able to say we read you.
Speaker 1: Nobody's gonna read your mind. My mom's motto for all
Speaker 1: of us was let him know you're there. And I
Speaker 1: don't know where even she got that, because she was
Speaker 1: kind of shy and of a totally different generation like
Speaker 1: your mom was obviously different circumstances and much more privileged
Speaker 1: but but not uber privileged upbringing. But she she really
Speaker 1: kind of understood, especially for her daughters, the importance of
Speaker 1: letting people know you're there, of not being a shrinking violet,
Speaker 1: of speaking your mind, of being this is this is
Speaker 1: a generational thing because if you think about your mother
Speaker 1: and my mother were in the same um generational times
Speaker 1: they were they were raising us at the start of
Speaker 1: this kind of outcry by women. It was the beginning
Speaker 1: of this by women, the modern outcry by women to
Speaker 1: be heard and to be to have We start to realize,
Speaker 1: women start to realize that there was a little bit
Speaker 1: more to us than the public male public was giving
Speaker 1: us credit for. And so or you know, our goal
Speaker 1: in life didn't have to be to please our bosses
Speaker 1: and to make them feel like the man, absolutely or
Speaker 1: or necessarily to please our any male colleague, including our husband,
Speaker 1: and make them feel like the men at our expense, right,
Speaker 1: So I absolutely understand how relationships work, and you obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of it has to do with making a
Speaker 1: person feel good. But what happened in the past is
Speaker 1: we did that to the exclusion of any look on ourselves.
Speaker 1: And what we were starting to live through I know
Speaker 1: I was living through was this idea that I had
Speaker 1: a point of view and I had some worth and
Speaker 1: so this had to be a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a partnership um in marriage for sure, right And in fact,
Speaker 1: that's so critically important. You talk a lot about how
Speaker 1: your husband Lloyd supported you through the years, and we've
Speaker 1: seen millions of women drop out of the workforce during
Speaker 1: the pandemic because domestic labor is just not evenly divided.
Speaker 1: And you know, we've been set back decades in terms
Speaker 1: of progress. And I know that that having a supportive
Speaker 1: spouse and having someone who helps is so critically important
Speaker 1: and was so critically important to your success. I want
Speaker 1: to I have to ask you about Xerox and being
Speaker 1: the CEO. So you were one of these long time
Speaker 1: loyal employees of a corporation and that happens a lot
Speaker 1: less often now, as you know millennials and gen z
Speaker 1: s or our masters at job hoppying they are going
Speaker 1: to have fourteen jobs or so on average before they retire.
Speaker 1: But you were as loyal as the day is long
Speaker 1: to xerox um and that loyalty paid off. You became
Speaker 1: CEO of the company in two thousand nine. Is that
Speaker 1: writer's law? And uh? But at the same time, holy cow,
Speaker 1: you kind of inherited a bit of a ship chow
Speaker 1: excuse my French, because you had to manage the decline
Speaker 1: of a company that had really seen its hey days,
Speaker 1: you know, decades before, because of of of massive changes
Speaker 1: in technology in the world. And how hard was that
Speaker 1: and what kind of shape was Xerox in when you
Speaker 1: suddenly found yourself in charge. Yeah, the good news about
Speaker 1: this is that I was preceded by a woman, right
Speaker 1: and okay who really inherited the ship show. She was
Speaker 1: the French for the description of the company company gay company.
Speaker 1: But it was a mess when she got it. We
Speaker 1: would literally we were running out of cash when she
Speaker 1: took over the company. That's right, It almost went bankrupt,
Speaker 1: right right, And she really she really laid the foundation
Speaker 1: was Xerox to have another set of generations. And but
Speaker 1: by the time I got the company and I was
Speaker 1: her second for my whole you know, for my whole
Speaker 1: senior career. Um. And she may be president in two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven and a member of the and the
Speaker 1: board elect me, remember the board in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: preparing me for to you know. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that I realized from Anne was that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: that there was that there was a future that we
Speaker 1: didn't have to succumb to the easy route of just
Speaker 1: the easier route of just kind of letting it happen.
Speaker 1: It's because there was a lot of explanation and defense
Speaker 1: about letting it happen. Literally, we were being um substituted,
Speaker 1: We're being made irrelevant by technology. We're running where every
Speaker 1: time we ran into a problem, we found a new solution,
Speaker 1: found a new solution. So we were always running and
Speaker 1: catching up. But the fundamental value of the company as
Speaker 1: a document management company in the old sense, as you
Speaker 1: can see today, is literally, um no longer as valuable
Speaker 1: that you were. You were rendered obsolete pretty much literally
Speaker 1: by these things. Yeah, by these things, and there's smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller and by the way perfectly and the clouds
Speaker 1: to have the file cabinets, the paper and the story.
Speaker 1: So yes, we kept running. When I took all the
Speaker 1: thing that was really great about it was that we
Speaker 1: were again cornered, if you know what I mean. There
Speaker 1: was some there's something interesting about having few choices, and
Speaker 1: people said, oh my god, you're a great patetice grape.
Speaker 1: Mind I said, if you have a thousand choices, making
Speaker 1: the right one, it's probably harder than if you have
Speaker 1: to right. If you have to, you make one one
Speaker 1: of them is probably stupid the other. And we had
Speaker 1: no choice but to look for different options for the
Speaker 1: future of this company. We had no choice but to
Speaker 1: do that, and fortunately I had a predecessor and a
Speaker 1: board who said, let's take some chances and look. Not
Speaker 1: every single one of them worked, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them did. And still very very fraught time for Xerox
Speaker 1: during my tenure and even today, is this whole idea
Speaker 1: about recreating itself yet again, to become more, to become
Speaker 1: relevant yet again. We'll keep happening to Xerox. Not every
Speaker 1: single company has a right to exist forever. I say
Speaker 1: this as well, and at some point you may have
Speaker 1: to say done done. But I think that when I
Speaker 1: was there, for sure, and I think even now it's
Speaker 1: too early to call that for a company like Xerox
Speaker 1: that still has an amazing number of people that still
Speaker 1: can deal lot well with large corporations, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: there's a way to trying to extract value. You should
Speaker 1: do that as long as possible. The great news is
Speaker 1: that I was I was so long in the company
Speaker 1: that it was part of my life. It was you know,
Speaker 1: it was right then a literally I woke up every
Speaker 1: day walked into this place. There was no way in
Speaker 1: the world I could just sit back and let it
Speaker 1: kind of driftful, dribble away. I had to, you know,
Speaker 1: not only me, but the whole hundred ten thousand people,
Speaker 1: fifty thou people aboard of directors and management team. We
Speaker 1: had to fight for it, fight for tough man. Though
Speaker 1: it's like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, in
Speaker 1: some ways, large e stand for pieces of our business.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, And I talked about this in the context
Speaker 1: of a couple of things. After I retired, it became
Speaker 1: a more popular I'm not saying I started this, but
Speaker 1: one of the things that I struggled with continuously was
Speaker 1: whether or not it was reasonable or fear to disrupt
Speaker 1: people's lives as dramatically as you do when you make
Speaker 1: them redundant in an environment like Rochester, New York, which
Speaker 1: is where a lot of our employees were at the time,
Speaker 1: well other other communities that were basically dependent on an
Speaker 1: industry or two in their towns. Is there a way
Speaker 1: for us to kind of balance it out a bit?
Speaker 1: And I said this, I talked about this in the book.
Speaker 1: We had a lot of time when I was CEO,
Speaker 1: but even right before that, when it was president, when
Speaker 1: we're going through it, when Anne was CEO, when I
Speaker 1: first started working for her, but we had to make
Speaker 1: decisions about whether or not we were going to just
Speaker 1: lay off ten thousands of people, and if we could
Speaker 1: do save like fifty of them by not maximizing profit
Speaker 1: like this, not maximizing profit, could we balance it such
Speaker 1: that it could be a little bit more graceful transitions?
Speaker 1: That is today a standard discussion that CEOs have to
Speaker 1: have because communities governments are saying out loud, what the
Speaker 1: heck are you doing? You can't. I do get profit
Speaker 1: and profitability, but I also get the fact that you
Speaker 1: can't just dump on Rochester, New York a thousand more
Speaker 1: unemployed people. The government's gonna end up taking care of them.
Speaker 1: So you transfer wealth to a shareholder at the expense
Speaker 1: of the government. Call right, And I think I think
Speaker 1: now companies are coming under much greater scrutiny and this
Speaker 1: you know, you know, race for quarterly profits and all
Speaker 1: that is just companies are expected to be more humanitarian,
Speaker 1: honestly and full citizens of the world. Full citizens of
Speaker 1: the world have to be engaged and interested in their
Speaker 1: shareholders wealth and profit. They have to be engaged and
Speaker 1: interested in the communities that they work and live in,
Speaker 1: and social issues. Have to be engaged in government and
Speaker 1: social issues. I'm on this all the time, even when
Speaker 1: I was CEO, on this idea that we can't be silent.
Speaker 1: How in the world can we be silent when we
Speaker 1: come back Ursula's unflinching advice for today's business leaders. I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about, uh, this year's Fortune five
Speaker 1: hundred lists because they saw a few records CEOs or women.
Speaker 1: There are two black women. But still progress is so slow.
Speaker 1: And I know you write about feeling this otherness, and
Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was fascinating that that you
Speaker 1: know the fact that you don't play golf and that
Speaker 1: you would never play it Augusta because they didn't accept
Speaker 1: black members until nineteen and you know, and why should
Speaker 1: you have to play golf if you don't like golf?
Speaker 1: You know, But what else can be done to improve
Speaker 1: these numbers? When you consider that women make up, you know,
Speaker 1: fifty two of the professional workforce, and the number in
Speaker 1: C suite jobs it's under ten percent. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been talking about this ursula and interviewing people about
Speaker 1: this for thirty years. Thirty years. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: what I come to the conclusion. And I said this
Speaker 1: out loud, and of course I'm getting more bullback on
Speaker 1: this in a little bit, but I'm gonna continue saying
Speaker 1: it in to a until something else changes. I actually
Speaker 1: became a fan of quotas. Let me tell you what
Speaker 1: happened with women. The numbers that you just um told
Speaker 1: us about are a recent um reality. Ten years ago
Speaker 1: literally the number was a quarter of that. We were
Speaker 1: like fifteen, so half of that. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: what happened. California, Europe, UK and Western Europe start to
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that their states or the governments
Speaker 1: were going to require companies to have a diverse board,
Speaker 1: and they said of the board should be California did
Speaker 1: it whatever surprised. Let me tell you what happened. Out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork came these fully formed adults called women
Speaker 1: who were ready and able to serve on boards. Before
Speaker 1: you said it, thirty years. For my entire career, forty
Speaker 1: years in business, we've been talking about this. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to find them. And the women on everything. Wait
Speaker 1: a second, yeah, hello, Ursula Burns could be on I
Speaker 1: am on lots of them, but I could be on
Speaker 1: twenty of them. But it's ridiculous, dulous. But here's the
Speaker 1: here's why I say quotas work for a while. Quotas
Speaker 1: are the penalty for not doing what you should be
Speaker 1: doing by yourself. Right. We've been talking about it for years,
Speaker 1: thirty years, as you say, forty years, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: We can't find them, we don't really know someone on
Speaker 1: some one we find literally, I don't know where California
Speaker 1: said and out of nowhere appeared these women. Enough, they're
Speaker 1: not all the same. There's there's forty that they're out.
Speaker 1: They appeared in the c suite. Oh my goodness. They
Speaker 1: were born yesterday, educated the day after yesterday, and today
Speaker 1: they became you know, they've been there all the time.
Speaker 1: The problem with this progress, though, I will tell you
Speaker 1: that the thing that troubles me is that we've made
Speaker 1: the progress in women with the exclusion of women of
Speaker 1: color of any sort. Most of these, as you you
Speaker 1: said it, most of this is majority of women, white women,
Speaker 1: and we've made that progress without a lot of progress
Speaker 1: in brown and black males. So the step it's we
Speaker 1: can't seem to kind of get the momentum rolling across
Speaker 1: the board. We always have to make. It's always a choice.
Speaker 1: And I say women, white women have to help us,
Speaker 1: right because they have to. Now they're sitting on these
Speaker 1: in the c suite and the new boards, they have
Speaker 1: to ask the question, what the hell are you guys doing,
Speaker 1: Why in the world are you not Why in the
Speaker 1: world don't we as a leadership team or a board
Speaker 1: have more, even more diversity than this gender diversity. So
Speaker 1: it's taking us forever it had as required pushes um,
Speaker 1: you know, legal pushes, nudges, whatever the heck it is
Speaker 1: to make the progress. Hopefully we will make enough progress
Speaker 1: that that becomes redundant, that those legal needs become a
Speaker 1: legal means, become redundant. I'm hoping that that's the case.
Speaker 1: But until it becomes the case, I want people, I
Speaker 1: want NASDACT to keep pushing and saying no, you're not
Speaker 1: gonna list on this, on this mechanism to to sell
Speaker 1: your company, to present your company, until you present yourself
Speaker 1: to the world like a fully formed company, which is
Speaker 1: a company that has a lot of people of different
Speaker 1: types of working and in fact that that leads me
Speaker 1: to my final question, what did you tell some of
Speaker 1: these people who called you, probably in a bit of
Speaker 1: a panic ursula, when this racial justice movement became too
Speaker 1: loud to ignore. I mean, it wasn't new, but it
Speaker 1: was too loud to ignore at that point, what would
Speaker 1: you tell business leaders about how to improve UH diversity
Speaker 1: and equality and inclusion in their companies? Right? And we
Speaker 1: did this through a mechanism I did after George Floyd died.
Speaker 1: I remember flying to London, back to London, landing and
Speaker 1: getting a call almost immediately I got to my flat
Speaker 1: um from a very very good European business leader, amazing guy,
Speaker 1: um all the right foundational elements to actually have a
Speaker 1: sensible conversation with. He called me and said, I think
Speaker 1: I got this, but I'm a little confused. He was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I think I got it, and I just want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about what's actually happening. This was the move,
Speaker 1: the marches that were happening all over the world. I mean,
Speaker 1: George Floyd is killed in Minnea, in Minnesota, and people
Speaker 1: in London and marching Chinese people, you know, young everybody.
Speaker 1: So he said, he just didn't he he think he
Speaker 1: thought he got it, but he didn't really get. My
Speaker 1: question to him was, I won't say name what. I'm
Speaker 1: more than happy to talk to you about this, but
Speaker 1: why are you calling me? He said, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: I said, why don't you call talk to somebody on
Speaker 1: your board or talk to somebody in your management team.
Speaker 1: His was the response, I don't have anybody on my
Speaker 1: board and my management team that's anyone of color. I said,
Speaker 1: what so yeah, I said, well, first first thing to do,
Speaker 1: start close to home. You get you have to start close.
Speaker 1: You have to fix your house before you can tell
Speaker 1: how bunch of people how to fix their houses. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't have a uh, you don't have a diverse
Speaker 1: management team, you don't have a diverse board. Shame when
Speaker 1: you I didn't quite say it this way, what do
Speaker 1: you do? Start close to home. Literally, you have to
Speaker 1: have people who are in your house nudging you along
Speaker 1: the way, giving you insights. So, first of all, I
Speaker 1: tell the business leaders, get a diverse team around you,
Speaker 1: get a diverse board around you. You're the people who
Speaker 1: you have to have a diverse organization, not because you
Speaker 1: just want to be quote unquote altruistic, even though that's
Speaker 1: reason enough, because it's not altruism is called equality. But
Speaker 1: even if you have to be altruistic, Okay, you don't
Speaker 1: need to go that far. Results are better. Well, it's
Speaker 1: been studied in every business school. You can imagine. Diverse
Speaker 1: teams performed better than non diverse teams. Diverse companies profitability
Speaker 1: and longevity, their future readiness is significantly better than non Okay,
Speaker 1: So we don't have to actually do this anymore because
Speaker 1: we want you to feel bad. You have to do
Speaker 1: it because you serve your shareholder is better. First, start
Speaker 1: close to home to literally speak up this voting rights
Speaker 1: thing that's happening right now. Companies are actually debating whether
Speaker 1: they have a voice in this. I keep saying, what
Speaker 1: do you mean where they have We're not talking about
Speaker 1: supporting radical ideas. Here, we're not even talking about supporting
Speaker 1: a black or brown person. I'm not or Asian part.
Speaker 1: We're just talking about supporting the right of any citizen. Well,
Speaker 1: you saw Ken Fraser and Ken Channa come out and
Speaker 1: talk about what was happening in Georgia. Fraser the CEO
Speaker 1: of Mirk, Yeah, and myself and seventy others went out,
Speaker 1: Black and brown business leaders, why now and sign this
Speaker 1: letter and paid for them to be full page ads
Speaker 1: in the Journal and the Times, well to Journal New
Speaker 1: York Times. Why because, first of all, we were ashamed
Speaker 1: that we hadn't spoken up before, and we wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a yell everybody understand. And we were surprised
Speaker 1: at how few other business leaders were speaking up. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't be required that black people speak up about all inequality.
Speaker 1: It affects them, Inequality affects everyone everyone. So second thing
Speaker 1: is make sure that you speak up on issues that
Speaker 1: you are engaged as a business, not a personal crusade
Speaker 1: of business. You need. We need a free and fair
Speaker 1: democracy for our business to operate. Well, that's all you
Speaker 1: have to do, is that's all you have to tell
Speaker 1: the state leaders. That's all we need and this is
Speaker 1: what we think. That is someone someone's on. Second. So therefore,
Speaker 1: get involved. First, start close to home. Second, get involved.
Speaker 1: Do not let this crap slide by you. It's not
Speaker 1: only about profits in the quarter. It's about readying the world,
Speaker 1: ready in the United States for its future. Third, inspect
Speaker 1: the numbers. I am always surprised at this. Facts and
Speaker 1: data don't lie. Look at pay equity in your company,
Speaker 1: look at performance of different types of people in your company.
Speaker 1: Look at the numbers. Track when you see problems, fix it.
Speaker 1: And we you know, we do this with profit. Literally
Speaker 1: we do it with profit, with you know, to the penny.
Speaker 1: We don't do it with other areas well. We don't
Speaker 1: have enough enough women, well why I don't really know.
Speaker 1: Next year we don't have enough women. Were just not
Speaker 1: a priority for them. But by the way, if they
Speaker 1: want to retain a workforce of young people, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, they say all altruism is self serving,
Speaker 1: but there is. I'll take that. I'll take that for now.
Speaker 1: I I literally don't like this to the extent that
Speaker 1: it's becoming where everybody who gives money puts a name
Speaker 1: on things. But that's a different, a totally different show.
Speaker 1: But I tell you what if we need to start
Speaker 1: with self serving altruism, which is I tell you a
Speaker 1: lot of how I got for You know, scholarships were
Speaker 1: named after people, right, So I'm I say, God, bless you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, or whoever it is that you admire,
Speaker 1: blessed you, thank you very much. I do believe that
Speaker 1: there is an equal amount of altruism that is done
Speaker 1: with no lights on them. Right. And I'm really into
Speaker 1: civil servants lately, you know, I just started to realize how,
Speaker 1: I mean, how thankless a job these guys, and most
Speaker 1: of us don't even know who they are, but look
Speaker 1: at them. They're hustling away trying to get you know, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever done. I think that we're at a point where
Speaker 1: it's not a moment, it's a movement where you cannot
Speaker 1: ignore the voices of people. Technology helps here. We cannot
Speaker 1: ignore people just paying attention to how you're doing. People
Speaker 1: in this movement have a huge amount of power. They
Speaker 1: cannot um minimize how important their voice and their impact is.
Speaker 1: If they want to see change, have to speak up.
Speaker 1: If I want to see change, I have to speak up.
Speaker 1: I cannot so I mean I do. I cannot take
Speaker 1: the easy path, right Sometimes I just want to sleep,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, just kind of you get
Speaker 1: it as well, just go and you know, stay silent
Speaker 1: for but you really somebody else, let somebody else this battle.
Speaker 1: But you can't, You really can't, because what are the
Speaker 1: part of life is the battle, right because with the
Speaker 1: battle comes all the fun and all that stuff like that,
Speaker 1: the engagement interaction with people. But I want to make sure.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why I wrote the book was to make sure that
Speaker 1: people understand it does not take super people. Literally, this
Speaker 1: is not a superperson. You're not looking at a superperson.
Speaker 1: If anybody was super it was my mom. I literally
Speaker 1: was a hard working, kind of average Joe and who
Speaker 1: who literally was pretty smart did okay, fine, fine, fine,
Speaker 1: fine fine. A lot of us in the world. A
Speaker 1: huge amount of help differentiated me. And then literally all
Speaker 1: of the lessons of the person who died a long
Speaker 1: time ago came into play. It was like almost perfect
Speaker 1: came into play where I could repeat her words and
Speaker 1: try to live by those words, and it was impactful
Speaker 1: and relevant today. And that's the point of the book.
Speaker 1: It's not about any great story about this. You know,
Speaker 1: I found goal in the no I literally just had
Speaker 1: a lot of help, a lot of help from the
Speaker 1: time I was born to know a lot of help.
Speaker 1: And you're using it now to pay it forward and
Speaker 1: make the world a better place. Ursula, Thank you, Ursula,
Speaker 1: Maxine Max Burns. The book is called Where You Are
Speaker 1: Is Not Who You Are? A real tribute to your
Speaker 1: sweet mom, your incredible mom. You talk about your business
Speaker 1: experience or life experience. It's a fantastic memoir. Congratulations on it.
Speaker 1: A big thank you to Ursula Burns, who we all
Speaker 1: agree is very cool. Her book is called Where You
Speaker 1: Are Is Not Who You Are? Next week on next Question.
Speaker 1: There was this very strange distinction between the public perception
Speaker 1: of what it meant to be a man and how
Speaker 1: men were um demonizing me and saying I was a
Speaker 1: traitor to my own gender. How women were publicly applauding me,
Speaker 1: but the men who needed it were privately writing how
Speaker 1: the hottie from Jane the Virgin, Justin Baldoni is trying
Speaker 1: to change how we think about masculinity, one man, one
Speaker 1: reader at a time. That's next Thursday, on Next Question,
Speaker 1: Next Question, with Katie Kurik is a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Media and Katie Kurik Media. The executive producers Army,
Speaker 1: Katie Curic, and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen.
Speaker 1: Associate producers Derek Clements, Adriana Fassio, and Emily Pinto. The
Speaker 1: show is edited and mixed by Derrick Clements. For more
Speaker 1: information about today's episode, or to sign up for my
Speaker 1: morning newsletter, wake Up Call, go to Katie Correct dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find me at Katie Correct, on Instagram
Speaker 1: and on my social media channels. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,