Ursula Burns, CEO Xerox
The leadership organizations of both undergraduate and graduate students at The Fu Foundation School of Engineering at Columbia University are pleased to announce today that alumnae Ursula M. Burns, chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation, will be the keynote speaker for Columbia Engineering’s Class Day ceremony, which will be held on May 14, 2012. The Engineering Senior Class Council, representing undergraduates, and the Engineering Graduate Student Council, representing MS, PhD, and professional degree students, jointly selected Ms. Burns as their graduation speaker for 2012.
Burns, who earned her M.S. in mechanical engineering in 1982 from Columbia Engineering, was named chief executive officer of Xerox in 2009 and, shortly after, made the largest acquisition in Xerox history—the $6.4 billion purchase of Affiliated Computer Services, catapulting the company’s presence in the $500 billion business services market and extending its reach into diverse areas of business process and IT outsourcing. In 2010, she became chairman of the company, which has 140,000 people serving clients in more than 160 countries.
