“Where you are is not who you are. That’s a quote from her mom that Ursula Burns CEO of Xerox Corp remembers and lives by day to day. My essay is on Ursula Burns, who started off as an intern at Xerox Corp that eventually rose through the ranks to become the first African American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. In this essay, I will discuss her career, her business leadership and her many other business strategies. During a talk at the annual awards conference, Burns talked about how her mother, who raised Ursula single, in one of the worst New York City Public Housing Projects, loved to give advice.
After passing the Harvard entrance examinations, she stayed with her father until his death in 1889 and her mother passed on in 1891. She came to Gallaudet in 1900 to teach at Kendall School and the college. Dr. Peet received her Bachelor's from George Washington University in 1918. She received three honorary degrees: Masters' from Gallaudet in 1923, Doctor of Pedagogy from the George Washington University in 1937, and a Doctor of Humane Letters from Gallaudet in 1950. She also received a special certificate from the Sorbonne in Paris, France.
Mary was the first black women appointed to the Board of Education, she became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, and she was the first women president of the Bethel Literary and Historical Society. Mary speaks about the trials and tribulations African Americans had to endure during the early 1900’s, and how situations continue to worsen as time goes on. In her speech she goes on to make references how colored people are not being treated fairly and with dignity she believes they deserve. She makes it easy for her listeners to understand these injustices by referencing topics her audience can relate to. Her story about how a young colored women was turned away from a job just because the color of her skin can be linked with how women with higher capabilities than their male counterparts are still not receiving the position.
About Sonia Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954. She is the 111th justice, the first Hispanic justice, and the third female justice of the Supreme Court. She was born in the Bronx, New York, and is a Puerto Rican descendent. She graduated A. B., Summa cum lade, from Princeton University in 1967.
African-American women are not an exception to other people who have goals, and Dr. Ramona H. Edelin is a great example. Edelin was born in Los Angeles on September 4, 1945. At an early age, her family relocated to Georgia, where she attended elementary school, and then graduated from Stockbridge High School in Massachusetts in 1963. She then attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee earning her BA (Bachelor of Arts). Ramona later resumed her education, completing a Ph.D. at Boston University in 1981, an outstanding accomplishment.
Parks wanted to act. She finally decided to go to a NAACP meeting on December 1943 to try and serve a purpose, which her husband was already a member of. There she would meet not only a lifelong friendship with a man named E. D. Nixon but “a partnership that would change the course of American history” (Theoharis 18). They soon become crucial members of NAACP, Nixon was the branch president and Mrs. Parks “was then elected the first secretary of the state conference” (Theoharis 27).
Stewart attended Barnard College in Manhattan; she earned a degree in European and Architectural History in 1962. While attending at Barnard College, she met a guy named Andy who happened to be a Yale law student. In the year 1961, Martha & Andy got married. Six years later, they had a beautiful baby girl named Alexis. Stewart went to work at a stockbroker for the boutique of Monness, Williams, and Sidel.
She was a rebel. Most of Society pictures Rosa Parks as a simple women who just happened to do the right thing at the right time. The reality that Theoharis places in your mind is much more intriguing as it proves Rosa Parks’ involvement in the movement was enormous for years before her well known stand on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This story tells of her initial involvement in the Civil Rights movement well before the famous bus incident and tells of her many financial and psychological sacrifices she faced along the way. The book shows in depth her battle against the injustice that the Jim Crow laws of the South during the civil rights era brought to her doorstep.
Walker became the first female, self-made millionaire. She changed the way people marketed their businesses. She revolutionized the African-American hair care product industry, and helped make changes toward black peoples’ civil rights. Madam Walker was born Sarah Breedlove two days before Christmas on December 23, 1867 to former slaves and sharecroppers, Owen and Minerva Breedlove. The Breedlove’s and their six children lived in a dilapidated shack in Delta, Louisiana, near the Mississippi River.
CEO of Sara Lee Brenda C. Barnes “I set a high bar for myself and others, and I think I help people get over that bar. That’s my job” (USA today). Upon being hired by Sara Lee in July 2004 as president and then promoted to CEO a year later, she became one of eight women to head a Fortune 500 company. Later she would rank as number 29 in Forbes list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women in 2009. Brenda Barnes has led the way for women in corporate America.