Where you are is not who you are Ursula Burns More Quotes by Ursula Burns More Quotes From Ursula Burns You don’t have to be at every volleyball game. We can’t guilt ourselves. Ursula Burns volleyball guilt games Admiration takes on a whole new level when you appreciate just how complex it is to run a modern business. Ursula Burns modern-business appreciate running My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person. Ursula Burns pragmatic self mother Xerox is really good at managing documents, and we're definitely good at managing through a process. Ursula Burns xerox documents process This old notion that work is drudgery is nonsense. Most days, even back when Xerox was under siege, I could not wait to get to the office. Ursula Burns siege office waiting 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 good society reading school Impatience is a virtue. Ursula Burns impatience virtue Kids are pretty resilient. You don't have to be at every volleyball game. We can't guilt ourselves. Ursula Burns pretty game you guilt 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 you community mother work 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 you age work life 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 person say you talking 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 you bible time people Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders. Ursula Burns leaders companies founders people 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 good company responsibility believe The world is full of opportunities - every day there's something new that you can do. For example, you could make dirty water potable. Why does anyone not have potable water? Because it's a problem that hasn't been solved yet, but it can be. Ursula Burns day you water world
