#2 Ursula Burns - CEO at Xerox

Ursula Burns managed to shake off the company's carbon copy reputation, and certainly has built a brand new company.

Raised by a single mother living in public housing in Manhattan's Lower East Side, it was Burns' love for math, and her mother's inspiring outlook on life, that got her to where she is now.

She is the first African-American woman CEO to head a Fortune 500 company. In 2009, Forbes rated her the 14th most powerful woman in the world.

In 1980, Burns first worked for Xerox as a summer intern, permanently joining a year later, in 1981, after completing her master's degree. She worked in various roles in product development and planning in the remainder of the 1980s throughout her 20s.

In January 1990, her career took an unexpected turn when Wayland Hicks, then a senior executive, offered Burns a job as his executive assistant.

In 2000, Burns was named a senior vice president and began working closely with soon to be CEO Anne Mulcahy, in what both women have described as a true partnership. Nine years later, in July 2009, she was named CEO, succeeding Mulcahy, who remained as chairwoman until May 2010.

"Many people told me I had three strikes against me. I was black. I was a girl. And I was poor," wrote Burns in her LeanIn story. "Mom didn't see it that way. She constantly reminded me 'where I was didn't define who I was.' She knew that education was my way up and out."

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