Burns overcame a tough upbringing in a New York City housing project to get a degree in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of NYU and then a master's from Columbia University.

Since then she's been a Xerox lifer. She started as an intern at age 22 in 1980 and joined full time a year later after getting her master's. She rose rapidly through the ranks, working in various product development roles until she was named CEO in 2009. She now serves as the chairwoman of the board at Xerox.

"When I came to work at Xerox, I just chose to work. Somebody said 'how about this?' And I said OK, and I would go do that in the lab," Burns said in an interview for the PBS documentary "Makers." "Then somebody said how about doing some business planning. Then I started leaning more towards larger global systems problems. And systems problems are the business."