Ursula Burns was announced as the new president of Xerox Corps. this week, making her the first African American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Burns' appointment, effective July 1, follows the eight-year run of CEO Anne Mulcahy. This tranfer of power is the first to feature female-to-female CEO among the large corporations, reported Forbes.com.

Burns was appointed to this position three decades after joining Xerox as a summer intern in 1980, reported Bloomberg Press. By 2000, Burns, who received a degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University, was in charge of the company's manufacturing and supply chain, reported Forbes.

In response to her success Burns told Forbes: "I came from a very poor single-parent household but [had a mother] who was extremely confident and had nothing but outstanding expectations of me and my siblings. There was no expectation that I would be anything but great at whatever I did."