mPower Moments: On Reaching Your Full Potential with Ursula Burns

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about it.

Yeah, everything about me today is born from where I came from. Everything about where I came from was focused around my mom. My mother was a single parent. She died when I was 25 years old, when she was 49. She was a miracle worker. Now, when I was back there, I didn't think she was a miracle worker. I thought she was a little bit of a pain in the butt. But she was amazingly focused. She had three things that were important to her: one was my brother, second was me, and the third was my sister. She had three kids. She made very little money. She was a home health care, daycare worker. Kids came into our house from a little bit richer people, and we took care of them. My mother took care of them through the day, and her focus was on her kids. She had these isms. One of them was, 'Where you are is not who you are, and remember that when you're rich and famous.' Stuck with you. And she, what does she know about rich and famous? I mean, my mother knew nothing about that. She's from Panama. Rich people? Now you can actually Google this. Back then, nothing. It was nothing. Our neighborhood was the whole world. But she had some idea that we would end up in a place very different than where we were at that moment, and she was trying to prepare us for that. She would say, 'God doesn't like ugly.' And what she meant was not ugly physically, but ugly soul. She would say it all the time. 'God doesn't like ugly.' So she had these great sayings, all born from her upbringing, her background, and she just imparted them on us. I was the closest to her. I was a middle child, you know, normal pain in the ass kid. But she was just very clear, unwavering in her love, but also in her discipline and her expectations.

People think you can, and you do, of course. I mean, to an extent that you can get over this. To this day, I'm now my mother's been dead twice as long almost as she was alive in my life, and she is still unbelievably present in just about every major decision. She's like there, in my kids you can see her there. So obviously when you ask where does that come from and how much does it affect me today, it's like everything about me is from it. It's literally part of your DNA. Yeah, it's part of your DNA. Yes.

Yeah, one of the things my mother always told me is that if you didn't say to people what you wanted, that they would never know. I said it was really funny. I said, 'Well, I want to,' and she said, 'Well, did you tell the teacher?' I said, 'Oh no.' She said, 'Well, how are they going to know?' She said this all the time. 'How are they going to know if you don't tell them? You should expect them to not understand and not know.' And so, one of the things I'm known for is that I'm very frank and I'm outspoken, and people say it's natural. And it's because starting from then, from my mother, all the way through grade school, Catholic school, which was a great school, high school, all-girl Catholic school, all the way to work, first job at Xerox, summer interns at all these labs that I worked at in the summers when I was in college, all of it was I got reinforced and reinforcement from saying things. So people didn't say, 'Oh, shut up, you don't know what you're talking about.' You say something, even if it's a little bit controversial, but generally it wasn't. I mean, it was just answering a question that somebody asked. You answer. The reinforcement was pretty prevalent. So I just from the very beginning, starting with my mother till very much later, even to this day, I've practiced and been reinforced with saying, asking questions, being engaged, being curious. A lot of people aren't, right? And society generally for younger people basically says just sit down and shut up and stay in the corner. We didn't have a lot, but we didn't have that. My mother said, 'You got to speak up, you got to speak up, or else nobody's going to know.' And that's a lesson that's hard for a lot of women.

A little bit, a little bit. But we're sliding back. I just said that in my speech this morning. I'm so nervous about this because I think people are not really paying attention to what's happening here. This is not about an individual, you or me, right? Because you're going to be fine, I'm going to be fine. At the end of the day, you're fairly established, you can make it in the world. You have children. If you do, we're preparing the world for them. There are people like my mom who came over with nothing. We're preparing the world for them. Because if we don't do something that changes the old paradigm, which is there's a playing field. White men laid the field out. There are rules. They decided on the game. They wrote the rules. Yes, there are judges, referees, whatever the hell, who judge. They are the judges. And then they say to us, the people who are not like them, 'Come play.' They didn't say 'please come play,' but they said 'come play' because we're running out of men, because we need some help, we need dangerous jobs done, whatever the heck it is. 'Come play.' We come and we go and play, and they say, 'Oh, but you know, you're really not favored here. You're really not even really liked here.' You say, 'Why?' They said, 'Because you're not playing the game like I play the game.' We said, 'Well, we're women. We don't play the game like you. The job will get done at the end of the day.' Well, we had someone on stage this morning who said, 'I just have to say it out loud. I'm sitting here with fewer rights than I had last year this time.' Think about this. This is not even funny. I know we're political, and I know there are two sides of the thing. I say everybody, let's throw that aside for a minute. The way that this country works, by the way, and you're here, so we're not talking about Russia, I'm not talking about the rules in China. I'm talking about the rules here. One thing that we know for sure that the founding fathers wrote down is that we all have the right to independent thought, to control ourselves. Right now, they're saying you all have that right, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If you're a man, if you're a woman, you could get there, but you have to earn yourself there. You have to live the way I say you have to live in order to get there. Men are just born and they actually get it from birth, just because they look a certain way, they have anatomy of a certain way. And it's kind of flipped. Because like I said, we can't keep going if women don't participate fully in the world. And right now, we have less rights today than we did last year. We are thought of differently today than even last year. Yes, the rhetoric is absolutely, 'We need to be cared for, we need to be protected, we can't have independent thought.' When did that happen? Five minutes ago, I guess. Right, right. Yeah, anyway, it's dangerous. And I'm hoping that it's just part of the journey, which means that you always kind of have a little bit of a blip and then we'll start progress again. I'm hoping that's where we are. But it's not only women, it's black people, it's disabled people, yes, it's children.

One is that please be aware that there is a different way to do things. The tried and true methods, money is everything, males kind of know how to do it, war is reasonable, fighting, this aggression is all good. You have the ability and the freedom to actually change that model. We know where that model gets us. It's not totally bad, by the way, but there's a lot of areas that we can improve. Start thinking about that. That's one of the things that we thought about when we started Integrum and then EverTree Insurance, a brokerage firm that we own. It's a great place to start a career in life. We wanted to be diverse. So think about it. You don't have to have a data analytics degree to be in insurance. You can build a really good business. So grab hold of the opportunities that you have and don't just fall into the rot that's up there. Don't do that, please. You can change the world a little bit. You can actually be much better at it. That's one. Number two, money is not everything. I say this every time I speak somewhere. In my speeches, you'll hear me say, 'We run after...' I would say to people, 'Why aren't you participating in the world? Do some charity work, do some teaching work.' They say, 'Well, I'll do that when I make it.' I'm like, 'Oh, so the world's going to wait until you make it?' No, the world needs your contributions today. So second, engage. Money is not everything. Engage in the opportunities that are out there: portable water, birth rights, medicine for all, good food, whatever the heck it is that you want to do. Even if you want to fly an airplane, whatever it is that you want to do, engage in that relatively early in your life. And then the third is that you, if you don't say what your point of view is, informed please. I don't want people making up stuff. And don't get it off of TikTok. Don't get it off of TikTok. Don't say, 'I saw it on TV.' I love that one. 'I saw it on TV, then it must be true.' I'm like, 'Really? I saw Star Wars on TV, and last I knew, I think it was a movie.' So don't. Please understand that you have a responsibility in this world. So go after it. And then last is work hard. There is no... My mother said that to me when I was a kid. And you think you look at some of this and say, 'Ah, people get rich quick.' You could, but the work is part of the fun of the journey. And we say the word 'work' like it's a curse. I've been working for 40 something years. I literally... and most jobs, there's always a bad experience in every 10 years. Most jobs, I loved what I did. And you spend a lot of time at it. So find something that you're passionate about, you can be good at, and please, please, please do that. If you do that and don't do the plan, 'I'm going to make it, I want to be a...' you'll have a great life and you'll probably end up where you wanted to end up quicker and with significantly less stress than if you do this, 'I'm going to go become an entrepreneur just because that's what you do.' Get something that you're passionate about.

You are welcome. Thank you for having me.