Explore Xerox leadership history, current executives under CEO Steve Bandrowczak, and timeless business lessons from this document technology pioneer.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Sun 4th January 2026
Few companies have shaped the modern workplace quite like Xerox. From revolutionising office copying to inventing the graphical user interface, Xerox leadership has oscillated between visionary brilliance and cautionary tale. The company that could have "owned the entire computer industry," as Steve Jobs once lamented, instead became a masterclass in both innovation excellence and the perils of failing to commercialise groundbreaking technology.
Understanding Xerox leadership matters because it encapsulates nearly every challenge facing modern executives: managing disruptive innovation, navigating digital transformation, building diverse leadership pipelines, and reinventing legacy businesses. Whether you lead a FTSE 100 enterprise or a growing startup, the lessons from Xerox's executive suite remain remarkably relevant.
Steve Bandrowczak serves as Chief Executive Officer of Xerox Holdings Corporation, a position he assumed in August 2022. His journey to the corner office defies conventional corporate trajectories. Bandrowczak grew up on Long Island, was disowned by his family at sixteen, and spent a decade working on the Long Island Railroad whilst completing a two-year degree part-time at Nassau County Community College.
"If it was challenging, if it was hard, I always did it," Bandrowczak has stated. "I never took the easy path in my career."
This philosophy carried him through executive roles at Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, Lenovo, DHL, and Avaya before joining Xerox as President and Chief Operations Officer in 2018. His willingness to accept pay cuts and lower titles for more challenging opportunities proved instrumental in reaching the chief executive position.
The current executive team reflects Xerox's strategic priorities around operational excellence, digital transformation, and the integration of recent acquisitions:
| Executive | Role | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Bandrowczak | Chief Executive Officer | Former COO at Alight Solutions; transformed HP's 16,000-employee shared services organisation |
| Louie Pastor | President and Chief Operating Officer | Appointed September 2025; leads business model advancement and operational strategy |
| Chuck Butler | Chief Financial Officer | Appointed December 2025; oversees global finance, treasury, and enterprise risk |
| Billy Spears | Chief Product Development and Delivery Officer | Former SVP at Lexmark; leads product portfolio and supply chain operations |
| Jacques-Edouard Gueden | Chief Revenue Officer | 30-year Xerox veteran; leads direct and indirect print go-to-market units |
| Scott Letier | Chairman of the Board | Provides board governance and strategic oversight |
In July 2025, Xerox completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lexmark International, marking the most significant strategic move in the company's recent history. This combination creates a vertically integrated manufacturer and distributor serving over 200,000 clients across 170 countries.
The acquisition addresses several strategic imperatives:
The deal accelerates what Xerox calls its "Reinvention" strategy—a comprehensive transformation from hardware manufacturer to comprehensive technology services provider.
Xerox's current leadership recognises that the traditional print market is consolidating rapidly. The Reinvention strategy represents a deliberate pivot toward higher-growth digital services and IT solutions.
The Reinvention programme encompasses several interconnected initiatives:
Simplifying core products to serve the hybrid workplace, where economic buyers increasingly demand flexibility and efficiency rather than enterprise-scale hardware deployments.
Accelerating channel partnerships by investing in a partner-enabled go-to-market model that extends reach whilst improving cost to serve.
Expanding IT services through strategic acquisitions like ITsavvy, which has driven the IT Solutions segment to account for 13 percent of total revenue—up from 5 percent previously.
Digital transformation including intelligent document processing, content management, and data capture solutions that address evolving customer workflows.
Cloud modernisation through the RISE with SAP partnership, standardising global processes and simplifying the application landscape.
"IT services has more than 10x the addressable market as print," company leadership has noted, explaining the strategic rationale for diversification.
No examination of Xerox leadership would be complete without addressing the Palo Alto Research Center, perhaps the most influential—and most frustrating—corporate research laboratory in technology history.
Founded in 1969 by chief scientist Jack Goldman, PARC operated under remarkably permissive conditions. Founding director George Pake reportedly told executives "not to expect anything tangible in the next five years" and that they could "start asking questions" if nothing useful emerged within a decade.
The list reads like a catalogue of modern computing's foundational technologies:
Steve Jobs famously visited PARC in 1979, saw the Alto computer with its revolutionary graphical interface, and adapted these concepts into the Lisa and Macintosh computers. As Jobs later observed, "Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry."
The PARC story offers five enduring leadership lessons:
Distance breeds disconnection: PARC's 3,000-mile separation from Rochester headquarters provided creative freedom but impeded communication with decision-makers
Vision must exist at the top: Senior leadership remained convinced that Xerox's future lay in copying and printing, failing to grasp the transformative potential of personal computing
Invention is not innovation: Ideas require viable commercial models and operational execution to create value—PARC excelled at invention but lacked pathways to market
Protect but connect skunkworks: Successful innovation requires insulating creative teams from bureaucracy whilst maintaining leadership engagement
Execution determines outcomes: As one analyst concluded, "Ideas are nothing if you can't execute them and make them work at scale"
Xerox's leadership history includes a genuinely historic achievement. In July 2009, Ursula Burns became the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company, and the first woman to succeed another woman as head of such an organisation.
Burns rose from a summer mechanical engineering internship in 1980 to the chief executive role over nearly three decades. Her background—raised by a Panamanian immigrant mother in Manhattan public housing—makes her ascent particularly remarkable.
Burns demonstrated several distinctive leadership qualities:
Radical candour: Anne Mulcahy, her predecessor, valued Burns because "she has the courage to tell you the truth in ugly times."
Opportunity maximisation: Burns describes her career philosophy simply: "I don't think there was a single thing I said no to in the first 15 years of my career at Xerox."
Transformational vision: She oversaw Xerox's largest-ever acquisition—the $6.4 billion purchase of Affiliated Computer Services—signalling a shift from defensive positioning to offensive strategy.
Compassionate leadership: Burns combined laissez-faire delegation with transformational motivation, giving employees autonomy whilst communicating clear priorities.
Burns left Xerox in 2016 when the company split into two entities. She continues influencing corporate leadership through initiatives like the Board Diversity Action Alliance, which she co-founded in 2020 to increase Black representation on corporate boards.
Before Burns, before the PARC innovations, and before the company's current reinvention, Xerox faced an existential threat that another leader addressed through fundamental cultural transformation.
When David Kearns became CEO in 1982, Japanese competitors were selling copiers in America for less than Xerox's manufacturing costs. Market share had collapsed from 93 percent in 1971 to barely 40 percent. Ricoh had become the top seller in the United States market.
Kearns launched the "Leadership Through Quality" programme in 1983, borrowing liberally from Japanese manufacturing practices—particularly those he observed at Fuji Xerox, the company's joint venture partner.
The initiative produced extraordinary results:
Xerox became "the first major American company targeted by the Japanese to regain market share from them." The company received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1989, the nation's highest quality recognition.
Kearns' three-pillar approach—employee involvement, competitive benchmarking, and quality improvement processes—demonstrated that Western companies could adopt and adapt Japanese management techniques whilst maintaining their own corporate identities.
Throughout its history, Xerox has maintained a distinctive organisational culture that emphasises several consistent themes.
The company articulates its values across several dimensions:
Xerox's leadership philosophy recognises that motivating employees drives customer satisfaction. As Anne Mulcahy observed when she took over a struggling company: "To achieve customer satisfaction, employees must be treated as key stakeholders and become interested in their work."
This people-first orientation has enabled Xerox to build remarkably diverse leadership teams and to attract talent despite operating in a consolidating industry.
Steve Bandrowczak serves as Chief Executive Officer of Xerox Holdings Corporation. He assumed the role in August 2022 after serving as President and Chief Operations Officer since 2018. Bandrowczak brings extensive operational experience from previous executive positions at Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, Alight Solutions, and several other multinational technology companies. His leadership focuses on executing Xerox's Reinvention strategy and integrating the Lexmark acquisition.
Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) was acquired by Stanford Research Institute in 2023, ending its status as a Xerox subsidiary. Founded in 1969, PARC invented numerous foundational computing technologies including the graphical user interface, Ethernet, and laser printing. Though these innovations largely benefited other companies—most famously Apple—PARC's legacy as an innovation laboratory remains influential in how technology companies approach research and development.
Xerox completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of Lexmark in July 2025 to strengthen its core print business, expand geographic reach, and accelerate its Reinvention strategy. The combination creates a market leader in managed print services with operations in 170 countries. The deal also addresses the gap left by the 2021 end of the Fuji Xerox partnership and is expected to generate at least $238 million in synergies within two years.
Ursula Burns made history in July 2009 when she became CEO of Xerox, making her the first Black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Burns joined Xerox as a summer intern in 1980 and rose through the organisation over nearly three decades. She was also the first woman to succeed another woman (Anne Mulcahy) as head of a Fortune 500 company, and she led Xerox's transformation into an international business services company.
Xerox's Reinvention strategy is a comprehensive transformation programme designed to diversify the company beyond traditional printing. Key elements include simplifying core products for hybrid workplaces, expanding IT services through acquisitions like ITsavvy, investing in digital services such as intelligent document processing, and implementing cloud modernisation through the RISE with SAP partnership. The strategy aims to shift revenue toward higher-growth markets whilst maintaining profitability in the consolidating print sector.
Under CEO David Kearns, Xerox launched the "Leadership Through Quality" programme in 1983 to counter Japanese competitors who were selling copiers for less than Xerox's manufacturing costs. The initiative borrowed benchmarking and quality practices from Fuji Xerox and Japanese manufacturers, resulting in dramatic improvements: reject rates fell 97 percent, supplier counts dropped from 5,000 to 500, and overall quality improved 93 percent. Xerox became the first major American company to recapture market share from Japanese competitors.
Xerox offers several enduring leadership lessons: the importance of commercialising innovation (not just inventing), the value of quality-focused cultural transformation, the power of diverse leadership pipelines, and the necessity of strategic reinvention in declining markets. The PARC experience demonstrates how brilliant research can fail without executive vision and execution capability, whilst the Kearns turnaround shows how disciplined leadership can overcome even existential competitive threats.
Xerox leadership history spans the full spectrum of corporate experience—from industry dominance to near-collapse, from revolutionary innovation to missed opportunities, from groundbreaking diversity achievements to ongoing reinvention. For leaders navigating their own transformations, the company offers both inspiration and warning: vision without execution yields nothing, but disciplined leadership can overcome seemingly insurmountable challenges.