in the 1990s, mentored ursula burns.earing on "the history makers" with host gwen ifill, allaire recalled that burns was no wallflower. >> we went through a number of fairly high level meetings and on the way back from them i asked her, ursula, what did you think? and her answer was, "i could do this." ( laughter ) i said, "what?" she says, "i could do this! i could do your job. i could be c.e.o.!" ( laughter ) >> reporter: now that she is c.e.o., burns is one of nine female top executives at xerox. more than a quarter of the company's corporate leaders are women compared to just 15% at other fortune 500 companies. and 20% of top managers are minorities. >> we approach issues from different perspectives. no doubt about it. if i actually had my leadership team and they were all african american female from new york city engineer, the conversation would be easy. and you would trust each other implicitly. and we would trust each other implicitly, and your perspective would be excluding a lot of perspectives. so we would fee