Steve Bandrowczak, Xerox’s chief executive officer since 2022, grew up on Long Island and returned recently as something of a role model. He received an honorary doctorate from Long Island University and delivered the commencement speech at Nassau Community College.
After growing up in Copiauge and putting himself through college while working, Xerox’s CEO left students with a lesson from his life.
“You own your own destiny. Work hard. Look in the mirror every day. If you don’t like it, change it. And create your own path to success,” he said. “Don’t let anyone define who you are or define your path to success.”
While saying that may seem easy, Bandrowczak embodies a do-it-yourself approach to life along with a team approach to business, leaving home at age 16 when his family moved to California and defining his own destiny while serving a company. He took early jobs that couldn’t be more synonymous with Long Island — clamming and working on the railroad — while making and remaking himself.
“It’s given me the grit and the backbone to be fearless,” he said.
He’s been leading the remaking of Norwalk, Conn.-based Xerox (the full name is Xerox Holdings Corp.) since August 2022 as a tech company providing services as well as products in a digital age.
“We think about historic Xerox,” he said. “We’re synonymous with driving productivity in the workplace. Historically, that’s been through printing, scanning and document workflow.”
Xerox, he said, has been going beyond its heritage of photocopying, providing services and skills that reposition it.
“Today, we have incremental services on top of that, like security, cybersecurity, helping with things like moving to the cloud and infrastructure, helping clients think about how they use artificial intelligence to drive productivity in the workplace,” he said. “We’re transforming Xerox to be a service-led, software-enabled company.”
Xerox, in what it called a “milestone” moment on July 1, said it completed the acquisition of Lexington, Kentucky-based Lexmark in a deal valued at $1.5 billion, including debt and liabilities.
He described the acquisition as “furthering our reinvention and solidifying our path toward long-term, profitable growth.”
The combined organization serves more than 200,000 clients in more than 170 countries and operates 125 manufacturing and distribution facilities in 16 countries.
“The transaction accelerates our reinvention by improving our mix of revenue,” he said. “We’re better equipped than ever to deliver innovative, end-to-end solutions that drive success for our clients across every geography and industry.”
The deal, he said, also brings about $240 million of synergies as Xerox seeks to go from a household name to a Wall Street pick.
“Now with Lexmark, we have our own manufacturing abilities,” he said. “They’re in the Asian-Pacific market, Australia, New Zealand. Xerox was not.”
Born in South Ozone Park, Queens, Bandrowczak grew up in Copiauge. His father ran the maintenance crew for Pan American Airlines at JFK until being reassigned to Los Angeles.
“I said I didn’t want to go,” he said. “I got a paper bag and walked out of the house. My dad said, ‘If you walk out, you’re on your own.’ I was on my own.”
One reason he didn’t want to leave was his sweetheart, Donna, who lived nearby, and who he would soon marry. He did heavy construction and attended the Grumman Data Systems Institute, where he learned computer programming.
He got a job at the night shift at Schweiber Electronics, now Arrow Electronics, in his early 20s, attending Nassau Community College and then getting a degree in computer science from LIU while working.
“I came from a poor upbringing,” he said. “It was about making every day better for my family and creating a better lifestyle for my family.”
He was hired by Sperry Electronics, which became Infosys, and then by Time Electronics, a $300 million company when he started, which he helped grow into a $30 billion company known as Avnet.
“We did 40 acquisitions in 10 years,” he said. “I was part of the team integrating companies around the world.”
There was a lot of pressure, but he had learned to manage stress, finding not to lose his cool.
“When things get chaotic, I get calmer,” he said. “In fact, people who are around me in times of real crisis think I’m not human. The more chaotic, the calmer I get.”
His early life, including construction, prepared him to build much more than railroad ties and raised rails.
“You get back to growing up. I made the statement I don’t fear anything,” he said. “It’s difficult to be a leader in a global world and deal with the challenges we have, the dynamics, if you let fear or stress bother you.”
He became a key part of the management team that helped IBM PC Group merge with Lenovo and became CIO and head of sales and marketing at telecom Nortel. He then became president of Avaya’s network group and then CIO of Hewlett-Packard, which spun off Alight Solutions, where he became CIO and COO, before it was sold to Blackstone and then Xerox.
In June of 2018 he became president and COO of Xerox before becoming CEO in 2022 as he led the reinvention of one of the best-known brands in the world.
“We’re going through a transition of reinventing the company. You reshape it, you change and drive certain revenue that we call low profit down,” he said. “We bring solutions into multiple verticals. Education, healthcare, legal.”
Xerox has been exiting the paper manufacturing and resale business, which lowers its top line, but lets it focus on profits.
“Everything that gets put on paper is information. It is digital that gets on the physical,” he said. “We’re taking what’s physical and digital and putting information and AI around it.”
He sees the reinvention as true to Xerox’s history and identity, but keeping it in tune with the times.
“Let’s take the attributes of why it’s successful,” he said of the firm which, he said, has a history of innovation, research and development. “People trust us. One of the big things with AI is trusting data, validating data. One of the things about security is trust is so important”
Bandrowczak went on to get an M.S. from Columbia University and teaches “Leading Disruptive Change in the Digital Economy” at Northeastern University. He serves as Executive-in-Residence at the university’s Center for Technology Management and Digital Leadership.
At Xerox, he is the executive sponsor of the Young Professionals NeXgen group, but if he has experienced a lot of change, he has also had stability. He’s been married to his wife for about 45 years, his childhood sweetheart who he met and has made a remarkable journey with.
“You know when you have a common set of goals, beliefs and integrity and you like each other, life is easy,” he said. “When you’re married to your best friend, life is easy.”
