Former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, who was the first African American woman to lead an S&P 500 company, is one of the four co-founders of Plum, a new blank-check company incorporated in the Cayman Islands. In the prospectus, Plum’s co-founders say: “We seek to partner with a scaled, high-quality company that leverages platform models in the enterprise software, SMB software and infrastructure, or disruptive marketplace models in verticals where we have extensive expertise, such as business automation, health and wellbeing, fintech and insuretech. We will seek to identify businesses with distinct Machine Learning and AI-driven advantages to create new markets and disrupt existing ones to drive outsized market share and investor returns.” Plum’s co-founders also say: “We seek to establish ourselves as the first-stop SPAC platform for high-quality companies in the U.S. and Europe.” (SPAC is an acronym for special-purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank-check company.)

Ursula Burns became the chairman and CEO of VEON Ltd., a multinational telecom company, in December 2018. As Plum’s executive chairwoman, she is joined by the company’s three other co-founders in these roles:

*Clay Whitehead, CEO and a director of Plum, is the founder of Pomegranate Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in private high-growth tech companies in the cloud, enterprise and consumer sectors. Recent investments include Digital Ocean and Lemonade. He also co-founded and led Presence Learning, a telehealth platform for special education and mental health therapy services for children and teens, from 2009 through 2018.

*Kanishka Roy, president and a Plum director, is the former global head of tech M&A origination for Morgan Stanley.

*Mike Dinsdale, CFO, COO and a Plum director, who “has defined the ‘modern unicorn’ CFO for over 20 years,” according to the prospectus. He previously was the CFO for Gusto, DoorDash and DocuSign.

(Note: Plum Acquisition Corp. I priced its SPAC IPO on March 15, 2021, in line with the terms in its prospectus: 30 million units at $10 each to raise $300 million.)