The door to Burns’ successful career for the worldwide corporation was opened in 1992, when she joined MasterCard International as manager of enhancement services in consumer products. Though it was a long way from her childhood dream of becoming a physician, she has always felt her increasingly expansive work life has been about helping and healing people.

“Our grandmother lived with us, as a child,” she recalls. “She was always sick, always in and out of the hospital. I wanted to grow up and work in a capacity where I could help someone.” So, she went to college as a pre-med student and spent her summers on jobs with planned parenthood and family planning centers at Emory University Hospital and Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Finally, one of those summers, she was privileged to observe the real day-to-day lives of medical interns. While she admired their dedication, Burns could not see the possibility of a medical career that would allow her to pursue her other goals of having her own family.

She changed her college major to psychology and earned a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree in public administration from New York University. Later, she completed the University of Michigan’s advanced human resources executive program.

Following graduation, Burns began to develop her signature style of management, which focused on helping people. Her initial experience with education as a method of affecting positive changes in the lives of others came when she accepted a one-year stint as a fourth grade teacher in Harlem. Her students had already been tagged a “problem class,” and it was up to Burns to keep them from being left behind.

“The kids were inspired but they didn’t have good role models,” Burns recalls. “And people assumed that because they were poor they could not achieve. I believed that because they were poor they had no choice but to achieve.” She told them so.

Then she set out to find individuals in the community who could help them realize what they could be. Burns says she was able to identify a diverse group of people for her students to meet each week – people who could help the students understand and appreciate their respective histories.

“Growing up African American in Atlanta, it was not possible to not know your own history. We were always talking about black history and about our own culture,” she says. “These children in New York weren’t learning that, so I tried to find creative ways for them to learn about their histories while helping them to build skills.”

Creativity began to pay off early, and Burns still uses it as a management strategy today. She remembers that when her students did not perform, she had them write poems and recite them before class. She even participated in the exercise herself, and she says “It was then that I saw them blossom and begin to grow in confidence in themselves.”

Before entering graduate school, Burns was introduced to the management training program at Chemical Bank, where she finished first in her class. There, she began to understand how she could apply her education in psychology to helping people improve their financial behavior. Working at a particularly affluent branch, Burns quickly made the transition to financial marketing, where she combined her analytical, marketing and management skills to successfully create opportunities for her customers. Burns took full advantage of the heady 80’s, during which time she engaged customers to develop hefty financial portfolios and she carved strong marketing relationships for her employer before moving onto a more diversified career path.

At MasterCard International, Burns’ first assignment was influencing the development of insurance-based products in consumer and commercial card portfolios. Working in partnership with member banks, she participated in the design and implementation of the company’s World Card program. Under her leadership, MasterCard’s customer satisfaction research and benchmarking initiatives were developed. Noah Hanft, general counsel at MasterCard, says “Janice’s presence bespeaks leadership. Her insight, interpersonal skills and integrity exemplify the qualities that MasterCard and all forward-thinking organizations seek in their management team.”

Her career continued to expand when, in 1998, Burns was asked to formalize the MasterCard approach to diversity. While the additional job was initially offered as a developmental assignment, it provided what she now realizes was a “great opportunity…like starting your own unit.” The result of the two years was a program that has been integrated throughout the entire business.

“Finally I was able to use my analytical skills with finance and softer skills with employee relations issues,” she says. “Even then, though, I must not have appeared to be ‘stretched’ enough. Maybe I looked a little bored, because strategic planning was added soon afterwards. Actually, I love it. Now I can think long-term about where the company is headed and how to build human capital strategy around that to create a high performance structure. Global staffing, which is another of my responsibilities, gave me more traditional human resources experience. Talent sourcing allows us to leverage human capital strategy to attract people who best exemplify our values from performance and behavioral perspectives – people who can be our leaders both now and in the future.

“Our staffing strategy goes hand-in-hand with our diversity efforts because we’re always looking for the best talent. We strive to have a very diverse workforce. We are a global organization, and our diversity is not just about traditional things – gender, ethnicity – but about a diversity of skills and experience. We utilize staffing as a mechanism to make sure we have a rich portfolio of skills, experience, and all the other elements of diversity that come with working in a global organization. Our staffing approach is much more than taking in new people from outside the company. It’s also looking at the skills of our existing employees to best utilize and develop them,” Burns says.

Janice’s boss, Michael Michl, executive vice president of Central Resources at MasterCard, is supportive of her efforts. “Janice joined us with strong business skills background and quickly established herself as a key person on the HR team. Under her leadership, the areas she is responsible for have seen significant success. Janice is a pleasure to work with and a valuable asset to the company. And, she is also a trusted advisor.”

Visibly ebullient about her profession, Burns describes her work day as anything but typical or predictable. She says “I love the variety of responsibilities because they let me use a range of skills to find solutions to problems. I just have to be a little more creative with the solutions. I may begin the day interviewing for executive position and go from there to working with budgets and meeting with employees.”

Diane Dann, vice president and counsel at MasterCard says Burns is “an extremely knowledgeable and talented HR professional who exemplifies the company’s shared values of honesty, respect and spirit on a daily basis.” Dann says she is very “high energy, driven by a desire to do the right thing in every circumstance.”

“To that end, she is creative, decisive and unbelievably effective,” Dann says.

Other business associates agree. At Deloitte & Touche, Mike Phelan is principal, human capital advisory services. Phelan says that over the past year, he worked with Burns as an external consultant for a number of strategic projects.

“During the course of these projects, I have grown to admire Janice for her decision-making instinct and her commitment to be a visionary when doing so is an inherent risk,” Phelan says. “Janice possesses one of the rarest of leadership qualities: the ability not only to make qualified, hard and fair decisions quickly, but also the commitment and support to help those affected through the change process.”

Bill Stopper of WGS Consulting added, “If you want to work with an executive who gets things done and pulls you along in the torrent of her enthusiasm, then Janice Burns is the one.”

Kerri Reynolds, vice president of global staffing for MasterCard International, says Burns provides “extraordinary” leadership to employees.

She says “Janice’s dedication to building a high performance work culture is evident in every decision she makes. She is thoughtful manager who promotes work/like balance, inspires your entrepreneurial spirit, and teaches you the value of building relationships. She is committed to creating a positive experience for every person she interacts with on behalf of our company.”

Burns admits that she is constantly “on task” and that she is easily bored. It is that characteristic, though, that propels her forward. Still concerned about how she can help others be the best they can be, she admonishes young people to “be true to yourself.”

“You can’t let anyone else define who you are or what you should be, or what the limits are for you because you are only as limited as you limit yourself,” Burns advises. “You have to keep dreaming and trying to fulfill those dreams for yourself. Be proactive in managing your own career.” She says her Southern upbringing influenced her tenacity because assumptions were always being made about the things she was supposed to do – as a girl and as an African American.

“My parents never ever put those types of limitations on me, so I never put them on myself,” she remembers. “And I think we often let people tell us what it is we should be. We are so busy trying to fit into a mold or a group that we sometimes don’t define for ourselves what it is we want to be or where it is we want to go with our lives. Also, we can’t let minor or temporary setbacks keep us from moving ahead. There is always a solution – a way out. As the youngest and the only girl in my family, I learned early that when someone said ‘no’ to me, it meant that I just had not asked the question the right way. So I became a little more creative. We all have challenges but we have to learn to navigate them. Life is about navigating and rising above the challenges.”

The high standards Burns sets for herself and others are reflected in her accomplishments as not just a professional but as a wife, mother and mentor, as well. Separating the roles is a priority with her, however, and she is adept at making time for her family and community service. Lisa Kennedy, an associate for more than 18 years, feels fortunate to consider Burns a “dear friend, spiritual sister, confidant, mentor and running buddy.” She says she attributes the success of their relationship to Burns’ “enormous heart, warmth, sincerity, loyalty, dedication and honesty – in every aspect of her life.”

Despite maintaining a frenetic pace, Burns is “on task” at home, as well. She manages to find time to spend with her physician husband, Craig, three-year old daughter Sonali, six-year old son Cameron, and her miniature schnauzer Smokey. Fortunately, the household ferret is low-profile and requires little attention. Weeknights are spent reading to her children and the family always sits down to dinner together. She devotes her weekends to family activities, such as visits with relatives and backyard cookouts.

A member of her son’s parent teacher organization, Burns is also the designated after-school car pool mom – a duty she says has grown to include picking up her own children, her nanny’s two daughters, and “various neighborhood children.” She cites involvement at school as a priority but admits that sometimes she suffers from the worst-kind-of-parent syndrome. “School is really more traumatic for parents than for kids,” she says. “Once my son’s teacher sent me a note that said ‘for the child’s own independence, you simply must not walk him into the classroom and put his things away.”

Colleagues recognize that Burns nurtures all her relationships with the same fervor. Donna Johnson, vice president for acceptance development at MasterCard, says that she hoped to get to know Burns when they first met more than seven years ago. Johnson looked to Burns as an executive who, as a female, could help guide and direct her through her first few months with the company.

“Janice has personally taken on the role of mentor to preteens in her town,” Johnson says. “She regularly engages two local girls in her family outings, from dinners to Saturday night movies. She has included the young ladies in the “bring a child to work” programs, and she tutors them several times a week. Through her relationship with these girls, Janice has extended her outreach to two other girls in town. One of them has recently become a regular in the weekly programs, after having been a latch-key child since the second grade. Janice does this without an expectation of thanks. Janice is committed to providing the best for the children within the community, and she does it without fanfare or public recognition. She is an excellent business executive and role model.”

Like every good employee, Burns has her eye on bigger and better opportunities at the company where she has stretched herself professionally. She knows the road gets rougher as it narrows up the corporate structure but she has an outlook that keeps her from standing still.

“If I ever feel completely ok with something, I become complacent,” Burns says. “So I always want to feel like there is a little bit more to do. I don’t think ‘I can’t get past that’, no matter what anyone says. There has always been someone who’s told me ‘in corporate America this is as far as you can go.’ They’re not role models either, especially for me. They don’t faze me.”

Her plans are to maximize her potential at MasterCard. She would like to make an even more significant contribution as a member of the company’s executive management team – a role she believes can influence and help set the tone and the conscience of the organization.