My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

Nooyi was very pleased with the acquisition of the Quaker Oats Company. Not only did this bring under the PepsiCo umbrella the very profitable Gatorade, one of Quaker’s companies, but it also helped Nooyi see a healthier future for PepsiCo where nutrition innovation would be welcome. Enrico stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Steve Reinemund, who was known for his religious devotion, frugality, and dedication to his family. One of Nooyi’s new challenges was to make PepsiCo’s packaging and delivery cheaper, since even cutting costs by fractions of a cent per product added up to significant savings for the company. By the end of this project, Nooyi and her team had saved PepsiCo $700 million over the course of five years.

At this time, Reinemund gave Nooyi a new office and a significant pay increase, as well as stock options with the company. She realized later that she had been paid less than her similar-level male colleagues, and that HR had knowingly continued this practice. The author ponders how this form of sexism continues today and shares her frustration with women being under-compensated for doing the same work as male colleagues.

Nooyi reflects on the constant demands of family life and her ongoing guilt that she missed many of her daughters’ everyday routines. However, once she was allowed to fly on a private company plane, this allowed her to travel more efficiently and spend more time at home. She also prioritized being with her kids if they were sick or injured. Her assistant, Barbara, was particularly helpful and became a “part of our family” (175). Nooyi reveals that once she considered quitting her job at PepsiCo to spend more time with her daughters, but they urged her to continue working toward her career goals, even though they missed her. Nooyi’s husband and friends were supportive of her career, which helped her stay motivated and eased her guilt about being busy with work.

During her time as president, Nooyi had to evaluate and approve a massive $1.5 billion IT overhaul for PepsiCo, whose technology was quickly becoming outdated and unreliable. Nooyi worked nonstop over the holidays to understand the IT systems and make the right decision. She urges other executives to always understand the details of what they approve or disapprove, rather than relying on others’ advice.

Nooyi argues that there is a double standard for women and men in professional life. She recalls worrying that she would be judged as arrogant if she spoke too much about her responsibilities or celebrated her successes too publicly. She was disrespected by “simple, little slights,” such as being referred to by her first name while her colleagues were spoken to formally (183). She felt pressured to maintain a high standard of appearance and had her fashion choices criticized.

Nooyi was surprised when Steve Reinemund retired as CEO and informed her that the board had selected her as his successor. While she was excited at the thought of leading PepsiCo and influencing its new products and work culture, Nooyi also “felt the weight of the job” and that “reality was taking hold” (188).

A nervous and “over prepared” Nooyi began her work as CEO, aware that people within and outside PepsiCo were carefully evaluating her. She became more wary of the press, disappointed that her identity as an Indian and a woman was sensationalized in the media. She recognized that she was a “curiosity,” since she was one of very few women leading a Fortune 500 company, and wished that journalists would cover her career and personality more accurately instead of creating a caricature of a “zany outsider” (193).

Nooyi hired a new personal assistant, who stayed with her for her whole tenure as CEO. She also continued the practice of having a new chief of staff every eighteen months. They traveled with her, arranged meetings and roundtables, and advised her on speeches and presentations. Nooyi generally felt warmly welcomed as CEO, but she knew that she also had critics who vocally questioned her promotion.

Finally, at the head of the company, Nooyi felt she had to steer it in a new direction. She was concerned about governments and public health officials discouraging junk food and soda, which remained a mainstay of the PepsiCo product line. While they had introduced some healthy initiatives, this did little to change people’s perceptions of the company. She was also concerned and embarrassed about PepsiCo’s role in producing landfill and ocean waste, as well as how the production process used two and a half gallons of water to only create one gallon of soda.

In response, Nooyi came up with her Performance with Purpose plan, or PwP. PwP would help PepsiCo to “nourish” consumers, “replenish” environmental resources, and “cherish” employees to foster their skills and talent. While some were reluctant to back this plan, Nooyi convinced them that her plan was not to merely give money away but to transform how PepsiCo did business. This would ensure its long-term viability as a company and honor its responsibility as a powerful corporation.

Nooyi believes that companies should operate ethically and contribute to society. She was pleased when division heads at PepsiCo approved of her ideas and knew that younger employees were happy with the changes she wanted to make. Shareholders, however, were more concerned, since they thought that Nooyi’s initiatives would decrease profitability.

Nooyi hired Mehmood Khan, the president of a pharmaceutical company, to join PepsiCo and create new products and healthier versions of their original snacks. In a speech to other business leaders, she urged them to take responsibility for the nutrition of their products, asking everyone to help solve obesity-related health problems. Under her leadership, PepsiCo purchased healthier food companies, which offered dairy and juice products.

She also turned her attention to optimizing water usage. This endeavor was a huge success: The company saved 16 billion liters of water in five years and won the Stockholm Water Prize. Nooyi believes that private industry should work with the government to affect positive change in society, and that companies like PepsiCo have a unique opportunity to do so.

When Nooyi returned to India to visit relatives, she was happy that her mother’s friends congratulated her on raising a successful child. She decided to write thank you letters to the parents and spouses of some of her employees as a part of her mission to “cherish” PepsiCo’s talent. She loved corresponding with staff and their families this way.

One enjoyable aspect of Nooyi’s job was evaluating PepsiCo products and consumer behavior. She realized that while PepsiCo had made their food healthier, she also understood why the younger generation was choosing local brands and sugar-free products. She also became more concerned about making PepsiCo products more accessible to older people; for example, large crates of sodas and tight bottle caps are inconveniences for many people. She collaborated with the MIT Age Lab to understand how labeling, shelf position, and fonts all inform the consumer experience for older people.

Nooyi was inspired by a meeting with Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, in which he shared the importance of design in every aspect of a product. When she asked her executives to create albums based on good design, many of them were uninterested. Nooyi wondered how to incorporate better design into PepsiCo products and packaging. She later hired Mauro Porcini, an Italian designer who had worked for 3M, and agreed to open the PepsiCo Design and Innovation Center in New York. Nooyi was pleased when this new project paid off, and the NBA and the WNBA agreed to have PepsiCo as their official brand and marketing partner.

At this time, Nooyi was interested in planning for the future by fostering the talent of PepsiCo executives and making sure that someone was ready to be CEO when she eventually stepped down. She reaped the benefits of her IT overhaul since the company had better access to information from its headquarters around the globe, which facilitated the sharing of data and ideas. She also decided to spend more on advertising for Pepsi and Mountain Dew. Nooyi helped to encourage work-life balance by renovating the PepsiCo headquarters to include childcare spaces and preschools for PepsiCo staff families.

One challenge for Nooyi was dealing with “activist investors” who wanted to leverage their influence as stockholders. She remembers respectfully disagreeing with these billionaire investors and proudly shares that they later sold their stocks at a profit. After nearly a decade at the helm of PepsiCo, Nooyi felt “vindicated” by the achievements of PwP and the overall success of the company.

Nooyi fondly remembers the most notable of her international trips, such as traveling with President Barack Obama to a US-India forum and traveling to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and announce a PepsiCo partnership with the Nelson Mandela Foundation. After twelve years as CEO, Nooyi decided that it was time to retire from the position. She selected one of the four executives she had mentored, Ramon Laguarta, to take her place, and the board agreed. After an emotional goodbye and speech, Nooyi left the PepsiCo offices.