“What is she doing here? She was the only woman on the boards”: Indra Nooyi

In 2006 Indra Nooyi was appointed CEO of PepsiCo and he was in office until 2019, his management was transcendent, since it changed the corporate and business culture, but the road was not easy.

Nooyi remembers that when she came to the company in 1994, as vice president of corporate strategy and planning, all of the senior positions were held by men. “Almost everyone wore a blue or gray suit with a white shirt and silk tie. Most played golf and tennis.

When he entered the meetings, almost she was always the last woman. “I thought everyone was like, ‘What is she doing here? It’s so different, we’ve never had a woman here.’ They never said it but I felt that in her head they were asking that. My stomach hurt sitting there and she told me, I’m going to show them that my work is so good that they’re going to forget that I’m a woman and they’re going to consider me someone who contributes”.

For this, he had to work harder than them. “I had a husband, children, but at the same time I had to prove my value working harder”.

In an interview, for the presentation of his book “My full life: work, family and our future”, he said that at the beginning of his career he worked very hard and wanted that to beat his way of speaking and dressing. “I leaned on the quality of my work and I was in companies that valued that, quality, regardless of whether I was from India, a woman or a migrant.”

Nooyi was born in Chennai, India, where he studied Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics for undergraduate degrees and a postgraduate degree in Management, then migrated to the United States where he studied for a master’s degree in public and private administration. She did not intend to be a director of a multinational company, but her talent and effort took her to Johnson & Johnson, Boston Consulting Group and Motorola.

“I wanted to play in a rock band or play cricket or do something crazy, but I ended up studying chemistry and growing up in that conservative society where we were expected to get married and have children, dreams were quite a few. minors to be CEO”.

It is necessary to recognize female talent

For Nooyin women and men are talented; but the system must work for them, promote them, open the way for them, that colleagues help them grow, and that companies remove barriers and biases, often unconscious, such as wage gap.

“Not because they are women, but because they are talentedIf we give them tools then they will contribute to companies. Companies have to recognize this talent that exists, they should not work more than men in order to advance, women should be promoted because they have talent”.

In order for more women to reach managerial positions, it is also necessary to create care policies such as childcare and labor flexibility, to combine their life and professional growth. “It would be a big mistake not to support women.”

Employees are people, not robots

Nooyin’s experience as a migrant and a woman gave her another vision, for her the employees are people with families, they are fathers, mothers and children and they have problems in their day to day, no son robots.

Although companies cannot deal with all the issues that concern the employee, they can sit down and say: “we believe you have talent and we want you to be successful”, but you have to understand what are the issues that concern them.

“People should be considered assets, not tools for the business. A machine changes a piece and that’s it, but in a person it is not like that. I have two daughters and at work, maybe I have to deal with something from school. My bosses considered me an asset to the company and helped me”.

It is often thought that promoting diversity and inclusion policies costs money, when the benefits are greater and it should be done with talent in mind. “If we develop policies to support workers who have talent then the company is going to be more successful and more valuable.”

believe in your ideals

Nooyi’s personal experiences were key to making changes in the company, an example of this is the reduction of sugar in soft drinks. The idea arose when, on her daughter’s birthday, she realized that one of her friends was forbidden to drink soda because of the amount of sugar. This fact led her to reduce the amount of sugar in the entire production.

Another fact that led her to have sustainable policies it was the scarcity of water that lived in Madras, his hometown. “My mother had to fill small buckets in a fountain to cook and bathe us.” However, at the local Pepsi plant, 2.5 liters of water were used for each liter of soft drink, for which he requested that it be reduced to 1.2 liters and promoted programs for the local population to learn how to store and use water better.

“Everyone said, why now, if it is not a problem, why start with sustainability when it is a long-term issue.” Some will understand and some won’t, but if you think it’s the right thing to do you must be firm and not back down. If you take a step back, you will never have support.