The prestigious Yale School of Management will name its deanship in honour of PepsiCo’s India-born CEO Indra Nooyi as she gifted an undisclosed amount to her alma mater, becoming the school’s biggest alumni donor and the first woman to endow a deanship at a top B-School.
Yale did not disclose the amount gifted by Ms. Nooyi but said her “landmark gift” to endow the deanship of the school and inaugurate an innovation fund has made her the “most generous graduate” of Yale School of Management.
She is also the first woman to endow the deanship at a top business school, the school said in a statement on Tuesday.
The PepsiCo chairman, who graduated from the school in 1980, credited her experience at the school for “forever” altering “the course of my life” and said her gift “pales in comparison with the gift that Yale gave me the fundamental understanding that leadership requires an expansive worldview and a deep appreciation of the many points of intersection between business and society.”
“Business issues are never just business issues, and my most ardent hope is that this endowment will teach future generations of leaders that the most successful companies of tomorrow will do more than make money,” she said in a statement.
Ms. Nooyi joins several prominent persons of Indian-origin who have donated generously to U.S. universities.
In October last year, Ms. Nooyi’s sister and Grammy-nominated musician Chandrika Tandon and her husband Ranjan made a $100 million gift to the New York University’s School of Engineering.
In 2010, Harvard Business School had received a gift of USD 50 million from Tata Companies. Industrialist Ratan Tata had attended the School’s Advanced Management Programme in 1975.
Ms. Nooyi has a long record of support for the Yale School of Management, previously making substantial contributions to the construction of the Edward Evans Hall, including gifts to name the Nooyi Classroom and the Isaacson Classroom in memory of Professor Larry Isaacson.
Yale University president Peter Salovey said Nooyi’s “sense of purpose, deep engagement with civic life, and pursuit of excellence exemplify the kind of leadership in service to society that we hope all Yale graduates will achieve.”
“The world needs skillful, purposeful, and dedicated leaders in every field and every sector, and Indra’s name is synonymous with those core values of the university,” he added.
