In 2009, Indra Nooyi found herself caught in a funny game of tug of war. As the global business icon stood between US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during a meeting, they both claimed her as one of their own!
A daughter of Chennai who moved to the US to pursue an education and career, Nooyi, now 65, became the longest-serving — and most visible — CEO of PepsiCo, which she ran from 2006 to 2018. During her tenure, she championed healthier product offerings, pushed for sustainability, including waste and water reduction, and sought greater workplace diversity. Reflections on her personal and professional journey now inform her new book, My Life in Full , a memoir-meets-manifesto for work-life inclusion.
Nooyi describes it as a personal story, a business story, and a story about her hopes for the future of work. “I want to advance the care discussion, figure out how to convene the right people. [I also want] to give back as much as I can, whether it is mentoring the young generation or working with entrepreneurs,” she tells The Hindu Weekend in an interview. The book is a riveting read, and particularly engaging in the parts where she explains her career trajectory, from BCG’s Chicago office to PepsiCo. She also opens up about herself, her dreams for cricket, and why dressing right is a powerful tool. (In the book, she recalls how she bought an ill-fitting dark blue polyester outfit to “fit in”, but it backfired. A friend then advised her to wear a sari the next time because if people “won’t hire you for who you are, it’s their loss”.)
Today, Nooyi serves as an independent director on the board of the International Cricket Council, the first woman to do so. She also sits on Amazon’s board, teaches at the prestigious US Military Academy at Westpoint, and continues to advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Edited excerpts:
Indra Nooyi
What prompted you to write this memoir?
When I retired after 12 years as CEO of Pepsico, I wanted to work on issues supporting women advancing in the workplace. When I stepped down, people kept asking me, ‘Why isn’t a woman replacing you?’. They never ask a man that question! There’s a tremendous burden on women in terms of how to handle work and family pressure. My lawyer and publisher came to me and said, ‘I think people want to hear your life story... how you stayed married for 41 years, have two kids, and advanced to becoming CEO. That story gives authenticity to whatever you are going to propose’. That’s how this book came about.
Other books by male business leaders hardly touch on work life balance. When is that going to change?
How about right now? We have to start the conversation by saying we are not talking about females, we are talking about family. Talking about families is an economic issue. The economy grows when everybody can be deployed to help grow the economy. I think we have to bring men to the table to talk about how, collectively, we are going to address this issue.
- “I am a person who lives with duality. I am still lost in the 60s and 70s. I listen to MS Subbulakshmi, Sudha [Ragunathan], Aruna [Sairam]. I listen to my sister, Chandrika [she’s a fantastic singer]... and to ‘Vishnu Sahasranamam’ in the morning. But then I also love my western music, [especially] country music. I listen to all of the modern country music — the Blake Sheltons and Garth Brooks of the world. I have a wide taste in music.”
You write that ‘women’s choice to work outside the home is integral to their well-being’. Yet the reality of so many women’s lives makes it hard to manage both.
There’s no question that I had a good family support structure. And when they weren’t there, I created a support structure. Many people cannot afford that. I think about the nurses, front-line workers during the Covid-19 pandemic — many women who had children at home. They had no predictability, no flexibility in their work hours. And we never sat down for a moment and talked about how they were going to handle childcare, eldercare? The one good thing that came out of the pandemic is that we have to think about work flexibility in a much more expansive way.
The book cover
How would you envision changing this lack of a support structure?
This is where I think governments, corporates, NGOs, and communities have to come together. I was looking at the anganwadi structure in India. The thought behind it is very good, but the execution needs to improve. Now, we should think not about anganwadi 2.0 but 4.0. Redesign that structure, train the people, pay them so they can work there and take kids till age five so that they could go to school after that. This could be absolutely frame-breaking for India at a point when women are doing really well in schools and colleges. Somebody once told me the biggest emerging market opportunity within the United States and within India is women. So I am approaching this an economist, not a feminist.
How did you navigate the internal politics in a major organisation like PepsiCo?
The time that I came into the workforce, there were hardly any women. What I experienced, however, was a lot of support. People said, ‘Hey, if she’s made it this far there must be something good about her’. But I also sensed [the question], ‘A woman of colour, sitting in the boardroom. Who is she?’. And, along with that, came certain behaviours you could say are just not acceptable. So, I had to perform better than anybody else to be seen or noticed or respected. The most important piece of advice I would give people is: understand the politics in the organisation. Stay the hell out of it. The minute you start to play the politics, it’s a slippery slope. Don’t do that.
- “Coming into the Olympics could be a big breakthrough [for cricket]. That’s something we are working on. I think it would put India on the map and the viewership [for the Olympics] in India would go up.”
Theincident of you returning home to share the newsof becoming president of PepsiCo, only to have your mother ask you to go fetch milk went viral. As you write, ‘women have to leave their crowns in the garage’—how do we challenge these notions?
I think we have to talk about both [men and women] leaving their crowns in the garage. In the home, we are all members of a family, members of a co-operative trying to create harmony, bringing up the next generation, taking care of the elderly. When we give birth to a girl child, we never start by saying, ‘Oh my god, I’ve given birth to a life-long unpaid labourer’. We say we give birth to this beautiful child. We want her to dream, to soar. Instead what do we do? We relegate many women to life-long unpaid labour.
Indra Nooyi
Do you think with the pandemic, the idea of care and gender roles is evolving?
I think work flexibility has to become the norm. Some mix of work at home, remote work and in the office will become common. We have to be careful not to create two classes of citizens [though] — the men who come to work and the women who work from home and, therefore, are pushed down or treated differently.
You introducedmentoring [women]at PepsiCo. How do companies foster such programmes?
If we frame this as a strictly women’s issue, people go, ‘There they go again the women!’ This is not a female issue, it’s an economic issue, a family issue, a future of work issue. The future of work is about caregivers — about teachers, nurses and doctors. It’s about women coming into the workforce in large numbers. The whole care structure is not going to work without women in our systems. How are we going to support all these women? We are all social beings and we have to figure out how to create social networks outside of digital social networks.
From your earliest days at BCG, wearing saris to work, till now—where your trademark scarf and stylish short hair are admired —you describe your sartorial transformation as giving you confidence.
The workplace is a competitive place. What you want to do is take away any negative attention on the way you dress. And that goes to dressing inappropriately or so badly that you draw derision. In each country or economy, dress appropriately for that place. In my case, I was in long skirts and misshapen clothes. I look back at some of my pictures and think ‘Oh my god’. Every time I would look around, I would feel inappropriately dressed for that group. So, [I would] overpower the dressing issue with my competence. I was always over prepared. When you come to a workplace, it’s not a social place. Dress appropriately and let the work speak for itself.
Your drive comes across throughout the book. Even as a young girl, you formed a band and started a women’s cricket team. Is that an innate personality trait?
I am wired differently. It feels like I have to do something all the time to break boundaries. The world has so much to teach you. Go out and seek that knowledge.
