Indra Nooyi Quotes

Listen to me,” my mother replied. “You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.

My childhood was not a world of “Great job!” It was more like “That was so-so” or “Is this the best you can do?” We were accustomed to honesty, not false encouragement.

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.

Always assume positive intent.

Good business demands tough decisions based on rigorous analysis and unwavering follow-through. Emotion can’t really play a part. The challenge we all face as leaders is to let the feelings churn inside you but then to present a calm exterior, and I learned to do that.

our system puts the career clock and the female biological clock in direct conflict.

Mothers and fathers have an extra set of hands when they need them, and children and grandparents connect, building the kind of deep and lasting relationships that I had with Thatha and that Preetha has with my mother and Raj’s parents.

think women are held to a different standard from men when it comes to celebrating their professional accomplishments. No matter what we do, we are never quite enough. Getting a promotion or a prize outside the home sometimes seems to mean that either that prize was easy to get or that we are letting our domestic duties slide.

The challenge of the leader is looking around the corner and making the change before it’s too late to make the change.

Topics were explored in depth; pros and cons debated. I’d never been part of anything like it.

We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

I was involved in hundreds of projects with tight deadlines that probably could have stretched into a few more days. Would that have made a difference to the project? Most of the time, no. Would that have made a difference to my colleagues’ lives at home, as caregivers or as members of their community? I think the answer is a resounding yes.

My department was always going to be a sounding board, but our recommendations might take years to implement.

By 1994, PepsiCo was the fifteenth-biggest US company, with annual revenue of $25 billion. It sold drinks and food in more than 150 countries and employed 450,000 people.

Roger wrote a book called The Other Guy Blinked, declaring victory in the cola wars.

Most significantly, this event made real my father’s urging for me, as a woman, to always have the means to provide for myself.

physical fitness.

Huge change has no shortcuts.

No business can ever truly succeed in a society that fails.

excruciatingly

More female leaders will mean a healthier, wealthier, more egalitarian society.

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.

The core of the concept of success lies in knowing what you want to do in life and those who have triumphed at figuring out that issue should consider themselves tremendously blessed.

I’ve just become president of PepsiCo, and you couldn’t just stop and listen to my news,” I said, loudly. “You just wanted me to go get the milk!” “Listen to me,” my mother replied. “You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.

It is possible. It just doesn’t happen enough. Private industry—with its incredible ability to move fast and efficiently—in partnership with government, with its broad mandate, is perhaps the most powerful force we have for positive change in society.

extravagant and chose not to attend. When Roger took senior executives on the PepsiCo jet to Montana or the Cayman Islands for long team-building weekends, Steve usually chose to stay home with his wife, Gail, and their four kids. I, of course, was never even invited on Roger’s trips because they were always men only. For me, that was

When I had the honor of being included in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2019, I sat for a painting with four objects on a shelf behind me in the composition: a photo of my parents; a photo of Raj, Preetha, and Tara; a Yale SOM baseball cap; and a PepsiCo annual report with the words “Performance with Purpose” on the cover.

Once and for all, we must embrace the fact that both women and men work in jobs outside their homes; that children need fantastic care; that our aging parents need tender attention; and that governments, companies, communities, and individuals need a common road map to address the massive, complex social issues involved in making life a little easier.

Our Good for You portfolio was growing elsewhere, too. I got a call one day from Ofra Strauss, the CEO of Strauss-Elite Food, our snacks partner in Israel. She asked to see me in Purchase and showed up with a huge hamper of Mediterranean dips—hummus, baba ghanoush, you name it. She laid them all out with fresh pita bread on my conference table, and we enjoyed a picnic of products from Sabra, a New York–based company that Strauss had recently purchased. It was a delicious lineup—totally vegetarian—and a great potential mate to Stacy’s Pita Chips, which we’d acquired a couple of years earlier. Less than a year later, Sabra and Frito-Lay signed a joint venture, and Sabra now leads the US hummus market. More important for me, Ofra is one of my dearest friends.

One of the things my parents and my grandfather taught me was when you do a job you have got to do it better than everybody else. Simple. You cannot let anybody down. I will tell you, today at PepsiCo if I am given a job, people who work with me and people I work for will tell you that even if Indra is dying she will make sure the job gets done because I just don’t know any other way to work.

My mother celebrated every Hindu festival with the appropriate rituals, but no one acknowledged birthdays. My parents never hugged us, kissed us, or said, "I love you.". Love was assumed. We never shared fears or hopes and dreams with our elders. They just were not the kind to have those conversations.

In our home, boys and girls were allowed to be equally ambitious. That’s not to say that the rules were just the same. There was certainly a sense that girls were to be protected differently than boys were. But intellectually and in terms of opportunities, I never felt held back by my sex.

I was always looking out in airport gift shops for stickers or little toys and knickknacks to include with the envelopes. We ended up with quite a collection of dolls in national dress—from Finland, from Japan, from Brazil. These notes and keepsakes were an ongoing, private little project for me as I carried on with my other duties. It kept me closer to

When I rose to CEO in 2006, the press was again thrilled to celebrate my exoticism as a woman and Indian immigrant. I was presented in a sari and sometimes enhanced by bare feet.

There was a downside to this role, however. Chris Galvin at Motorola was right. My loyalty to Gerhard was complete, but I was really working for the individual, not the institution. My success and longevity in ABB were tied to Gerhard.

They were flexible because women were minding the home front. They could also pack up to go wherever the company needed them to go, with their wives and children on board. Society paved the path for these men to gain money and influence in companies, government, and global affairs. Everyone else supported them.

I’d miss the opportunity to manage a business. It was great to be appreciated for my strategic thinking, but the people in the field with responsibility for profit and loss always got the most respect. Staying put would certainly restrict my career growth.

Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.” —INDRA NOOYI, Business Executive and Former CEO of Pepsico

[Performance with purpose is] basically PepsiCo saying that companies can no longer perform and toss costs to society. We believe that the new future is public-private partnerships, where companies feel responsible for society at large.