42 minute read
A Legacy of Equality
by SEEMA
Jyoti Chopra learned it from her parents; now she promotes it in the corporate world
ABHIJIT MASIH
ALL PHOTOS CREDIT : JYOTI CHOPRA S he is the senior vice president and the chief diversity and sustainability officer at MGM Resorts International. That position is the right fit for Jyoti Chopra, an award-winning diversity, inclusion and sustainability leader who has always been focused on inclusion strategies and positive gender initiatives.
From her office in Las Vegas, Jyoti Chopra spoke to SEEMA about her journey, which began in a hospital in the East End of London.
A first-generation British-American-Indian is how she describes how she was born in England
and subsequently moved to the U.S. to study further when she was 18. Though she has not lived in India, apart from brief holiday trips, she proudly claims herself to be a Sikh Punjabi in heart, soul and roots. She spoke to us about her Indian heritage and the deep connection she has with the country,
“My parents are from India. My late father was born and raised in Pune and my mother grew up in Bombay. Three months after they got married, they decided to set sail aboard a ship headed for London.” She gives a taste of the inherent British humor when she mentions, “I’m told I was produced somewhere off the coast of Italy.”
Born in a first-generation immigrant family, Chopra and her two younger sisters, even within a conservative Indian household, had a normal British childhood. She recalls growing up in London.
“I was raised in the Sikh faith. My father wore a turban throughout his life, and we would go to the gurdwara every Sunday,” she said.
Growing up, the three girls always felt a sense of equality in their home.
Chopra explains: “There was equal division of labor; both my parents worked. I would say the distinctive part of my childhood was the incredible emphasis that my parents placed on education and saving every penny to ensure that my sisters and I could go to a good school.” A result of that was Chopra went to the best schools, ones with an emphasis on learning. The example of her parents and the lessons learned has stayed with Chopra. Her story resonates with so many secondgeneration immigrants in America whose parents made a life for themselves and their children with sheer grit and hard work. Like in many Indian American homes, the values imbibed at home from her parents shaped and molded Chopra’s character.
There were, of course, those trips to India that are etched in her memory. The first happened when she was just three.
She recalls, “I remember my parents taking me to try to get my ears pierced. The needle went through one ear, but it didn’t quite make it through the second ‘cause I was screaming so much. So my parents gave up on me having my ears pierced and wearing earrings.” The second and the one she remembers more
Chopra with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at a Deloitte partner meeting in Washington DC, in 2011
fondly is when she was about 11, way back in the 70s when she spent an entire summer in India, spending time with her grandparents, extended family and cousins. Chopra explains that her relation with India was very much through the eyes of her parents, but while she was there, she enjoyed the time relishing nimbu pani, gol gappas and watching Hindi movies.
Brought up in London with a somewhat hybrid British-Indian upbringing, enrolling in New York University at 18 called for some adjustment. But she fit right in.
“I remember arriving into Manhattan and just feeling this incredible sense of freedom, liberation, and being welcomed and I loved it,” Chopra said. “I had an American coming of age, I really came into my own and discovered my identity and defined myself as an adult in the United States.”
Chopra began working at the United Nations, which deeply influenced her work, making her aware of the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion.
It was also in New York that she met her husband. Their son was born Jyoti Chopra with her son Kabir at her graduation from the University in Manhattan, but they raised him in of Oxford, where she got an MBA with distinction Princeton, New Jersey. Chopra credits a lot to the U.S.: “America was really where I came of age and, and then subsequently built my professional career.”
At the United Nations, Chopra was exposed to working on issues affecting women, young girls and children. But she made the surprising decision to leave a cushy job with a permanent contract for the private sector.
She explains her decision: “It was really the inflection point in my career, the decision to leave the United Nations and to pivot into corporate America. It was a much sought out deliberate, intentional move. I sort of felt I didn’t want to end my career as a diplomat. I wanted to get experience in corporate America.”
So from working with people from more than 170 countries at the time, she went into the heart of Wall Street, a different, very male dominated domain with very few women and with a very hard sales entrepreneurial culture. The tough Chopra with her parents and sisters in Nice, France 2009
Sikhni from London was up for the task and learned on the job, even going back to school for two stints. She states, “I did a three year executive education program at Wharton while I was at Merrill Lynch while I was working. Subsequently, while in my 40s, I made the decision to go back to university and to pursue an MBA.”
The decision to go back to school was based on the realization of leadership gaps and strengths and concluding that to advance she needed to plug those gaps. So, while she was a global managing director overseeing diversity and sustainability for Bank of New York Mellon she did a two-year executive MBA program at the University of Oxford. This led her to where she
is today at MGM Resorts International.
From her experience working for the private sector, Chopra’s advice to young women entering corporate America is to first invest in relationships and cultivating formal or informal networks, within the organization and outside. The second is to seek out mentors, and then cultivate them into sponsoring relationships.
“Mentors can help coach, advise and guide you; sponsors can help pull you up the pipeline, advocate for you and help get you promoted to a position of leadership,” she said. “Sponsors really are people in positions of power, who can influence your career and advocate on your behalf.” Besides investing in relationships and having sponsors she also suggests on having a clearly defined vision for one’s self.
To achieve a racially diverse workforce in the true sense and not just to fill the pallet of color as a token is a challenge for many companies. As chief diversity and sustainability officer, she explains the role she plays within her company is to ensure a balance and in keeping them competitive. She advocates firmly for a diverse workforce and an inclusive work environment.
“At MGM Resorts International, we have properties for housing resorts in multiple locations,” she said. “Our clients come in from all over the United States and around the world to visit our properties. And so as we think about guests and it’s important to understand their cultural values and their cultural norms. And so we are very focused at MGM Resorts on advancing both a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture.”
Talking about sustainability to help protect and preserve the planet for the future generations, Chopra feels immense pride at some of the work done by MGM Resorts, an example of which is the major investment in building a massive solar array in the desert. It’s one of the largest in the area of renewable energy, she said.
“The solar array actually powers more than 90% of our daytime electricity for all of our properties on the Las Vegas Strip,” Chopra said. “That’s just one example of what we’re trying to do in the area of sustainability.”
Chopra credits her zeal for work and her success as a woman in a leadership role to her cultural background and as product of her upbringing which was founded on a deep work ethic, a legacy from her parents.
“In my case, a very strong work ethic, transferred from my parents to me,” she said. “Values, like integrity, authenticity, this notion of being true to yourself and being who you are and being able to bring all parts of yourself into the workplace and being true to your identity are really important aspects of my leadership.”
Chopra may be one of the few women as part of the C-Suite club but is in no way content with the level of representation of South Asian women in senior leadership positions. She goes a step further and is dismayed by the minuscule number in the boardroom of corporations.
“We need to do more,” she said. “If you look at the composition of boards of directors in the United States you see, low single digit representation of women of color in those boardrooms, but those boardroom seats get pulled in from the C suites of the Fortune 1000. If you don’t have South Asian women in executive positions, there’ll be even fewer of them in the boardroom.”
Besides overseeing the MGM Resorts’ Diversity and Inclusion, and Environmental Sustainability teams and departments, Chopra also oversees MGM Resorts’ Foundation and Community Grant Fund, a corporate giving program, and the Employee Volunteer Program.
She describes the promise of the younger generation, saying she is amazed by this dynamic and vibrant young South Asian community. A member of that group is right in her home, in the form of her millennial son, Kabir Chopra. She considers him one of the most important influences and inspirations in her life, after her mother. She gushes with pride when she speaks of Kabir. “He is a writer, an actor, a filmmaker, a videographer, a producer, and probably a few other things that I forget,” she says. “I have learned so much through Kabir, through the lens and the aperture of his camera, as he’s gone off and explored the world. It’s been absolutely fantastic to see the talent that is out there in the world of cinema, film and television.”
THE Iconic INDRA NOOYI
Her new book “My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future” is a call-to-action for how society can empower women to blend work and family. We sat down with Indra Nooyi to talk about life, leadership and South Asian sisterhood
SEEMA KUMAR
PHOTO CREDIT : DAVE PUENTE
For Indra Nooyi, former chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, life has been one big balancing act. It has been a delicate dance between retaining her cultural identity as an immigrant, and assimilating into the mainstream business environment to earn the top position. Between keeping the intense pace required to climb the corporate ladder and finding quality time for home and family priorities. Between breaking ultimate glass ceilings to become a role model for working women in corporate America and fulfilling the duties expected of a traditional daughter, wife and mother in a South Indian household. It is not an easy balance but it can be done, and Nooyi’s life is a lesson on the tremendous “care infrastructure” it takes for a working woman to rise to the top in the corporate world without compromising identity and family.
“I’m a family builder, not a family breaker,” says
Nooyi. “I believe in family; it’s the core of all society. However, the only way for families to be economically secure is if both husband and wife have the power of the purse. Because families are fragile. Nobody knows when something can go wrong. You don’t want a situation where one person is left with all the family responsibilities and without any support.”
The pandemic has brought the issue into sharp focus and given rise to the great resignation, as workers, particularly essential workers and frontline healthcare workers, have struggled to maintain the balance between lives and livelihoods. The lack of care infrastructure — high quality, accessible, and affordable child care; paid family and medical leave; and home- and community-based services to help families meet their caregiving needs — has led to a wave of resignations in the U.S. and around the world.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July 2021, with a record-breaking 10.9 million open jobs at the end of July.
Nooyi, who was tapped by the state of
Connecticut to co-chair “Reopen Connecticut”
PHOTO CREDIT : DAVE PUENTE
ABOUT THE BOOK
“My Life in Full” is an intimate and powerful memoir by Indra Nooyi, the trailblazing former CEO of PepsiCo.
For a dozen years, as one of the world’s most admired CEOs, Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. The first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company, she transformed
PepsiCo with her vision, pursuit of excellence, and a deep sense of purpose. Now, “My Life in Full,” a memoir brimming with grace, grit, and good humor, offers a firsthand view of Nooyi’s legendary career and the sacrifices it so often demanded.
Nooyi takes us through the events that shaped her – from her childhood and early education in 1960s India, to the Yale School of Management, to her rise as a corporate consultant and strategist who ascended into the most senior executive ranks. The book offers an inside look at PepsiCo, and Nooyi’s thinking as she steered the iconic American company toward healthier products, and reinvented its environmental profile, despite resistance at every turn.
For the first time, Nooyi lays bare the difficulties that came with managing her demanding job with a growing family, and what she learned along the way. She makes a clear, actionable, call for business and government to prioritize the care ecosystem, paid leave, and work flexibility. She also argues that improving company and community support for young family builders will unleash the economy’s full potential. “My Life in Full” is the story of an extraordinary leader’s life, a moving tribute to the relationships that created it, and a blueprint for 21st-century prosperity.
Visit IndraNooyi.com for recent coverage of the book. The book was released on September 28, 2021 and published by Penguin Portfolio Books.
during the pandemic, says it was an immersive eye opening experience.
“Reopen Connecticut made my eyes open to the real challenges being faced by the essential worker,” she says. “We have to address care for both the office worker who has to also be a family builder, and for the essential worker. For anybody who has to go to work, and doesn’t have the luxury of flexibility, you’ll need a care infrastructure. Without that, I think you’re going to see the great resignation accelerate. People are going to say, I don’t want to do these jobs where I have to go in every day. These jobs don’t pay enough and I don’t get treated so well. I think this is a human issue. If you want to preserve our quality of life, yes, we have to really think through this whole care infrastructure in a much more sensible way.”
Nooyi is familiar with the importance of care infrastructure without which she says it would have been impossible to rise to become CEO at PepsiCo, especially as an immigrant, as a woman and a woman of color.
A Tamilian from Chennai, who is still vegetarian and prefers South Indian food, Indra Krishnamurthy grew up in a traditional family in T-Nagar, Chennai, with a progressive working father who traveled a lot, a strong South Indian mother who managed the household and encouraged her kids to dream big, and a paternal grandfather who lived at home and was there when the kids came home from school, teaching them world affairs, politics, and economics and helping them with school projects. The three children grew up with “freedom, but within the frame.”
“Sometimes, I pinch myself and say, I won the lottery of life based on the family I was born into,” says Nooyi, who earned a degree from Madras Christian College and a masters from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. She felt she won another lottery when she was admitted to Yale School of Management with a financial scholarship and her traditional parents allowed her, a single woman, to leave for America for higher education. Especially her mother, Shantha Krishnamurthy, who like many protective South Indian mothers, wanted her daughter to soar professionally and have opportunities she did not have access to, but at the same time
Nooyi at the airport saying farewell to her family before her flight to the U.S. and Yale
felt the traditional tug to get her daughter married by age 20 and be “settled” on the family front before embarking on a career. “She had one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the pedal,” says Nooyi.
COMING TO AMERICA
Nooyi’s coming to America is not unlike other South Asian immigrant stories. With only $500 and a college admission, Nooyi landed wide-eyed in New Haven, CT, in what seemed like paradise. Orderly, neat and clean, everything seemed to be in place in America.
Cars driving within lanes, no animals walking on the street, no honking auto rickshaws. But reality hit almost immediately, and Nooyi experienced the typical culture shock that many Indian students go through.
“You come into this world of loneliness,” says Nooyi. “You have no idea what to do. You have no idea how to shop. Or
get a bank account, or a mailbox, which you needed in those days. There was no computer or internet. You come to this world. That is lonely. And after the hustle and bustle and the noise and the honking of India, you just say, what have I done? I don’t know how to survive in the silence. The first few days were pretty tough and I cried more than anything else.”
Support and reinforcement arrived in the form of international students who taught her the ropes and helped her assimilate into the culture. She moved to an international dormitory where the familiar smells of cultural cuisines, the ability to cook her own Indian food and to be among other international students made her feel at home. There was no looking back after that.
STYLE MATTERS BUT SUBSTANCE RULES
Nooyi’s foray into the workforce in America began with her applying for summer jobs in her first year at Yale. “I was considered smart and hardworking, and people liked me fine, I think. But I was also largely invisible and conscious of how international students, especially from developing countries, were grouped in people’s minds. Diligent, but no style, funny accents, socially inept,” says Nooyi in her book, conscious that the clothes she had brought back from Chennai, which she had stitched by an Indian tailor, were “ill-fitting and ugly.” But her work ethic and her unique global perspective, which Corporate America needed, made her competitive. She says she used her savings to buy a polyester business suit at the S.S. Kresge store (a precursor to KMart) but without trying it in the fitting room, culturally uncomfortable undressing in a public place. Nooyi interviewed with the company, Insilco, in her ill-fitting suit, feeling good about the interview but embarrassed and defeated about how she looked, especially as her classmates looked well put together in their Brooks Brothers suits. She was convinced she had bombed her chances, but Insilco made offers only to two students, and Nooyi was one of them. “It dawned on me that I was in a new environment—and that this might be a living example of the American promise of meritocracy. It was clear that Insilco picked me because of what I said and what I could contribute and looked past the horrendous outfit I wore. I had three weeks to accept the offer.” Nooyi had also interviewed with Booz Allen, showing up to the interview in a sari, after receiving advice to wear something authentic and comfortable. Once again, she landed the job, proving that what she said had more weight than what she wore. She accepted the offer from Booz Allen and was on her way to being a working woman in America. “I wore
Nooyi spearheaded PepStart, PepsiCo's onsite childcare center at their New York headquarters
INDRA NOOYI'S LIFE IN FULL
Born Indra Krishnamurthy in Chennai, India B.S., Madras Christian College, Chennai Product Director, Johnson & Johnson India and Mettur Beardsell, Ltd. India
1955 1974 1977
Director, International Corporate Strategy, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
19801986
1960s 1976
Holy Angels Anglo Indian Secondary High School, Chennai MBA, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta
As a child, Nooyi was in an all-girls rock band, The LogRhythms. She played the guitar
Nooyi as a baby in 1956
1980
Master of Public and Private Management, Yale University School of Management
Marries Raj K. Nooyi
Nooyi and her husband Raj in the early days of their marriage
Nooyi's younger daughter Tara was born when Nooyi was at ABB in Connecticut
Nooyi's firstborn, Preetha
Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning, Motorola
19861990
Second daughter Tara is born
1992
Nooyi at a market tour in Guatemala to see how products looked on the shelf and show appreciation for the frontline workers
Senior Vice President, Corporate Strategy and Development, PepsiCo
19962000
1984 19901994 19941996
First daughter Preetha is born Senior Vice President of Strategy, Planning and Strategic Marketing, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, PepsiCo
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, PepsiCo
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, PepsiCo
20062019 20002001
20012006
President and Chief Financial Officer, PepsiCo and Member of the Board of Directors
a sari to work every day but never visited the client,” says Nooyi in the book. “Taking me to a client meeting in Indianapolis in a sari would have been too jarring in those days. At the time, I fully understood and accepted my colleagues’ leaving me behind. It seemed a small price to pay.”
MARRIED WITH FAMILY
Nooyi had moved to Chicago for the summer job and into an apartment with her friend and classmate. It was there, as she was settling in a new town, that a friend suggested she meet Raj Nooyi, a young engineer from Mangalore, India, who’d just finished his master’s degree and had moved to a job in Chicago and living alone in a small apartment. She invited Raj home for dinner one night and soon they began to spend a lot of the summer together. In August, during her last week at the internship, she and Raj met for a movie, and over dinner decided to get married. Both were from traditional South Indian families, where arranged marriage was the norm. So there was work to do in getting the apprehensive families to embrace the idea, especially as the families had not met each other nor had they matched horoscopes as is typically done in South Asian households. Ultimately, the parents met in India, held an engagement ceremony there. Nooyi graduated from Yale in 1980 with her family arriving from India to celebrate and a few days later got
Nooyi married Raj in the basement of Raj’s uncle’s house surrounded by their closest family
FAMILY:
• Parents: Shantha and R.
Krishnamurthy • Married to Raj K. Nooyi, president at AmSoft
Systems, in 1981. • Two daughters Preetha and Tara • Resides in Greenwich,
Connecticut • Siblings: older sister Chandrika
Krishnamurthy Tandon, businesswoman and Grammy nominated artist; younger brother Narayan Krishnamurthy • Played cricket and was also in an all-girl rock band, where she played guitar
Raj's parents with Nooyi's daughters Preetha and Tara
Nooyi's daughters Preetha and Tara in their school uniforms. For several years, Nooyi worked and traveled nonstop, missing her children
married in a small ceremony in the basement of Raj’s relatives in Chicago with both families in attendance. Ironically, she had lived up to her mother’s dream, getting married and settling things on the family front before embarking on a steep climb up the career ladder. Raj’s father gave parting advice to the young couple and left Nooyi with a piece of wisdom: “Indra, don’t give up your job. You have all this education, and you should use it. We will support you in any way we can.”
ENTERING THE AMERICAN WORKFORCE
Nooyi moved on up, working for Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Motorola, and Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) in increasing roles of responsibilities leading strategy before joining PepsiCo, all the while balancing the pressures of an insane work schedule, giving birth to her first daughter, Preetha, finding good childcare, managing school events, and dealing with issues of racism in her kid’s school.
Nooyi says she could not have done it without the support of her husband Raj and the care infrastructure of her family in India, including her mother, her mother-in-law and other relatives and American friends, neighbors and colleagues who took turns to help her with household duties and with childcare until she and her husband Raj came home in the evening.
On the flip side, Nooyi says, her employers’ support and her bosses’ mentorship also played a big part in her professional ascent. She points to BCG’s offer of three months paid leave, which enabled her to take care of her ill father without compromising her career or personal finances, and mentorship by Gerhard Salge of ABB who continued to give her plum assignments when she was pregnant and after the birth of her first child.
THE IMMIGRANT PHENOMENON
Nooyi admits she probably worked twice as hard to prove herself, which she says is an integral part of being an immigrant and a woman and a woman of color.
“When I was in corporate America,” she says.
MAJOR AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS:
To date: 15 honorary degrees.
2007 Padma Bhushan from the Government of India, the country’s 3rd highest civilian honor.
2007 Named an “Outstanding American by Choice” by the US State Department.
2019 Portrait inducted into the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
2021 Elected member of the American Philosophical Society Board of Trustees of the National Gallery of Art. Inducted into the Asian Hall of Fame and National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Currently: Member of the Board of Amazon and Philips, Member of International Advisory Council of Temasek; an independent director of the International Cricket Council; Member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Member of the MIT Corporation and Dean’s Advisory Council at MIT’s School of Engineering Member of the Boards of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Partnership for Public Service. Class of 1951 Chair for the Study of Leadership at West Point Advisor to several early stage companies. Co-director of the newly created Connecticut Economic Resource Center
President of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam pins the Padma Bhushan award on Nooyi in April 2007
“I was the only woman in most cases in senior positions. And in the early days in the tech world, there weren’t a lot of immigrants in mainstream corporate America, so I was always the odd person out. I had to work harder to establish myself, there’s no question about it.”
The good news is that there are more immigrants and women in the mainstream, but she says they have to work hard to maintain the right balance between retaining their authenticity and integrating into the mainstream.
“Sometimes when you try to be too authentic, you stand out too much in a negative way,” she says. “And if you try to integrate too much, you come across like a little bit of a fake. So it’s a real interesting balance we have to take: make sure that you don’t give up what makes you, you. But embrace what makes you more mainstream for the corporate environment or the business environment you’re in. It’s a dial you turn, and how you settle on the right point is the challenge. It is a trial and error to try to not get too extreme on either side.”
LEADERSHIP AND ALLYSHIP
Still Nooyi says that as a woman, a woman of color, and often the only one at a senior level in the room, she could not have done it without the support of senior level White males in corporate America who committed to develop, train and push her, starting with Wayne Calloway, CEO of PepsiCo, who believed that diversity was important and lived up to that philosophy and promise. He convinced Nooyi to join PepsiCo saying he needed her more than Jack Welch at General Electric who had also made her an offer.
“A lot of us work very hard, there’s no question about it. But sometimes we all run up against a real brick wall,” she says. “In my case, when I joined PepsiCo in 1994, I joined at a very senior level. I was 39 years old and head of corporate strategy, and all the senior executives were White males. But that was the case in all corporate America. PepsiCo was no different. Most of the executives were big supporters, helping every step of the way, pulling me along, even when I made mistakes. They viewed me as a major asset to the company. I did my piece of the job, no question about it, I work very hard. But I’m also a testament to mentorship, to a youthful company that welcomed me and pushed me forward.”
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS: FOCUS ON THE COMPANY, NOT YOURSELF
Working hard and having the right mentors and allies, in a company that supports diversity and has the right support infrastructure matters, according to Nooyi, but one more critical secret to success lies within the individual she says. That is a focus not on one’s personal success but on the success of the company, organization or mission, she says.
“To me, personal success was irrelevant,” Nooyi adds. “My personal success was tied to the success of the company. So I put the company before everything. And I worried about making sure the company is going to be successful in the long term. I made sure the company’s business model would sustain in the future. I had a great succession bench. So when I focused on those aspects, unselfishly, my position also solidified.”
Often people worry about themselves rather than the company and that creates issues, she says. Setting your goal on that senior job makes you obsess over the next promotion instead of doing well in your current job, she maintains.
“Do a great job now and that automatically gets you to the next level,” Nooyi said.
HOW TO ATTRACT THE RIGHT MENTORS
Nooyi’s experience is a lesson in the importance of mentorship as an essential aspect of developing a big leader. Mentors come in two types, she says. Those with the small M are mentors who give you advice at random every now and then.
“And then there’s the real mentor, the one with the big M. Some people call them sponsors, I just call them real mentors,” says Nooyi.
These mentors pick you, you don’t pick them, she says. They see something in you, and give you a push and are willing to let you outshine them and take their job, even if that means they will end up working for you. They are willing to commit the time to support, promote, and provide advice.
“Unless you find that sort of a big M mentor, you
Nooyi with (then PepsiCo CEO) Wayne Calloway on her first day at the company
Nooyi speaking at the Women in the World conference in New York in 2016 with international lawyer and foreign policy analyst Anne-Marie Slaughter (left) and television journalist and anchor of CBS News Norah O’Donnell (right) really haven’t hit the jackpot,” says Nooyi. And the way to attract the big M mentor is by doing a good job and doing it the right way,” she says. “It is not just what you do, it is how you do it, and by having a great presence. All three together, make people attracted to you. So you’ve got to think about your own brand proposition, and how to define your own brand proposition and attract people to that proposition.”
Like it or not, part of the brand proposition is your executive presence — how you look and dress, which can have an effect on how people receive and respond to you, says Nooyi in the book, describing her own experience with an image consultant and a colleague at PepsiCo who pulled Nooyi aside and advised her to improve the way she dressed.
Nooyi’s experience is not unlike what a lot of women, especially those from South Asian cultures, who over-index on the competence side but may not necessarily pay attention to personal grooming.
“I had to overcome issues related to how I dressed by overdoing the competence bit, by just showing that I was so good at my job,” she says. “People looked right through how I dressed, and I don’t have any issues with that. When a consultant pulled me aside and said, let me help you change your entire clothing, I thought it was a gift from God and in a very nice way without making me feel bad, made me change my entire outfit. I’ll be honest with you: I could have survived dressed the way I was. Trust me, nothing would have happened to me. But it gave me added confidence. It gave me more courage. I could walk in with my head held high, as opposed to focusing on why my clothes are so ill-fitting.”
Nooyi wishes she had access to such consulting services in her early years as a professional, and encourages women, including South Asian women, who feel the need to to improve.
FLEXIBILITY AND WORK LIFE
At PepsiCo, Nooyi’s brand proposition was someone who put company first and did not play politics although she understood them. She became the go-to person to
Left to right: Nooyi's daughter Preetha, husband Raj, and younger daughter Tara
assign difficult jobs to as she quickly gained the reputation for having a superpower to take the complex and make it simple and understandable. As part of the senior management team she was involved in PepsiCo’s transformation, exiting non-core businesses to focus on its snack food and beverage lines, including the acquisition of Tropicana and a merger with Quaker Oats. She continued to rise up the ranks to become CEO in 2006, becoming one of the few women–perhaps the only Indian woman at the time–to head a Fortune 500 company and later became Chairman of the Board, holding the post of Chairman and CEO for more than 10 years and being cited as one of the world’s best CEOs and the top most powerful women.
As CEO, Nooyi spearheaded PepsiCo’s transition to a greener, more environmentally aware company, and to adopting healthier foods and moving to less sugary drinks. Under her leadership, and with a focus on “Performance with Purpose” PepsiCo’s revenue grew from $35 billion in 2006 to more than $63 billion when she retired.
Throughout, Nooyi, who had her second daughter Tara, continued to balance life as an executive, wife,
Nooyi with Hillary Clinton, who visited PepsiCo when she was U.S. senator for New York
Nooyi with U.S. President Barack Obama daughter, daughter in law, a mother, and sister, all while staying connected to her Tamilian South Asian culture and meeting her family’s expectations to fulfill traditional duties of a South Indian woman, and heed her mother’s advice to “leave the crown in the garage” — all of which, she admits, was often a giant juggling act.
“When I was CEO, we didn’t have all of these remote technologies,” she says. “So I had to travel. I had to be in the office. Flexibility was not a choice. I was constantly juggling every priority, and PepsiCo, as a priority, could not be dropped. So I focused excessively on PepsiCo, because so many lives and livelihoods depended on my decision-making. Juggling these priorities meant I always hoped I wouldn’t drop something.”
Nooyi, admits there were moments of doubt, including when her daughters pleaded her to quit her job, but she was able to push through and manage because the companies she worked for had access to paid parental and medical leave and support structure, policies and perks and a supportive husband, a family infrastructure and community support system that allowed Nooyi to travel while leaving her children in able hands of her parents and extended family.
“I believe that women’s choice to work outside the home is integral to their well-being and their family’s prosperity,” Nooyi says in her book, challenging those who question its impact on children’s wellbeing. She argues that working women’s kids tend to do better in school, grow up to be more independent and respect their mothers as role models. She also points to evidence that women’s participation in the paid labor-force results in economic prosperity
INDRA’S INSIGHTS FOR PROFESSIONAL WOMEN
LISTEN: "There’s a reason you have two ears and only one mouth. So listen more than you talk."
LEARN: Get a solid education and build and hone your skills, using on the job work experience as a learning opportunity.
WORK HARD: There is no substitute for hard work. Give it your 100 percent; anything less is not enough.
CONSTANTLY UPDATE AND UPGRADE
YOUR SKILLS: Don’t assume that once you have a good set of skills, the game is over. Continuously improve them and learn new ones to remain competitive. Remain a life-long learner. Be curious.
PUT THE COMPANY’S GOALS AHEAD OF
YOUR OWN: Think of what you can do to make it a better place, rather than about how you are going to climb up the ranks. Do a good job and the rest will follow.
Nooyi with female CEOs, soon after taking over PepsiCo. Cherie Blair, English barrister and and wife of former British PM Tony Blair, is in the center
BUILD ALLIES: Your hard work can only get you so far. Allyship from senior leaders, including those in positions of power, is critical to success.
EMBRACE FEEDBACK: The boss knows better. If the boss says the project is only 60% of the way there, they’re giving you valuable feedback. Rather than ask them to tell you how to move to 90%, go figure it out. Work to get it to 100%.
USE DIVERSITY AS AN ADVANTAGE: As a person with a global mindset and diverse perspectives, you can bring valuable insights to improve the company’s prospects.
BE AUTHENTIC BUT ALSO ASSIMILATE: Maintain a balance between being authentic to who you are and your own culture. At the same time, assimilate to the mainstream and company culture to be part of the collective team driving a vision.
BUILD YOUR OWN BRAND PROPOSITION: First, put the company before you. Second, understand the politics but don’t play it. Second, focus on the job at hand, not on the next promotion. Third, think about what you are especially good at and can deliver on time while ensuring the highest quality. Accept assignments accordingly and do a great job again and again.
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MENTORS:
Mentors come in two forms. The one with the small M, where somebody just gives you advice at random, is OK. But real mentors, the one with the big M, commit the time to support, promote, and push you, and provide advice to enable you to grow. Unless you find a big M mentor, you really haven’t hit the jackpot.
ATTRACT BIG M MENTORS TO YOUR BRAND
PROPOSITION: Doing a good job and doing it right attracts big mentors. It’s not just what you do, it is how you do it, combined with great presence. All three together, attract leadership to your brand proposition.
SUBSTANCE IS THE CORE, BUT STYLE AND
PRESENCE MATTER: If you are unsure about your attire or presence, get help from independent consultants who can help you improve the way you dress, if needed. Knowing you are well put together can give you the added confidence to walk in with authority, and can take your mind off of how you look and focus instead on what you deliver.
PHOTO CREDIT : DAVE PUENTE
of nations, reduces poverty and boosts GDP. But ultimately, says Nooyi, for her, the reason women need a clear path to paid work is more direct. “We all deserve the power of the purse for our own freedom. The full acceptance of women as paid workers spells human progress. It unlocks them from being at the mercy of a male-dominated world.”
PAYING IT FORWARD
Nooyi is passionate about helping women get to the next level and keenly aware that beyond providing education, skills, opportunities, and mentorship, systemic change in care infrastructure is needed. When she retired from PepsiCo after more than a decade as CEO, she began to think about important policy changes needed to establish care infrastructure for professional women to head companies. But then the pandemic hit, and as she began working on the “Reopen Connecticut” project, she realized that the challenge for essential
workers and people who had to come to work physically was much more acute.
Even among the office workers who still had the flexibility to work remotely, the burden for women in particular was much higher. With kids home, mothers in particular had to juggle to be teachers, caregivers, cleaners, cooks, and more, because there was no help from outside during the lockdown and in most cases, women ended up with a workload that was off the charts.
“And on top of that, without broadband access, when you had to prioritize who should be on the computer, the kids and the husband got precedence, and the woman took a backseat even in her job that led to a lot of stress,” Nooyi says. “White collar workers went through extra mental stress and there was a lot more domestic violence and divorces coming as a result of the pandemic. So it was a messy situation.”
Nooyi first explored the possibility of writing policy papers but was strongly advised against it and instead advised to inform policy by storytelling the arc of her own life. So she decided to write a book, “My Life in Full,” published by Penguin 2021. “This book is a memoir like no other. It is a quasi-textbook. The best way to read this book is to go chapter by chapter, and engage in the book, because the lessons are very important and can be informative to the next generation.”
She is particularly interested that the younger generation, especially from the South Asian and Asian diaspora, read it.
“There’s no point calling somebody a role model, if you’re not going to understand what it took to get to where they were,” Nooyi says. “So I hope the diaspora looks at the book that way, as a way to educate the young and for the parents themselves to be educated, and to really understand what it takes to progress in the corporate world.”
She says it is particularly important, especially as a woman and an immigrant and a woman of color of South Asian origin to understand the puts and takes involved in getting to the mountain top. Yes, one part is you and how hard you work and your own personal philosophy, leadership and courage. But in equal measure it is about the system, the family and community infrastructure and the organizational infrastructure, the mentorship, and allyship and the policies needed to help you succeed.
“I think it’s important we give women the education and the power of the purse,” Nooyi says. “But then a job itself is a full time job. And as you rise in the job, it’s two full-time jobs or three full-time jobs. I know my CEO job was three full-time jobs. I think
Nooyi at the event announcing her retirement from PepsiCo
A FEW OF HER FAVORITE THINGS
FAVORITE MOVIE “The American President”
FAVORITE INDIAN/TAMIL MOVIE “Sadhu Mirandal” (1966 Tamil movie)
FAVORITE MUSICIAN No one favorite. Changes with the times
FAVORITE COLOR Blue FAVORITE FOOD TO COOK Good South Indian sambar and rasam. Also pasta of all kinds
BEST LESSON YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR CHILDREN “Can you let us finish what we are saying,” and “Stop interrupting.”
FAVORITE TAMILIAN EXPRESSION Othaippen (I will give you a kick – affectionately)
what needs to happen is, first, husband and wife should say, the family’s a joint responsibility ... Family is not female. Family is family.
“First point: That agreement has to happen between husband and wife. Second, I think in-laws and parents have to lean in to help the young woman do her job. Very often, it’s viewed as a penalty when she goes to work. And when she comes back home, she has to do all the housework. And sometimes a paycheck is taken away in India, not here. I think that’s got to change, I think the husband has got to put his foot down and say, my wife’s got to be treated right, and not put all the burden on the mother.
“The third thing is now with tools like this that we’re using, like Zoom, you can actually engineer flexibility into your workday, where you can work a bit by Zoom, and then do the rest in person, and be available for the family and for work. And so I think utilizing these technologies intelligently is very important.”
THE MISSING LINK: SOUTH ASIAN SISTERHOOD
Nooyi’s focus on maintaining cultural authenticity is common among many South Asian women in top ranks, including current Vice President Kamala Harris, many of whom attribute cultural values as critical to their success. I asked Nooyi about her message for women of Indian and South Asian origin, especially as more South Asian women have significant earning power and yet are not seen as an influential and powerful collective demographic.
“First of all, we have to ask ourselves, are the Indian women in the United States united? If you’re not united, it doesn’t help,” says Nooyi. “I’d go a step further and say, as Asian Americans, we should all be united. As Asian Americans, we contribute enormously to the United States, yet we want to be viewed in slices. And within the Indian community, we want to be viewed in micro slices as North or South Indians. That’s got to stop.” I asked about possible solutions and how to change that.
“I think that we have to really ask ourselves the question, how do we want to be viewed? Are we going to keep our heads down and not get involved in anything and just be viewed as somebody who is assimilated, or do we really want to keep our identity while we assimilate?
“I think non-Indian Asians have done a better job uniting than we have. And I think it’s an existential question to ask ourselves. Are we part of the Asian diaspora or the South Asian diaspora and are we going to embrace our South Asian or our South Indian, or North Indian, whatever slice we are from. Unless we make that decision, we will never be taken seriously as a group. I don’t think we even know each other. There’s no sisterhood. Asian women should feel comfortable talking to each other. We have to change this.”
We sat down with Nooyi recently to interview her for the Sundays with SEEMA TV show, to be aired on January 30 at 8.30 pm EST on TV Asia and to be available on https://www.seema.com/tv/ For any one who wants to follow in her footsteps, Nooyi has made it simple in her latest book, “My Life in Full.” Available on Google Play, Audible and Amazon.
