Indra Nooyi, former Pepsi boss: ‘In so many ways, I broke so many barriers’

Greenwich, Connecticut CNN — Turning a food giant like PepsiCo — whose portfolio includes Lay’s, Doritos, Cheetos, Gatorade and Mountain Dew — away from fat, sugar and salt might sound like a recipe for disaster. Indra Nooyi “I just looked at the assignment and said, Oh my God, I better do right by women, by people of color, by immigrants, by people of Indian origin,” she says. Kevin Hagen/Getty Images North America/Getty Images Nooyi is widely regarded as a visionary in American business history, and says her own definition of the word is “somebody who sees the future but makes change today towards that future.” But getting there wasn’t easy, and sometimes came at the expense of her own work-life balance, a topic she explored deeply in “My Life in Full,” her memoir, published in 2021. “My parents allowed me to do wild things like climb trees and fall down and play in a rock band — so everything that a traditional woman in India didn’t do,” she says. “So in many ways, as I always say, I won the lottery of life.” Video Ad Feedback Former CEO says don't obsess over your career path 01:22 - Source: CNN Today, Nooyi can boast no less than 15 honorary degrees from the likes of Yale, Penn State and Duke, her portrait hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and in 2021 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.