Indra K. Nooyi

Indra Nooyi was born in Chennai, India, in 1955. She earned a bachelor's degree from Madras Christian College, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, and a master's in public and private management from Yale University. Nooyi began her career in India, where she held product manager positions at Johnson & Johnson and at Mettur Beardsell Ltd., a textile firm.

She spent six years directing international corporate strategy projects at Boston Consulting Group. Her clients ranged from textiles and consumer goods companies to retailers and specialty chemicals producers. Between 1986 and 1990, Nooyi worked for Motorola, where she was vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning.

Next, Nooyi was senior vice president of strategy and strategic marketing for Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), a Swiss industrial giant. She was part of the top management team that was responsible for ABB's U.S. business as well as its worldwide industrial businesses.

In 1996, she became senior vice president of corporate strategy and development at PepsiCo, and in 2001, she was named chief financial officer and became a member of its board of directors. In that position, she was responsible for PepsiCo's corporate functions, including finance, strategy, business process optimization, corporate platforms and innovation, procurement, investor relations, and information technology.

In 2006, Nooyi became president and CEO of PepsiCo. She led the company's restructuring, including the divestiture of its restaurants into the successful YUM! Brands, Inc.; the acquisition of Tropicana and the merger with Quaker Oats that brought the vital Quaker and Gatorade businesses to PepsiCo; the merger with PepsiCo's anchor bottlers; and the acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann, the largest international acquisition in PepsiCo's history. PepsiCo grew to own one of the world's largest portfolios of food and beverage brands, and its main businesses, Quaker Oats, Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, and Pepsi-Cola, are sold in more than 200 countries.

In 2014, Nooyi was named the Third Most Powerful Woman in Business by Fortune.

Nooyi has served as the chief architect of PepsiCo's multiyear growth strategy, Performance with Purpose, which is focused on delivering sustainable growth by investing in a healthier future for people and the planet.

She has also served on the boards of the U.S.-China Business Council, U.S.-India Business Council, Consumer Goods Forum, Catalyst, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Peterson Institute for International Economics, and Tsinghua University in China. She is also a successor fellow of Yale Corp. and was appointed to the U.S.-India CEO Forum by the Obama administration.