An immigrant could come in with nothing in her pocket and become the CEO of an iconic American red, white and blue company. It can't happen in any other country in the world. I would never have been CEO in any other country of the world including in India. So I'm genuinely grateful.
Attracting the very best talent from around the world, those seeking education and opportunity has been one of America's greatest strengths for over two centuries. Immigrants have contributed to our vibrant culture and our dynamic world-leading economy.
Indra Nooyi is a part of that American story. Choosing to move to this country as a young adult, Indra embraced America's openness and thrived within our world-leading institutions. She became a trailblazing business leader.
Indra rose to lead PepsiCo, an iconic American brand recognized around the world. Along the way, she developed a deeply personal understanding of what makes American freedom and opportunity so unique in this world.
For only in America. My conversation with Indra Nooyi.
Good to see you, too. After a long time.
A long time. Right. Great to see you.
Good. I'm well, thank you. You've been fabulous as always.
Yes, you should tell me, right? So what's the most interesting thing you're doing right now from your point of view?
Being on the board of Amazon.
They keep seeming to reinvent new business models all the time and the way people think and the way that people act so fast. I've never seen something like that.
Yeah, so it's been quite amazing to watch.
When did you come to New York last? I don't get to these coasts that much.
Probably four times a year.
New York has this feeling and the vibe of energy that is unmatched anywhere. And you know, you stand on a street. I lived in Chicago for 10 years. You stand on the street called in New York anywhere and look the fashions. People dress in the most interesting way. I go to Chicago sometimes. The result is, you hate to say, I love Chicago, was born city, but it's New York is just exciting. People dressing, they mix and match things. They're like, 'How did you think about this?'
Yeah, it's a really exciting place.
All right. Which of us is where?
We'll have you sit on this side.
Okay. And I'm here and you have my phone with the...
It's a really pretty suit.
That I'm matching. Chanel came home and taught me how to match my Chanel jackets, other things other than Chanel.
I used to match them all. She said, 'Don't wear it with jeans.'
So, I'm learning to wear it with jeans.
Hey, Mark.
I'm here with my longtime colleague and good friend, Indra Nooyi. We're here in New York City looking out at this exceptional city that in many ways has been a landing point throughout our history for people from all over the world. And we're going to have this discussion about only in America. I really look forward to spending some time with you. It's been a while. You are of course the former CEO of PepsiCo, but very active still in the business community and philanthropy. So we'll get to some of that, but I want to start with the following question. So when my students come to me, they very often say, I want to be a leader. And I say that's not a job description or a destination. And it does lead to the question though of how one becomes a leader. There's this long question, lifelong question, are leaders made or are they born? So tell us about your leadership journey.
You know this question about are leaders born leaders or are they made into leaders? Sort of a long-term question which has never been resolved. But from observation, I will tell you there's a little bit of born leaders and then there's a lot of made leaders. Leadership requires you to have people wanting to follow you, wanting to follow you with passion, wanting to follow you until you fall off the edge of the earth. If you can evoke that kind of passion in people, then you're a real leader. It doesn't matter whether you're charismatic or whatever. Your message, the way you approach whatever you're doing, the way you motivate people makes people want to follow you. Now, to get to that point, it's a lifelong process. You have to watch, experience, practice, be put in situations where you have to follow leaders and then you have to have people follow you. It's literally like practicing for the Olympics or some sort of a sport. Leaders are made through a very tough process if you want to call it that over many, many years. And so if somebody comes to you and says they want to be a leader, just tell them, great, I'm glad you have that aspiration. Watch leaders, follow them, you know, look at the mistakes they make and how they recover from it. Look at how they shape agendas and make people follow them wherever they go. Look at all their habits and then learn from that and you know, see how you can become a leader too. Go for it.
Yeah, and also mentors, right? People who along the way help you to become a better leader. Are there people along the way that you think back and you think, 'Oh, how fortunate that that person came into my life at the time that they did.'
I am a product of great mentoring right through my life. From the time I was a kid growing up in India to the time I came to the United States, my belief is mentors pick you. You can't go to people and say, 'Can you be my mentor?' What can they do? I've been lucky in that mentors I never expected would pick me to be a mentee, picked me. I didn't even know they were mentoring me. They pushed me. They pulled me. They kicked me when I was doing things the wrong way. But they put me into difficult assignments because they felt that if I could demonstrate mastery in that assignment, I could be pulled forward. In retrospect, I realized they were all the best mentors. At that time, I was like, why is he pushing me so much? Doesn't he like me now? Now I want to say thank you to every one of them and I do that. But I'm a product of great mentoring and I'm forever grateful to every one of those people who gave me so much of their time and energy and more importantly, good mentors are never insecure because they know that if they mentor you well, you could take their job. So I was the product of great mentoring and I took their jobs. And so you know, I consider myself incredibly lucky that these people picked me.
I always say that mentors are people who see something in you that you might not even see in yourself.
Exactly right. Exactly right.
Because I would never have thought that I was going to end up where I did when I was a young kid in segregated Birmingham, Alabama. This was very far from anything that was imaginable. And I can't have imagined a little girl growing up in India. How did you make the decisions that led you to this place? Especially the decision to come to the United States. That must have been in some ways a little bit wrenching.
But you've got to remember I grew up in India in the 60s and the 70s. You know, that's when I was in India. India was a new country and women were not even a major force in India at that time. Most women stayed home and kept home. And in that India, my father and my grandfather were now encouraging us as girls to go out and conquer the world and dream big. And you know, to have men in the family say you don't have to be held back because of your gender. We're going to give you wings to fly and we're going to remove all the barriers in your way so that society doesn't stop you from dreaming. So I was lucky enough to be born into such a family. And then as the years went on, all my friends who came to the United States would call me or write me and say the United States is a seat of innovation, cultural advancement, incredible can-do attitudes. This is the place you want to be, the kind of person you are, you will thrive here. So I went to my parents and said, 'I'd like to go to the United States.' They said, 'Dream, dream on. It's nice to dream about the United States, but we're going to get you married.' My mother said, 'We're going to get you married. That's your job.' So surreptitiously, I applied to the Yale School of Management, which had just opened its doors, and it was a new school that was blending the public and private sector, and sounded fascinating. I applied to it, and I got in, but no money.
So, I went to my parents and said, I got into the Yale School of Management. They said, 'Yeah, dream on. Put that letter away because we can't afford to send you to the Yale School of Management.' Two weeks later, I got another letter from Yale saying, 'We're going to give you loans and a work study program to study at Yale and fund yourself. Would you like to come?' And I went back to my parents and said, 'All that you have to do is to buy me a ticket, air ticket, and I'll repay you in spades later on.' And I don't know why they agreed. Till today, I considered that a character flaw on them that they allowed me to sail the seas and go away from them. But they came to the airport, saw me off. I came to Yale and everything that my friends told me about the United States was understated. This was the most glorious country was and is. It was a seat of innovation. It was a seat of creativity, culture, a seat of people wanting to change the world. And I found it to be the most exciting place in the world. And one thing led to another and before I knew it I was progressing up a corporate ladder.
Yeah, that's really, it was word of mouth at some level with friends who somehow knew something about the United States, knew it was a place that was different. And you say it exceeded expectations about how different it was. But when you arrived you must have thought, what have I done?
Well, it was a lonely place. You know because there are not enough sounds on the roads here. India is full of sounds, lots of people, lots of colors. Here it was a quiet place. So I landed in JFK and went up to New Haven and for a moment I wondered whether I'd done the right thing. How am I going to cope with this loneliness? And then even at Yale it was a time when there weren't many international students especially colored international students or colored students overall in the school of management. And so I don't think I fit in. On the other hand, I will tell you our colored students banded together. We worked our tail off because to us we didn't come there for the social life. We came there to study and to work hard and to move ahead. So the goal we had was very, very clear. Study, work hard, get great grades and somehow land a job. Okay, that's all the objective was at that time. And so the fact that we didn't get invited to any parties or any trips to the Cape or anything like that, who cared? We didn't know anything about it. We didn't dress well. We didn't do anything the right way. And in those days, there weren't any counselors to tell you how to dress or how to talk or how to interact with people, nothing. So, we were the misfits. And if I look back at pictures of those days, oh my god, we were the misfits. But somehow we were viewed as academically pretty damn good.
So by the time the second year rolled along, people wanted to be in study groups with us. People wanted to be in projects with us. So we went from, oh my god, what has Yale done to not bad, these people are pretty damn good. So if we are in the group with them, maybe our grades will improve too. And so we were desired and wanted and pretty soon we got integrated. And then when we got consulting jobs or investment banking jobs, people looked at us and said, 'Hey, these are brainiacs.' Whether we were or not, different issue, but respect just went up.
Purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in because we also had to work remember to make ends meet. So we'd go to school in the morning, work through the night and I was a receptionist in my dorm from midnight to 5:00 a.m. So people realized that this was a grueling experience for us and they've respected us for that.
Now, it must then have affected how you looked at people like you as they were coming up as a leader. Now, you've made it, so to speak. You've done your degree, your consulting job, and you see young people who are maybe misfits, people who work hard but don't quite fit. Did it have an effect on your leadership style, on the way that you thought about these people? Both the immigrant experience and what came from that immigrant experience which was not quite fitting in and having to prove yourself.
