‘Put families at center’ of the discussion
STAMFORD — When Indra Nooyi retired as the chief executive officer of PepsiCo in 2018, she did not want to write a memoir. She was more interested in working on policy papers.
But her thinking changed a couple of years later when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. After receiving feedback from publishers, she realized there was a need for a book that recognized the millions of people struggling to balance work and family responsibilities — and that readers would also be interested in learning about her rise from her hometown of Chennai, India, to the top of a Fortune 500 company.
During a talk Monday evening at Stamford’s Ferguson Library, Nooyi discussed “My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future,” a memoir released last September that narrates a career in which she became one of the most prominent corporate executives in the world and a work that also outlines her recommendations for greater gender equality in corporate America and more support for working families.
“The hope is that we somehow put families at the center of our discussion, while not losing the entrepreneurial, innovative and inventive spirit in the country. We have an opportunity to reduce mental stress, mental illnesses and reduce the Great Resignation,” Nooyi told moderator Robert Dilenschneider and an audience of about 75 in the library’s auditorium and another 115 who watched virtually during the latest edition of the “Civility in America” lecture series. The series is sponsored by the library; The Dilenschneider Group, a strategic communications and public relations firm that Dilenschneider founded; and Hearst Connecticut Media.
In 2006, at age 50, Nooyi became CEO of Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo. At that point, the Greenwich resident was one of only 11 women to serve as chief executive of a Fortune 500 firm.
“I was president of PepsiCo from 2000 to 2006. When you’re the president and No. 2, you think you know it all because you’re in the room for all the decisions being made,” Nooyi said. “But the day you become CEO, it’s a whole new job because you’re ‘it.’ Everybody is looking at you. Everybody is looking to see what you’re going to do wrong, not what you’re doing right.”
At the same time, she said she was misrepresented by some media outlets who were fixated on her being an immigrant and person of color.
“They cast me in the media as this exotic being that wore saris to work, sang and walked around barefoot,” Nooyi said. “It is true, after 6 in the evening, my feet would hurt from the heels. … I’d kick off my heels, and I’d go to the coffee machine and come back in a floor that only had six or seven offices. Big deal. And after 6, if I’m exhausted, I might hum a tune. … I’d never worn a sari to work, so I don’t know what they were talking about.”
Nooyi faced scrutiny throughout her tenure as CEO. When she stepped down in 2018, some observers of PepsiCo questioned why she would support a male successor if she were so committed to gender equality. She rejected the notion that she did not support other women professionals, but she said the lack of women chief executives — last year, only 41 Fortune 500 firms had a woman as CEO — showed a need for stronger support systems for women in corporate America and other sectors.
“When we had to pick a CEO, there were only men to pick from,” Nooyi said. “As I dug deeper, I discovered that a lot of women came into the entry levels of PepsiCo. By about the third level, they left because they couldn't balance work and life.”
In the Q&A section of the event, Nooyi took questions from several audience members, including Christopher Shays, a Republican who served from 1987 to 2009 as the representative for the Fourth Congressional District, which covers most of Fairfield County.
“I wrestle with the thought that because of the pandemic we have realized the value of life outside of work and family and so on,” Shays said. “I wonder if we will be able to compete with the rest of the world if we have an attitude of ‘We’re going to work a little less and enjoy life a little more,’ when the rest of the world is going to work 12-hour days, seven days a week.”
Nooyi responded that she did not think countries such as the U.S. could be economically competitive and produce birth rates needed to sustain current population levels if they did not do more to help working families by providing greater child-care support and related initiatives.
“You need young people to keep communities healthy,” Nooyi added. “If you want to get the birth rate back to where it needs to be, you’ve got to provide support structures for families, to be family builders and family nurturers. And we’ve got to stop saying that ‘family is female.’ Family is not female. Family is family — whatever shape you want it.”