Pepsico President and CFO Visits Tuck
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—September 25, 2002
CONTACT: Kim Keating
HANOVER, N.H.—Indra Nooyi, president and CFO of PepsiCo, spoke at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth on September 23 about how the "school of hard knocks" helped her achieve her business success. Nooyi was recently ranked the 4th most powerful woman in business by Fortune magazine.
"There is no education like adversity," Nooyi said, quoting the 19th Century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. She told the crowd of Tuck students, staff, and faculty that her success did not come easily.
In 1996, Nooyi was hired as PepsiCo's senior executive for strategic planning, helping CEO Roger Enrico restructure PepsiCo after it experienced a staggering $800 million loss. To focus on PepsiCo's strengths—the convenience foods and beverage business—they decided to sell the company's restaurant chains, spin off the restaurant supply business, and later buy several "healthy food" businesses, including Tropicana and Quaker Oats. Nooyi was elected director, president, and CFO of PepsiCo in 2001, after negotiating Pepsi's $14 billion deal for Quaker Oats. PepsiCo stock reached a five-year high after her promotion, making it one of the world's five largest consumer product companies.
Nooyi talked about her lessons for success in business: (1) change before you're forced to; (2) focus on your strengths (as PepsiCo did when removing the restaurant business and increasing their food and beverage offerings); (3) set clear financial criteria and don't let the emotion of the deal obstruct reason (this philosophy allowed PepsiCo to wait patiently while Coca-Cola bid higher for Quaker; ultimately PepsiCo bought Quaker at their original offering price); (4) pray a lot, but plan more (Nooyi described how she planned 400 separate integration projects after the Quaker merger), and (5) numbers matter, but you live and die by people (PepsiCo supports employees with strong communication and work-life balance policies).
She had a final piece of advice for students: "Acknowledge what you don't know. If you're lost, stop and ask for directions."
Nooyi attributes her successful career to always working better and harder than anyone else and making sacrifices. "It's not easy at the top," she said quietly. "And you may not like to hear this, but you women—especially women of color—have to work twice as hard as your counterparts."
"Indra's style and message were inspirational," says Julie Lang, associate director of the Center for Global Leadership. "Following her visit, students said they appreciated her down-to-earth character and brutal honesty."
Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Information about the Tuck School is available at www.tuck.dartmouth.edu.
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