Indra Nooyi: Former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
Business Owner · Food & Beverage
Indra Nooyi moved from Chennai to Yale in 1978 and led PepsiCo as chairman and CEO from 2006 to 2018, ranking repeatedly among the world's most powerful women.
About Indra Nooyi: Former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo
Indra Nooyi (born Indra Krishnamurthy on October 28, 1955, in Madras, now Chennai) is an Indian-born American business executive who was chairman and CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018. She has consistently ranked among the world's 100 most powerful women: number 13 on the Forbes list in 2014, and second on the Fortune list in 2015 and 2017. She sits on the boards of Amazon and the International Cricket Council, among other organizations. Nooyi was the second of three children; her mother was a homemaker and her father worked at the State Bank of Hyderabad. Her mother, without a formal education herself, devised strategic games at dinner; when Nooyi and her sister were between eight and 11 she asked them to write a speech about what they would do if they held a position of power such as president or prime minister. If Nooyi fell short in a task, her paternal grandfather, a judge, made her write "I will not make excuses" 200 times. She schooled at Holy Angels Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School in Chennai, played guitar in a band and excelled at cricket, and earned bachelor's degrees in physics, chemistry and mathematics from Madras Christian College in 1975 and a postgraduate diploma from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in 1976. In 1978 she was admitted to the Yale School of Management, moved to the United States and earned a master's degree in public and private management in 1980. She began her career in India as a product manager at Johnson & Johnson and the textile firm Beardsell Ltd. Sources: English Wikipedia (Indra Nooyi, accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Former Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo
Company Details
PepsiCo
Food and Beverage, Consumer Goods