Indra Nooyi at NIAM GALA 2019 in conversation with Lakshmi Menon

going to have a conversation here and it's going to be led by the founding and current board member who's going to be coming up actually is a co-founder of a member of its board of trustees and a long-time community volunteer she's going to come up and talk a little bit about what she's going to do and how she's going to introduce our guest [Applause] [Music] [Applause] producing from the floor okay you said i will introduce her okay fair enough uh anyone who has a 401k that is growing right now that probably has an index fund in it notwithstanding what the president of the united states is saying with the stock market you probably have stocks that were affected by our keynote speaker here tonight um i'm very grateful for that i know you are as well but more than that is what she has done to lead a fortune 100 company and to be a true leader in american business and there really is a bigger proper game in the world uh the former ceo of pepsico [Music] recyclable packaging reduce [Applause] percent indeed and of course she was honored this year with a portrait displayed at the national portrait gallery in washington d.c and is proud to recognize her outstanding achievements please enjoy the conversation sounds good that's true we all change a bit but um so welcome back to chicago and uh you know there's we've all read and heard so much about your journey to the talk at pepsico and your remarkable achievements so today perhaps we could talk about the other road that's also a part of that journey the road that took you from an indian grad student to bringing american cultural touchstone and uh it's something that comes very close to anybody who's immigrated from somewhere else and you know would like to understand what you've gone through [Music] did traditions and cultural expectations feel confined and did america seem like the place where you could get away and realize your potential [Applause] the only thought that went through her head was how am i gonna get this girl you that um so now that was i viewed all of that as very young and non-constrained and so um in the 70s when i first started to get introduced to the united states and through both going to the u.s library by madras america was always the dream the greatest cultural uh phenomenon that was happening around the world the best movies the best um which is the united states so we have to make sure we understand that i wasn't running away from it [Music] [Applause] um and we were very lucky we came from one great democracy to another great democracy in many ways i consider myself incredibly fortunate for having gone through this experience so because of that i think americans do tend to maintain ties to the homeland because they're not trying to forget but yet um between your indian identity and your american one was there did you feel there was a need to keep the two separate so that you could succeed in america i'm wondering if there was a clue um [Applause] um but we've also adapted and completely become immersed in the american way of life uh you know i love american sports i love american music we have a lot of friends in our town you know who are born brought up here in the united states you're putting in so much effort to be something else and occasionally and people want a bit of faith and so the best thing is just be yourself okay and that's what we've always were two strengths against you your gender and your brown skin uh along the course of your career obviously they became non-issues and maybe even turning into assets what was the process that made that happen i was wondering was it a series of constant battles to prove your worth i think so i mean but i didn't think of them i chose to come to the united states i chose didn't really have somebody like all the way [Music] but that was great for me because i had to work harder and prove myself more so when people really noticed me they said wow [Music] but in my mind i have felt therefore i worked harder and harder and i think i raised the bar for myself and that put me in a positive light in the eyes of others and you know i'll tell you an interesting a partner a you are asking for the best [Music] [Applause] it made [Music] is there any achievement that is really personally meaningful and significant for you first of all the last 25 years in the last 40 years between the man and the kids we haven't really spent much time together as a family because in the early days you know we had nothing we had to start from scratch and build our lives very very hard and now we have nothing to worry about in terms of we are economically uh well-off our kids are grown up and we need to make more time for ourselves to do that i'm not successful so far [Applause] more importantly the last year and um so the world is in front of me and i want to pick those programs and assignments that i think will make a difference and make me feel good inside that i'm giving back to society in some shape or form um prosperity to the country let's provide the ecosystem for you how is it going to work so all these projects that i wanted to work on when i was in pepsico [Music] [Applause] our parents really did not even think about things like me time or work life balance or quality time with your children and you know these are very major sources of guilt and stress for working in american families how do you rate yourself and how did you cope with these matters [Applause] [Music] is the best i could if my kids were hurt in school i was the first one in school most of the other mothers and fathers would just call the school nurse and say as long as you banished at the airport i'd be the only one that showed up there and said did you manage was i there for every game every concert eighty percent of the concerts for the games that's the reality okay i cannot put the clock so i think it's time to i wish i could watch this concert i wish and if they want to spend more time be told preserved and shared and how do you think a museum like ours would be meaningful to your children so let me talk about two things this notion of presenting the story is not something i never thought about because things like portrait galleries wasn't really transcended in my mind and i began to understand why portraiture and the whole notion of portugal is so important to talk about how people contribute to the arc of progress in the country on various aspects whether it's being the president chief justice head of federal reserve uh musicians artists more recently business leaders why is it important that people you know over the ages look at the picture of that person beautifully painted so that it feels like they're looking at you and reflect on what they contributed to this art of progress this is not something that was fun in my mind at all are um the most successful group in the united states but if you really dig deep into the indo-americans the indian americans who contributed to the united states has nurses uh we are uh you know sailors and we're on ships selling fairly you know labor liberal roles so i think in many ways indian americans have contributed to the backbone [Applause] of um i got a call from indian americans saying you have now proven to people that indian americans can also run a traditional a large company not just a startup that became a big company and we also i think it is important that our american kids and everybody else understands the contributions of indian americans to the american experience and i hope we can contribute [Music] you know bring a little bit more respect to this community acknowledge the contributions of that person to this community [Applause] [Music] [Music] behind you that was you know the question was what was meaningful in my life which got me into that my family my parents my husband my kids that's who i am so many ways to who i am today um for many young people and um is i don't know maybe uh three from the um we were given so i think we'd like to start off um how would you encourage other indian american women or girls to achieve their dreams were there any people who influenced you oh how would i no first of all there is no substitute for an incredible hard work i don't think you like me to say this but you know at the end of the day you're not going to enhance a job you're not going to uh be pushed into a job because you know good looking or whatever if you really want to make it you just have to work your tail off and be completely and totally competent in whatever you're doing and in today's world where technology is changing everything you're doing it's not just enough to be very good when you're going to the job you've got to you've just got to be your skills all the time so for all you young people who think once you graduate from college or graduate school your learning is over think again the top part is just beginning so there is no substitute for that extremely hard work uh the one thing i would say to all of us as a community um you know we can all get great jobs the fact that we will never do something wrong always run our business with our job with integrity i think that we will bring shame on america [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] few bad um should not uh cast a cloud in the community integrity is very very important and as far as role models in my life i have had one role model many many many people have served as role models one piece of advice for me i take it and if i don't decide to follow it and go back and tell them why i want to perform so i don't think i have just one goal while i many great people that i sort of emulate and learn from as i go along thank you for the question [Applause] [Music] and we have one from you've spoken about the types of discrimination or bias that you've faced in the workplace as both a woman and in the brain and you've also talked about the need to confront that sort of bias head on and nip it in the bud at an early practical time uh in addition to confronting that what kind of structural changes have you instituted or seen other companies adopt that has successfully reduced workplace bias to discrimination great question um you know the main progress um a lot of progress over the last decade or two but we still have a long ways to go uh the best way to start to address in a significant way is if you get the numbers into the organization of people with diverse backgrounds and i gave a lot of credit to my predecessor steve who ran i'm going to [Music] differently so in every point he said the best world to get parenting in the workplace people listen to them truly wanted and then you develop them so that they feel like they're part of this elevation that goes on the organization and that's why as a company we've been very very successful both in financial results but more importantly in advancing the diversity in the social media but it's a [Applause] [Music] we have time for journey more question okay um thank you for the opportunity um thank you um just generally you've always been ahead of the curve really like wellness is a great example of really driving pepsico so just curious on kind of the secrets and how you brought an organization along and kind of breaking barriers to do something new and i just use health and knowledge of the topic with this in general like how do you bring people along and break barriers i think again another great question thank you um when we started this journey changed the company major impact on the company over the next decade now it's very important if you get people within the company to work on them they'll do it inside out so they do incremental negative effects [Music] uh you know there are books that have been written okay so you've got to be very very careful [Music] in the whole world of industry where people thought these are incremental changes we can manage through it so once we identify the mega trends from that we derive performance which is our program to change the portfolio become more environmentally sustainable all of which provide investments new capabilities so we took this whole negative work train first because if the board is not behind you can do nothing and then we took it on the road to our people and there's a great uh lesson from history when woodrow wilson was president and he wanted to bring the united states into world war one there was donated our own worship to be a difficult is it was not because it was such an obvious transformation we had to make because many of our employees were already eating and drinking they already were worried about the environment so many of the issues that we were talking about so it was much easier than we expected so when we got the message out we reinforced it several times [Music] is [Music] [Applause] museum hall of fame on stage [Music] i'd like to say a few words [Music] is fantastic the fact that dr mr taylor donated the building is very spectacular but this is just step one this is just about the first time think of this religious [Music] [Applause] [Music] to train indian americans have made the train and they require a place in your spirituality and religion so give freely please i know i have to be free [Applause] do this [Music] is

Channel: National Indo American Museum

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Length: 36min 51sec (2211 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020