Priyanka Chopra And Indra Nooyi On Breaking Barriers And Engaging Billions | Forbes Women's Summit

we saved the best for last ladies uh no pressure uh i am so excited to to be leading this conversation two women i admire uh and in many ways and we also thought this couldn't be a more fitting way to close the summit today's theme is all about leading the way forward and these women have broken barriers they've taken unconventional paths to success they've built community in extraordinary ways and across borders and many of you know who they are they need no introduction but just to put it in context in terms of the extraordinary power influence and success on stage uh andrew nui is a leader uh who's at the home of a 150 billion dollar company leading pepsico's yet that's not a small number now that's a lot of decimal points yeah it's a lot of zeros that's a lot of zeros leading a corporate family of over 260 000 employees around the world and in her tenure she's more than doubled the company's revenue while also aggressively diverse diversifying uh the company's product portfolio professionally priyanka i would say it's also very difficult to sum up your job title in in one line as well you're an actress a bollywood superstar pop singer uh star of the very popular show quantico a former miss world a movie producer unifor unicef goodwill ambassador and activist and you also have priyanka also has an extraordinary following of close to or about probably a hundred million people around the world who follow her across her social platforms so this gives you a sense of what influence and power looks like today women who've defied limitations and who inspire others uh in our conversation as we close today we'll hear about how their shared experiences have shaped their success what are some of the common qualities that have united these career trajectories that are truly remarkable and how they think about the impact that they have today both professionally but in terms of advancing the opportunities for future generations of leaders to to emerge so indra and priyanka many many thanks for joining me here today thank you for having us i i want to start off by you know going back to your childhood which is what i did with the speaker earlier today because both of you have talked a lot about the influence of your parents and your mothers in particular on your career journeys and setting these formative values andrew you grew up in a cert socially conservative city and you described your mother someone who was this interesting combination who would who adhered to traditional beliefs never works or went to college but she would always say to you i i want you to get married when you're 18 and make sure you aspire to be the prime minister so this very interesting which is good life goals to have um uh maybe not 18 but uh i'll take the prime minister apart um but these you know that's an interesting juxtaposition particularly coming from a woman who didn't work who never went to college reflect a little bit about the values that she shared and those cultural roots that you've cited as so formative and and threading the different experiences of your life together um maura thank you for having us it's great to be here with priyanka the beautiful and brilliant priyanka and i was just telling priyanka only one of those two objectives applied to me you decide which one how humble but you know interestingly maura in retrospect now we talk about my upbringing and talk about my mother and things like that what she did and what we went through was very normal for when we were growing up in madras in the south of india it was a conservative city and every mother's dream was to get their daughter married off by age 18 or 20 at the latest beyond which you were not quite marriageable so mothers in particular worried a lot about how are they going to make sure the daughters have a good marriage with a good family and gets settled and once you get settled you can do whatever you want can you prime minister astronaut do whatever you want so it was get an education preferably up to a master's because we don't get a master's degree families would sort of cringe and get married to the right person i remember i come from the nerdy south i come from the nerdy source too my grandmother was malayali and she's a nurse okay so one of my family is either a doctor an engineer so we both come from a nerdy background all right so it was if you don't you don't have a master's degree and marry by the time you're 20 you're in trouble so when you come from that sort of a background everything seems normal because she was behaving true to the role i'm glad she behaved that way because we got our master's degrees we studied hard and then she allowed us to also fly because the men in our family said hey you're not going to constrain the women and i still remember this incident where my sister got admission to a school outside of our city and she wanted to go away because it's very hard to get admission to the school and she got in and she she wanted to go and my mother said you can't go unless you get married and my sister said what the hell i've gotten admission into this very prestigious school i am i'm the bad and i don't want to get married i want to go my mom said if you go i'm going to fast until i die okay which is very normal moms indian moms okay it's not even dramatic it's normal very normal so she started a fast and my grandfather said to her she told us kids it's okay if she dies i'll take care of you [Applause] and my father said the same thing it's okay if she dies we'll take care of y'all but you are going to school in ahmedabad and we've already paid the deposit 24 hours later my mother broke the fast she's still alive she's still alive and so i think it was she was normal i'm glad she was so she was the break and my the men in my family my grandfather my father were the accelerator so combination made it work and priyanka i want to turn to you because you said that you grew up with parents who were relatively progressive in the sense that they treated you and your brother you said equally or relatively equally but i was really struck because your your father had a professional career but your mother did as well she was a double md she spoke she speaks eight languages am i right eight languages my mother is a full over achievement i mean that that isn't even overachiever i mean i can't even like think of eight languages here on the spot to name um she has uh i don't know if then at the yeah that doesn't what that says about me but uh but uh you know she has a business and the like uh how did that shape the way that you thought about your career in the sense that you had parents whose professional ambitions were very very strong um and and rooted in a way that i would imagine was a little bit different in the cultural context of some of your friends um i think um first of all i'm really excited to be here and i am a big fan of not just forbes but of indra so i'm really happy to be on this panel um especially in a room full of female achievers um y'all are all boss ladies so thank you for being here um my upbringing really shaped me as a woman um as a person because both my parents were super overachievers i mean way to set your children up for failure both my mom is a double md she's an ob gyn and an ent my dad was a surgeon a musician like a singer he was also a composer and an artist he used to paint and my mom spoke nine languages as a licensed pilot is like i forgot the pilot part like of course of course she's a pilot of course you're a pilot of course she was like we didn't have tv then um you did you just wanted to be an overachiever but um both my my parents were very progressive in their in their mindsets especially coming from a country at that time which india was which was a little bit like this you know a woman's life sort of ends when she gets married because after that yeah you can think about progressive families will tell you yeah you can achieve whatever but your milestone is to get married whereas uh my parents were my mom even now says that you know because i'm in my 30s obviously it's like way over the hill i should have been married like a decade ago but my mother still says she's like you know you'll get married the day you find someone who will who will appreciate how hard you have worked to get where you are who will appreciate the sacrifices you made and that's the man you will get married to and if you don't doesn't matter we're in the world of science can still have babies and i was like what kind of mom says that [Applause] but it was such a but the idea was the philosophy behind it that it didn't define me and even my father like my grandmother used to always say oh my god she's an actress oh my god she can't even cook she'll never get married and my dad was like yeah it's okay i'll send a cook with her wherever she goes i was like yeah daddy and he was true till the day he died like i had a cook with me that was pre-selected by my father because he knew i was particular about food that he would send with me wherever i went because he was like she can't cook um which is great for my figure but probably not good for me that's what i used to i used to tell him that always and he was like no my parents had such a different way of thinking my mom like ever since i was a kid always told me you make the you make mistakes which all of us do you might make wrong decisions and you might be afraid to come and tell your parents but courage of conviction is the only integrity that you need to have whether you make a mistake or not whether you tell um you make good bad of ugly it should all be yours my dad i was obsessed with cinderella like all kids are um with like fairy tales and disney and like i was like i'm cinderella and i was a klutz as a child like i couldn't walk straight without dropping something or breaking something or you know breaking some bones and um my dad used to call me bunderella instead of cinderella now bandar in hindi means monkey and he used to say you're a bunderella and i used to get really offended i was like why would you call me a bunderella i'm cinderella i could be pretty i could wear a gown i could be cinderella he was like no you drop around all the time you know somebody always has to be walking behind you so you don't break you're a bunderella so one day i got really offended and we had this conversation and i went up to him like you know with all my like emotions in check i said dad it makes me feel really bad when you say bundarella so he sat me down for the first time seriously explained it to me he said whatever you are and whatever you might want to be that is the best version of you so you drop stuff around or you are a clumsy and you're a klutz but it's you and that's what makes you special why would you ever want to fit into some glass slipper and i was like i didn't understand that at 9 i think i understood it at 15 when i knew what a glass ceiling was because he said you don't want to fit into a glass slipper that someone has made for you that you need to fit into you break the glass ceiling and at 15 i was like whoa that's what that meant until then i was like where's the glass ceiling but it exists in such a big way and that really shaped me so like things like that about my parents coming from a country like that really shaped who i was clear clearly i just spoke to my mother who lives in manhattan and i said mom i'm going to do this panel with priyanka and the first thing she said to me was tell priyanka to get married and settle down the only thing she asked me to pass on to any of you know any single men that you want to set priyanka will put a board upside outside and you can just start on the phone for two times for two more minutes she'd have recommended five guys that she found in some but but but clearly culturally there are these defining moments and expectations um that that even when you are encouraged to think bigger and and beyond um there are these still these moments such as marriage that are defining i feel like it's really not just a cultural thing i think women like think about it all the fairy tales all the fairy tales we've always read end when the princess gets married why is there no story beyond that that's the end of her life is oh my god she got the prince that she's married that's the next rule you're gonna play there we go we've got your next movie after she gets married what happens um but but i think that that brings up a good point just around around these cultural narratives but you know you mentioned the word sort of courage and conviction and injury you you talked a lot about it as well in terms of finding finding your passion i was really struck about your your uh journey to this country because you asked your parents for permission to study in america and they were so sure that you wouldn't get a scholarship that they said yes reply go ahead um and you did and you got in i'm i'm curious what about this country what about the opportunity what did you see in the world and and your ambitions that you didn't see at home that you wanted to pursue in in a way that many would see is very scary um and that that unknown well let's first of all we are a few generations apart okay she's she's as old as one of my kids so let's just be clear here when i grew up in india we had no tv um we had no cell phones no internet of course going to the movie theater was like the biggest adventure for the family i mean we planned months in advance to go see sound of music okay [Music] so life was very different i mean life was about going to school coming home studying playing in the garden in the house going back into the house so it's a very simple uncomplicated life going to business school in india studying in india's uh was again uncomplicated because life didn't have as much as many distractions and as much of the social upheavals that my kids seem to be having in new york city today so given that um when i went to them and i said i want to go to the states because everything we read about america was this was the dream country everybody was dreaming for a slice of americana students who graduated from the best schools in india wanted to come to the united states because this was the best the colleges were the best the universities were the best life here was spectacular so you sort of get caught up in that whole spirit and when i applied and got into yale my parents were so sure i wouldn't get any scholarship money he said of course you can go and then when the scholarship and loan money came by and they were sort of in a dilemma how do we send this young girl off to the states who's unmarried because once she goes unmarried she's not marriageable at all nobody will marry her because she's now gone alone to the states so there was there was a big family meeting everybody got together should we send her or not i was going but then should we send her you let them have their moment oh sure the whole family had its meeting and then they did something very interesting they contacted all the friends of ours had already come to the united states and told all of them that they had to check up on me so every week i'd have somebody come to yale to check up on me you know is she all right is she running around with some guys is she drinking smoking were you where were you no i was you know i didn't make good use of my time at here let's put it that way and so i was i was totally a nerd but um you know when they checked they ticked off all the boxes they said okay you can go now but they set up a support system for me and then the rest is history that was 40 years ago so you you had this ambition to come to the states priyanka you have a different relationship coming coming here you you came to the states in your teens to to live with family ultimately returned to ndi read there was a bully that was one of the motivating motivating there's one person right like we won't name names but if you want a name name you named her on tv before um well but but one one one young woman helped shape uh shape your turn back to india but you had a really interesting trajectory since then you plan to become an aeronautical engineer but you ended up being miss world and along came the bollywood producers and persuaded you to start acting acting to the point where you had 50 movies under your belt and one of the most if not most famous celebrities in india the second largest country in this world i mean unbelievable success and you came to the us at the apex of your career at least in terms of your professional career having been built in india and i i'd like to reflect a little bit what was it like coming here not necessarily having to start over but having to prove yourself in a different way when people often didn't even understand the industry that you were coming from um yes that was my my relationship with the united states is is very interesting because my adolescent years were spent here and you know how important 12 to 16 is for just a human being and to shape them so i kind of became an amalgamation of the east and the west wherever i went after that so when i came back to america i was doing music i was signed as a recording artist with interscope and i came in to do i'm a fan of music i love everything music so i was having the best time of my life but i'm also not someone who's entitled i've always achieved everything that i have on my own i did not have advisors i started working when i was 17 years old my parents were physicians they had no idea of entertainment my dad just loved music but that's all we knew and to navigate the business of entertainment and to navigate being a young girl you know in the big bad world of entertainment and now with all the conversations that are happening you guys know it's not the easiest thing so but i was never entitled so when i came to america this time around which was at like 27 28 i was not afraid to walk into a room and introduce myself i would walk into a room and i would say yes my name is priyanka chopra you may not know me i'm an actor from india i've done about 50 something movies but i'm also someone who's not defined by my ethnicity or where i come from i'm a woman i'm an actor i'm an artist and i'd like to see where that takes me so entitlement even now is not something that i hold um and i expect like whenever i walk into the room i don't expect each and every one of you to know me at all i've i've worked in a completely different country in a completely different content continent which doesn't mean that you need to know about it like when i go back to india i remember i was um at the oscars the first time when i went two years ago and i was uh presenting when i was at the oscars right it's like what is yeah it was i was presenting with liam schreiber and after we presented we were backstage because there was a segment going on so we were standing at the bar and like some people who had won were coming in and leave was like oh my god that's the most amazing movie and this guy has done blah blah movie and i was like oh not trying to be ignorant but i was and i was like i didn't know him he's like what you didn't know him and i was like yeah because i sort of grew up in another country if i name a celebrity from my country would you know him and he was like oh i get it but that's exactly what it is i may i i know american music and movies and and um because i consume it back in india but i don't know all kinds of pop culture but i had to learn like when i came and i started doing quantico which was i mean abc network tv a character girl who plays is um i mean a character that i play which is an american girl she's not indian and i had to be culturally sound like i needed to speak like her i needed to you know crack jokes like her pop culture i needed to know pop culture like her which i didn't there were lines which would come in i still remember this one line where and it's horrible because now i know her so well but when i first landed i didn't know her and i got so much from my co-actors for it there was a line which said yeah even ronda rousey loses sometimes and i was like oh she am i my co-actor johanna brady who was most of the time my pop culture teacher would turn around and be like she would whisper it in my ear and then i would pretend like i knew her because i didn't want to sound stupid but i had to learn i wasn't entitled about it and i think that really took me in a different direction this time around so so being confident but not entitled and and self-assured self-assured and ender i feel like that's been a thread that's been present in in your career because so often you know you have been the only woman in in the room and you talked about earlier in your career when you would go into meetings with men and they wouldn't look at you or they would double check your numbers and yet it seemed that you had this sense of confidence to uh in yourself or or your work that allowed you to navigate those obstacles and and when you when you were named uh appointed um ceo uh you had said um that that you know that there were you know unique challenges that you faced right being a woman being a woman of color um being a first um within your industry talk a little bit about how you navigated that and where you drew from to to have the anchor in these challenges you know look uh in my early days working in corporate america i never really fit in because i dressed differently i didn't have money to have good clothes so i'd buy two suits you know a black suit and a beige suit and make four suits out of it i'd mix and match them and uh the fifth day i always worried about what am i going to do am i going to repeat the cycle so nobody gave me dressing instructions did you worry about fitting in i worried about how i was perceived because i was the only woman right already walking in i looked different i didn't want my clothes also to give people some sort of a sartorial seizure so it was one of those things where i knew i didn't dress very well because i look at the other women and say wow how did they pull it off so beautifully craft you know they look so well put together why do i look always a black suit beige suit white blouse you know always is always the same i decided after a while that i'm never going to win the looks battle so i'm going to focus on this brain spot so i focused on doing a job better than anybody else could do it so pretty soon people started to say we only want indra on the assignment or let's put indra on the job because they got very comfortable that if you gave it to her or gave it to me it will get done not just get done it'll get done exceedingly well so i started to depend more and more on my brains and my hard work as opposed to how i looked or how i talked or how i made comments in meetings that comes with the package you know so think of meme not as a complete package but as a brain wrapped in ways that you are not familiar with so that's the only way i could justify myself so so brains was your common language right it was that's it i said that's all you're going to do but did you have to work harder than everyone else in the room and the time that i started to work in when i graduated from business school in 1980 in the united states i think all women had to work about 50 harder than men i think today it's about 20 and still you've got to work harder than the men but when i started it was 50 harder than men and you know being somebody of a different ethnicity different way of dressing i had 50 plus at least that's my perception nobody gave me this number i'm just throwing out these numbers because there is no scientific pretty star woman i feel like i feel like it's that's how it felt at that time yeah that's how it felt and so in a way the fact that i had to fight for everything uh just made me a better person but in retrospect you know there were a lot of trade-offs one had to make because you had needed time to do things so well so it came out of some other bucket and i want to talk about those trade-offs in a little bit because i think so often you know we look at successful women and particularly because there aren't that many in in the respective arenas and we look at the success and it looks wonderful but there is a back story there's hard work trade-off and and sacrifice and there's never a smooth ascendancy to the top so i want to switch gears and and talk about one or two of the defining struggles in your careers that were formative in bringing to where you are today the ones that stung the most and that were the most painful and potentially if you're living them in in the public eye priyanka i love to quote that you said you said i don't believe that you can sit and wish for something and it'll happen the soles of your feet have to be blistered there's no pretty picture of hard work there's no success story that doesn't have shadows of pain doubt fear lack of sleep and illness but when you step out of the light and all step out in the light all that gets hidden and the effort and the struggle gets hidden the path is not easy for any success story so when you think about the perception versus the reality are can you share one or two of those setbacks or those moments that were blistering uh that were so critical to allowing you to achieve what you've achieved um a couple of times many times through my career my career now is about 18 years old and i think when i first started and i i started with being miss world i won a beauty pageant and then i had movie offers that came to me because obviously producers thought it made business sense to cast miss world in a movie people come and watch it i don't know i could act um but the first thing that came with that was like i still remember there was this um so indian movies have songs and dances right so there was this one song in which um obviously i played the escort in the in the movie because that's what pretty girls do but um i was supposed to pee this escort and this song i was supposed to like you know be like seductive towards this guy and i was very excited but it was one of my first few movies with a really big ginormous indian actor and i was really excited about you know bringing in the aspect the human side of of this escort and i remember this song and i was speaking to the director and i said would you speak to my stylist and just explain to him what you want in terms of clothes and stuff i'm standing right next to him like behind him he's sitting on his chair you know in that really entitled way and he picks up the phone and he goes listen people are going to come into the movies to watch her when she shows her panties so it needs to be really short so that i can see her panties you know those people sitting up front they should be able to see your panties and he said it like four times and it's not even pretty in hindi it's worse um i just and i'm 18 years old 19 and i'd shot two days for that movie i remember and i went back home that night and i said mom i can't i can't i can't i can't look at his face i mean if that's what he thinks of me if that's how small i am there's no space for growth and i remember my mom was like well then don't do it i'd signed a contract that signed short two days the next day we signed a check which was more than my renumeration at this point um of the two days of shoot to the producer and i just walked out of the movie and i said i'm sorry i can't work and i've till date never worked with him he's come to me with three other movies and i don't even think he knows why but it shaped me in such a big way in my head that i said i've never ever whatever i decide to be will be my choice how i want to be perceived will be my choice how you perceive me is how i will show you i want to be perception is reality and my perception is going to be my identity and my choice whatever that might be no one is no one is the decision maker in my life and it completely shaped me there was a second time when [Music] i remember i started working in in america and i was sitting in this whole room of music producers that were trying to figure out like what to do with my sound and everyone like everybody keep getting kept getting stuck at the word bollywood with me as if an indian with me she's an indian artist she's an indian girl like every time somebody writes about me even now like people define me i'm a very very proud indian but my roots are not my identity they don't define my ability to have to have merit or to be the smartest person in the room or to be the one who breaks the glass ceiling it's something i'm proud of but it started defining and diminishing what my ability to be was um and they kept and like i'm always written as the indian actress blah blah blah does you know walked out of her apartment sashaying in the silver dress but it's the indian actress i mean would they do that with anyone else would you would you be the american maura forbes like would you i'm not sashaying out of my apartment and any silver i don't feel like that so i would run toward that but for different reasons um but uh but but it's but it's true but you do get bucketed right i always got stereotyped and like put into that box that oh i can um i can only be the exotic beautiful girl i can only be you know the engineer or or whatever the stereotypes of people's heads were but that was something that i wanted to break and that really diminished my spirit for a little while i was i told myself that you know and i was not cast in in in things be in in projects because um of that because it was my limitation that i came from an industry which is very different but i made that my asset because then i become a triple threat i can dance sing and act that that is a triple that and sashay and it's still in a silver dress and i want to turn to you because priyanka mentioned so that you get put in this bucket and you really were a barrier breaker in this country um as the first you know one of the first female ceos to run an organization at scale an indian woman um to do so which was also notable and there haven't been that many women after you and so there are buckets you know whenever we talk about sometimes female ceos we talk about them through a gender lens um you know questions that we wouldn't ask male ceos um similar to what you mentioned male actors that we do ask as female ceos but there are different realities and you mentioned earlier some of the trade-offs that are required uh when you do have very intense professional ambitions and i think you've been really you know i i'm very grateful because you've had very candid conversations around the challenges of navigating both career and family you've said that that quote women cannot have it all and the biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with with one another total conflict and in your life you said you haven't had regrets but you've had heartaches in reference to what that's meant for your daughters and and your family talk a little bit about that and is there another path are we being unrealistic when we uphold female ceos and ask them to run the world but when they also take a traditional path sometimes around motherhood they get judged and there's backlash look any way you look at it motherhood is a full-time job especially when your kids are babies being an executive is a full-time job being a wife is a quasi full-time-ish job uh does your husband even think it's a job like to see this is does he he makes my point of view i'm not really speaking to my husband and in today's world when you have aging parents especially for daughters that's also a responsibility i'm not saying it's a job it's a labor of love but a responsibility there's only 24 hours in a day and we have to do all these jobs be a parent be an executive be a you know daughter in in the indian case also daughter-in-law okay and somehow find time for yourself how do you make that happen so there are trade-offs you make all the time and uh in one way i think all of us women have been told we can do everything we've been given hopes and dreams and the education and then we have these other issues to think about how do we juggle all of this if companies community societies don't come together to help us how are we going to grow the population of the country so i think it's very important that we all understand that if you struggle with these choices you're not crazy you are human what we have to do in companies is give you an infrastructure in the company to allow you to have a family men and women and allow you to come to work but bring the two together by having near sight or on-site daycare like we do at pepsico and as you progress and get to the middle management levels where you have to work even harder because remember it's a pyramid it keeps getting narrow and you have to work even harder than everybody else to sort of rise to the top when your kids are teenagers they need you even more we have to make sure that we grease these kids for you that's where all the unconscious bias comes and companies that's where you struggle with people rolling their eyes when you're talking all of that stuff happens we have to make sure that your life at work is made easier because you don't have to fight all those battles it could be made easier though but it still comes with heartache at times tremendous at every point look men and women today go through the heartaches but whatever happens women go through it a lot more because you know i don't know about you guys when my kids were small anything they missed at home even if dad was at home they called mom mom would be in the office hey your dad's in his office can you go call him he's right there mom you tell us and then the verse is when the dad calls you to say where's my shirt do you have that it's in the cupboard no it's not in the cupboard it's six inches to the right under my it's six edges you got that too andrew i i have to why did you just move the head six inches my husband's in the room so i really like that you can't do it i know you i'm happy you're saying this oh okay i say the same all the time so i feel much better because why did you move it six inches i didn't move it you moved it but it doesn't matter for the sake of harmony you go yeah i did it i'm not going to argue i am not going to argue my daughters will say mom stand up for your rights why why it's not worth it it's a losing battle your dad's the best for someone who's not married pick your battles picture battles yeah just say he's the best even better you're the best honey i'm the best there hey you say that to my husband too so don't give me this i do say that to you i'm taking notes and drum techniques yeah just keep saying you're the best you're the best um you're the best it works it's always it's painful a lot of the trade-offs but that's a lot of pressure though right because you have to uplift your husband your kids 260 000 employees that doesn't a leave that doesn't you know not that that's the number that's a real big number but that doesn't leave a lot of time for you so how do you not let sort of the threads come undone see that's people have often asked do you have time for yourself but when i worry about my husband that's time for myself because this is my husband when i worry about my kids i'm worrying about myself because that's my kids it's my mother it's my in-laws so in a way i may not have time to sort of sit around and spa for hours but if i took my kids i have daughters remember if i took them with me to the spa we have together time and uh if you can convince your husband to come for a pedicure with you that's together time you've got to figure out all amazing you've got to figure out unnatural situations to be together because otherwise there is no time unfortunately there's only 24 hours in a day you have to stretch it yes you give up time for yourself stuff that you'd like to do when you want to hang around with your own girlfriends you don't have the time that's par for the course you can do it all so i i have a few questions before we wrap up but i think you know i mentioned earlier today that the past 18 months have been this watershed moment in time for for women around talking about inequities uh with a new sense of urgency and and commitment and the like which has been good and they're bringing it to the surface you two represent different generations and different vantage points around these issues and even the word priyanka you you call yourself a feminist you've you you you embrace that term uh i would love for you to each sort of talk about how you think about what's what's going on um and and that notion of feminism feminism today and ender also you know how it's evolved over the course of of your career i'll start with you priyanka um i i think growing up was conflicted about feminism i didn't understand what the word meant like a lot of us don't still it took me a little time to understand what it means now feminism is different to everyone to me what feminism stands for is give me the ability to make my own decisions without judging me just the same kind of freedom men have had for such a long time women should sound like this women should wear this women at this point should get married we're always told what we should do we need to be able to decide what we should do whatever that is so to me that freedom is feminism thank you [Applause] second i really i think that i think that growing up the one thing that i looking back now what i realized was for such a long time we've always been told as women that the best one will get the boy or the best one will get the job and we sort of have been conditioned to push each other out of the way so that we can be the better one and if we empower another woman right if i empower a woman who's sitting next to me i might lose the opportunity it's conditioning and we've been conditioned to be that way this is the first time in a very long time at least in my lifetime that i have seen women embracing each other women empowering each other women standing up for each other and that is such a critical time when women fought before us generations before us for us to have the ability to vote we don't even think about it today sitting in this room think about what all they went through so what we're doing today is where we're seeding the thought for your daughters for your for my daughter's daughters for kids who will not have to think about the gender disparity they'll not have to think about like how it feels to be a woman who's marginalized or or what it feels like to be um to be traumatized by men in power they won't have to think about it because we will create a world where men are afraid to do that we will create a world together where we stand by each other and say no i'm sorry you're not doing this to my daughter because you did it to me and that's enough and that is such a powerful time to be a woman and and and you have that unique vantage point right um generationally and and and given the world that that you're in and that this amazing perspective to see the opportunity that exists under given your career uh how how do you approach this conversation and and what priyanka mentioned and the optimism um that we all have in terms of being able to to move the momentum forward you know i look at the next couple of decades and say it's a decade of women because if i look at college degrees women are getting it in larger numbers than men if i look at the top grades more women are getting the top grades and the men so if you really want to run a successful company you have to recruit the best and the brightest i.e bring the women into the company so we have to create new companies new environments to make women thrive because if you hire them and then they leave you it's more expensive than not hiring them in the first place so i'm a firm believer that the next couple of decades are the decades of women when it comes to working but you can't put all the owners on women we have to create the support structures to allow them to balance the different roles they have to play because there are some roles you cannot delegate to men we have to do it ourselves and so i think it behooves companies to help them and achieve their goals and to priyanka's point i think we have to have our own sisterhood you know i've been telling the story recently uh about three months ago on my hbo popped up an episode of sex in the city i'd never watched it so yeah i fell in love with the first episode and i watched all 94 episodes i binge watched it i binge watched it and i had to tell your husband watch it with you was it one of the did your husband watch activities no the great thing about that show is because there's so many scenes that focus on the first word as opposed to the other three words you can fast forward which is what i did so but i love the show why did i love the show every episode had a lesson uh an interesting thing to think about but the biggest takeaway was the sisterhood of those four women carrie charlotte miranda and who was the fourth one samantha my god the sisterhood they had was fantastic what happened to us why don't we sisterhood somebody shutting off my mic because you want me to talk but you know what happened to our sisterhood why don't we have our own sisterhood i think the more i looked at that show i said man we have to create our own sisterhoods we have to have our own safe spot where we can talk about our issues because you can't talk about it at home because nobody wants to hear you talk about your work problems at home we need our sisterhood we need an environment where our sisterhood does not judge us but gives us constructive feedback where we can talk about mr big in a you know comfortable place you know what i mean for those of you who have seen the show but i have to tell you that show profoundly altered my thinking only because i didn't think about the show and the fashions which were awesome but really about what was behind the covers the sisterhood of women so the only way we're going to be able to balance everything going forward is if we don't do what priyanka talked about worry that the person next to us the woman next to us is going to take away our future potential because the next level is going to have fewer women because they have a quarter for women or whatever rather say let's pull us all let's put ourselves each other and that sisterhood needs to form and when we get there i think there's no stopping us i love that sentiment i love that well i uh i have i have two questions to um to to wrap up uh before uh before we finish the conversation each of you have broken barriers each of you serve as incredible role models around the world i would love for for each of you to reflect on what what the other what the other woman on the stage represents in terms of of opportunities for women um priyanka how do you see the work that indra has done as a role model for your generation uh and and what it means and indra i would ask the same question to you i mean there's really the one similarity between both indra and i are we come from small towns and we had big dreams and we didn't let anything else define that and that's why she's someone i'm a huge fan of not because you know she's she's the boss lady of how many employees you said two on how many 260 two right 206 boys ago 260 000. yeah just about just a few i want to be the but um not because of that but because of what she stands for as a woman she's a proud woman who's an achiever who and that but that doesn't define her when she walks into a room she doesn't walk into a room like a lot of male ceos do you know where you can tell by the sniff of their cologne how how how much of a ceo they are um and hair gel and the hair gel the gel and the suit yeah but indra walks in like she said not just because of her brains but for me as as as a girl who wants to be the biggest that i can be in whatever field that might be she stands for integrity she stands for being so self-assured that it's anything is like water off of a duck's back you know she has this grace and charm and humor that she deals her life with she's a mom she's a you know daughter she's a wife and she does all of that i mean i went for lunch at her house and she cooked she cooked i mean i can't cook so i really admire that about women and she cooked like from scratch this indian food and like she's completely wholesome and i think when i like as i'm growing up and as i see myself going forward in my life i would want to be a wholesome woman and that's what i admire her for he's a wholesome woman and andrew what would you say uh what would you say about priyanka i'm smelling my cologne first we know she can't cook so you know you can't you can't uh i got a few i gotta get this cologne but um you know i just said thank you you gotta i don't think anybody comprehends how big a figure priyanka's in india i mean she's not normal she's like awesome when she walks when she walks in the street she'll get mobbed when she lands in the airport there's like hundreds of people clamoring to see her she's like hot stuff and so uh you know the amazing part about priyanka is not only she a fabulous actress a fabulous dance a fabulous musician i'm sure many of you have never seen bollywood films but when you see her in one it is spectacular so most of the movies are like gross best sellers they just grow so much money but in addition to all of that she's not one of these vacant movie stars she's a person with great intellectual uh background she's a person with enormous brains aeronautical engineer who became an actress i mean that's not that's usually not in the same sentence right yeah yeah she's worried about humanitarian causes social causes is always coming forward to help people in need so i think she represents one of the most progressive arms of movidum if you want to call it that and if people like priyanka can lend their name and really lean in on these causes that change society like she's doing the world will be a better place so priyanka thank you for everything you do i think she's just awesome uh well well with that i think that is a good place a good place to end i mean i think it's thank you to to both of what you do uh you give hope you give possibility uh you give inspiration to so many and i think it's a great reminder of you know i love where ender when you you talked about the power of the sisterhood and uh and and needing to uh uh free ourselves from some of the boxes and constructs that others put us in and have a sense of confidence and self-assurance um because within that and in that um is where real opportunity for for our strengths to come to play um happened so again i i want to thank you to two amazing women um thank you and uh [Applause] who's whose power is extraordinary uh thank you and and whose gifts are extraordinary so thank you ladies thank you thank you very much thank you andrew thank you thank you and with that

Channel: ForbesWomen

Views: 9,186

Rating: 4.9692307 out of 5

Keywords: Indra Nooyi, Priyanka Chopra, Moira Forbes, Success

Id: 82yL1EOUlqM

Length: 51min 2sec (3062 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021