My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

by Indra Nooyi

Ibelieve in companies. I think the world is better off with large, private organizations, not only because they add stability but also because they innovate. Companies create jobs and offer products that satisfy people’s demands. They add to the tax base and create community. But I also believe that companies must be good in the ethical as well as the commercial sense. Some thought it odd that a modern-day CEO would try so hard to move an organization beyond the idea that a good company exists to make shareholders happy and beat the competition, within the bounds of the law. But the notion that a company is just a profit center is very recent. Throughout history, companies have prided themselves on their roots in society and the legacy they leave to it. No business can ever truly succeed in a society that fails. I believe that a company’s impact on society needs to be written through all business planning, and that this cannot be an afterthought. What’s good for commerce and what’s good for society have to go together. With PwP, I had a strategy—simple and thoughtful—to take PepsiCo into the future. I was quietly thrilled that Frito-Lay’s managers bought into it early and that our global leaders liked it, too. When I walked through the details with our board of directors, I had four vocal supporters—Dina Dublon, the former CFO of JPMorgan Chase; Sharon Percy Rockefeller, a philanthropist and the CEO of public-television station WETA in Washington, DC; Victor Dzau, then the...