My Life in Full Quotes

“Listen to me,” my mother replied. “You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“My childhood was not a world of “Great job!” It was more like “That was so-so” or “Is this the best you can do?” We were accustomed to honesty, not false encouragement.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Good business demands tough decisions based on rigorous analysis and unwavering follow-through. Emotion can’t really play a part. The challenge we all face as leaders is to let the feelings churn inside you but then to present a calm exterior, and I learned to do that.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“think women are held to a different standard from men when it comes to celebrating their professional accomplishments. No matter what we do, we are never quite enough. Getting a promotion or a prize outside the home sometimes seems to mean that either that prize was easy to get or that we are letting our domestic duties slide.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“our system puts the career clock and the female biological clock in direct conflict.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“I was involved in hundreds of projects with tight deadlines that probably could have stretched into a few more days. Would that have made a difference to the project? Most of the time, no. Would that have made a difference to my colleagues’ lives at home, as caregivers or as members of their community? I think the answer is a resounding yes.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“Mothers and fathers have an extra set of hands when they need them, and children and grandparents connect, building the kind of deep and lasting relationships that I had with Thatha and that Preetha has with my mother and Raj’s parents.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“We have two ears and one mouth, so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“I’ve just become president of PepsiCo, and you couldn’t just stop and listen to my news,” I said, loudly. “You just wanted me to go get the milk!” “Listen to me,” my mother replied. “You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“Topics were explored in depth; pros and cons debated. I’d never been part of anything like it.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Once and for all, we must embrace the fact that both women and men work in jobs outside their homes; that children need fantastic care; that our aging parents need tender attention; and that governments, companies, communities, and individuals need a common road map to address the massive, complex social issues involved in making life a little easier.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“Roger wrote a book called The Other Guy Blinked, declaring victory in the cola wars.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“By 1994, PepsiCo was the fifteenth-biggest US company, with annual revenue of $25 billion. It sold drinks and food in more than 150 countries and employed 450,000 people.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Most significantly, this event made real my father’s urging for me, as a woman, to always have the means to provide for myself.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“More female leaders will mean a healthier, wealthier, more egalitarian society.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Huge change has no shortcuts.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“No business can ever truly succeed in a society that fails.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“It is possible. It just doesn’t happen enough. Private industry—with its incredible ability to move fast and efficiently—in partnership with government, with its broad mandate, is perhaps the most powerful force we have for positive change in society.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“excruciatingly”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“Our Good for You portfolio was growing elsewhere, too. I got a call one day from Ofra Strauss, the CEO of Strauss-Elite Food, our snacks partner in Israel. She asked to see me in Purchase and showed up with a huge hamper of Mediterranean dips—hummus, baba ghanoush, you name it. She laid them all out with fresh pita bread on my conference table, and we enjoyed a picnic of products from Sabra, a New York–based company that Strauss had recently purchased. It was a delicious lineup—totally vegetarian—and a great potential mate to Stacy’s Pita Chips, which we’d acquired a couple of years earlier. Less than a year later, Sabra and Frito-Lay signed a joint venture, and Sabra now leads the US hummus market. More important for me, Ofra is one of my dearest friends.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“extravagant and chose not to attend. When Roger took senior executives on the PepsiCo jet to Montana or the Cayman Islands for long team-building weekends, Steve usually chose to stay home with his wife, Gail, and their four kids. I, of course, was never even invited on Roger’s trips because they were always men only. For me, that was”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“physical fitness.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“When I had the honor of being included in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2019, I sat for a painting with four objects on a shelf behind me in the composition: a photo of my parents; a photo of Raj, Preetha, and Tara; a Yale SOM baseball cap; and a PepsiCo annual report with the words “Performance with Purpose” on the cover.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“My department was always going to be a sounding board, but our recommendations might take years to implement.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“I was involved in hundreds of projects with tight deadlines that probably could have stretched into a few more days. Would that have made a difference to the project? Most of the time, no. Would that have made a difference to my colleagues’ lives at home, as caregivers or as members of their community? I think the answer is a resounding yes.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“My mother celebrated every Hindu festival with the appropriate rituals, but no one acknowledged birthdays. My parents never hugged us, kissed us, or said, "I love you.". Love was assumed. We never shared fears or hopes and dreams with our elders. They just were not the kind to have those conversations.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

“When I rose to CEO in 2006, the press was again thrilled to celebrate my exoticism as a woman and Indian immigrant. I was presented in a sari and sometimes enhanced by bare feet.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

“I’d miss the opportunity to manage a business. It was great to be appreciated for my strategic thinking, but the people in the field with responsibility for profit and loss always got the most respect. Staying put would certainly restrict my career growth.”
― Indra Nooyi, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future