Only In America Interview: w/ Indra Nooyi (Transcript)

This was very far from anything that was imaginable. Unimaginable, and I can’t imagine a little girl growing up in India. How did you make the decisions that led you to this place, especially the decision to come to the United States? That must have been in some ways a little bit wrenching.

INDRA NOOYI: But you’ve got to remember, I grew up in India in the ’60s and the ’70s. That’s when I was in India. India was a new country, and women were not even a major force in India at that time. Most women stayed home and kept home. And in that India, my father and my grandfather were now encouraging us as girls to go out and conquer the world and dream big. And to have men in the family say, “You don’t have to be held back because of your gender. We’re going to give you wings to fly, and we’re going to remove all the barriers in your way so that society doesn’t stop you from dreaming.” So I was lucky enough to be born into such a family.

And then as the years went on, all my friends who came to the United States would call me or write me and say, “The United States is a seat of innovation, cultural advancement, incredible can-do attitudes. This is the place you want to be. The kind of person you are, you will thrive here.”

So I went to my parents and said, “I’d like to go to the United States.” They said, “Dream, dream on. It’s nice to dream about the United States, but we’re going to get you married.” You have a mother. “We’re going to get you married. That’s your job.”

So surreptitiously, I applied to the Yale School of Management, which had just opened its doors and was a new school that was blending the public and private sector and sounded fascinating. I applied to it and I got in, but no money. So I went to my parents and said, “I got into the Yale School of Management.” They said, “Yeah, dream on, put that letter away because we can’t afford to send you to the Yale School of Management.”

Two weeks later, I got another letter from Yale saying, “We’re going to give you loans and a work-study program to study at Yale and fund yourself. Would you like to come?” And I went back to my parents and said, “All that you have to do is to buy me a ticket, air ticket, and I’ll repay you in spades later on.”

And I don’t know why they agreed. Till today, I consider that a character flaw on them that they allowed me to sail the seas and go away from them. But they came to the airport, saw me off, I came to Yale and everything that my friends told me about the United States was understated. This was the most glorious country, was and is. It was a seat of innovation, it was a seat of creativity, culture, a seat of people wanting to change the world. And I found it to be the most exciting place in the world. And one thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was progressing up a corporate ladder.

Arriving in America: Finding Her Footing

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Yeah, that’s really, so it was word of mouth at some level with friends who somehow knew something about the United States, knew it was a place that was different. And you say it exceeded expectations about how different it was, but when you arrived, you must have thought, what have I done?

INDRA NOOYI: Well, it was a lonely place, you know, because there are not enough sounds on the roads here. India is full of sounds. Lots of people, lots of colors. Here it was a quiet place. So I landed in JFK and went up to New Haven. And for a moment, I wondered whether I’d done the right thing. How am I going to cope with this loneliness?

And then even at Yale, it was a time when there weren’t many international students, especially colored international students or colored students overall in the School of Management. And so I don’t think I fit in. On the other hand, I will tell you, our colored students banded together. We worked our tail off because to us, we didn’t come there for the social life. We came there to study and to work hard and to move ahead. So the goal we had was very, very clear. Study, work hard, get great grades, and somehow land a job. That’s all the objective was at that time.

And so the fact that we didn’t get invited to any parties or any trips to the Cape or anything like that, who cared? We didn’t know anything about it. We didn’t dress well. We didn’t do anything the right way. And in those days, there weren’t any counselors to tell you how to dress or how to talk or how to interact with people, nothing. So we were the misfits. And if I look back at pictures of those days, oh my God, we were the misfits.

But somehow, we were viewed as academically pretty damn good. So by the time the second year rolled along, people wanted to be in study groups with us. People wanted to be in projects with us. So we went from, oh my God, what has Yale done? To not bad, these people are pretty damn good. So if we are in the group with them, maybe our grades will improve too. And so we were desired and wanted, and pretty soon we got integrated.

And then when we got consulting jobs or investment banking jobs, people looked at us and said, hey, these are brainiacs. Whether we were or not, different issue, but respect just went up. Purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in, because we also had to work, remember, to make ends meet. So we’d go to school in the morning, work through the night, and I was a receptionist in my dorm from midnight to 5 AM. So people realized that this was a grueling experience for us, and they respected us for that.

The Immigrant Experience and Leadership

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Now, it must then have affected how you looked at people like you as they were coming up as a leader? Now you’ve made it, so to speak. You’ve done your degree, your consulting job, and you see young people who are maybe misfits, people who work hard but don’t quite fit. Did it have an effect on your leadership style, on the way that you thought about these people, both the immigrant experience and what came from that immigrant experience, which was not quite fitting in and having to prove yourself?

INDRA NOOYI: It’s interesting. You’ve got to look at periods because I came to the United States in 1978. By the time the ’80s rolled along, I’d say the immigrants were still misfits. I’m not talking about European students who came here, I’m talking about students who came from developing and developed countries. They were still misfits.

By about the ’90s, Condi, they started to see videos of what was happening in life in the United States, and people would emulate those habits and clothes and the way of dressing. And the world was becoming more free in terms of exports and imports. When I was in India, it was a very restricted country in many ways, and there weren’t too many imports, and you didn’t see much.

But in the ’90s, everything changed. All of a sudden, you had many more students coming here. There were more used to a global environment, and they were more seasoned and suave, everything that I lacked. I had courage, I mean, I could debate, I could hold my own, but I didn’t feel good about how I looked or appeared. The kids who came in the ’90s all of a sudden had courage, they stood tall, they knew what their place was in society, and they weren’t as feeling so insecure as I did when I first came here. So I think as the years went by, things got better for them.

The Spirit of America

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: So immigrants in general, they are people who’ve left something behind. When they come to the United States, they have certain expectations. I remember back in the old days, people would say that they thought the streets might be paved with gold, but maybe it wasn’t paved with gold, but it was paved with the possibility of ambition, the possibility of starting anew. And so there was that spirit. And do you think we still have that spirit among immigrants? Are we doing the right things to make sure that people still feel that way about the possibilities that the United States will bring?

INDRA NOOYI: So there used to be an observation many years ago which said, if you opened the doors of every country wide open, where would people go? And the answer was the most number of people who leave their countries would still want to come to the United States because it was the greatest country. I’m going to say boldly that even today, if you did that, most people want to come here because in spite of some of the flaws we might have, we are still the greatest country in the world. And people will still want to come here because what made the United States so attractive for me when I came here in 1978 still holds today.

Somehow when you come here, you change. You become more exciting, more aggressive, more transformational, more innovative. I don’t know what it is about the environment here. Look at New York. You drive around New York, you want to become a different person. You watch fashion in New York on street corners, you want to go and dress fashionably. I mean, everything about what you see here sort of excites you. Condi, I hate to say it, this is the place to be. The United States and New York are just exciting. And so I think to immigrants, especially immigrants who want to come here for a degree, this is unbeatable versus any other country in the world, and I’ll say that without any hesitation.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: There is something about this place, and I often am a little bit concerned that people who were born here and perhaps don’t see it coming anew, don’t quite understand it. So you’ve begun to describe it. So if you were to say to an American citizen, somebody born here in the United States, “Hmm, here’s how you should feel if you were an immigrant. Here’s why as an American citizen you’re really lucky.” What would you say?

INDRA NOOYI: I say this to my daughters all the time. I say to them, “You have no idea how lucky you are,” to be born in the greatest country in the world. And they look at me and say, “Tell us how it’s the greatest.” And I tell them, let me tell you what life is like when you go to any other country versus what it’s like here.

Let me think, I’ll start with technology. All the big technological innovations, they may have happened in other parts of the world, but they were commercialized here. Technology developed doesn’t make any difference. It’s when you commercialize it and make a difference in the world is where it really, where the rubber hits the road. So I give them examples of commercialization happens here. This is where an immigrant could come in with nothing in her pocket and become the CEO of an iconic American red, white, and blue company. It can’t happen in any other country in the world. I would never have been CEO in any other country of the world, including in India.

So I look at them and I say, look at what I could achieve here. It’s because the system is a meritocratic system. Mentors don’t care whether you’re male, female, ethnicity, gender. They don’t care. They just want the best brains to rise to the top. So you guys should be happy that you’re in this country and you’ve got to do everything possible to maintain the spirit of this country because ultimately the future generations, instead of criticizing what’s not working, go fix it and keep this country great because there isn’t another one like this anywhere in the world.

And I say that with all sincerity because I’m genuinely grateful to the United States because I came as a guest and the US welcomed me with open arms. So I’m genuinely grateful, Condi.

The Journey to CEO of PepsiCo

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Let’s talk about that career, which is an extraordinary career, and how you moved through from the receptionist at the Yale desk up through to become the CEO of PepsiCo. What were some of the moments along the way that shaped you and then shaped how you thought about leadership and perhaps also about innovation. I think people don’t realize the degree to which a consumer brand like PepsiCo also has to innovate.

INDRA NOOYI: Constantly.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Take us through some of your journey in that way.

INDRA NOOYI: I think there are many contributors and contributions to my journey. There’s what I did and how that contributed. My mentors, oh my God, without them I’d be nobody. And then the institutions I was a part of. I think all these played a part in my life.

Let me start with my mentors. My mentors believed in me even more than I believed in myself. They would give me impossible assignments to do just to prove to the world that I was worth mentoring. They would lift me up at points when I thought I could never be lifted up. And I must say, all my mentors were white men. And I’m grateful to them. And many of them were part of the armed services in the United States before they came to PepsiCo or any other place. And they were just unbelievable mentors. They would tell me, “No, believe in yourself. You are capable of doing this. Let me give you a little push and you’ll do way better than you’re doing now.” So in so many ways, they shaped me. That’s one contribution.

I worked awfully hard, Condi. As I think back to my life, I worked so hard. I was never happy with my output. I always thought I could do a little better and a little better and a little better. Maybe that’s not right because when you go for perfection, you give up everything else to set your own definition of perfection. And for me, that definition was never ever with an endpoint. So I kept saying, I could make this better, just a little better. Why didn’t I think about this? So I pushed myself so much. It got to a point where my bosses would say, “Indra, if you’ve looked at it, we don’t even want to see it because we know how hard you work at these things. It must be perfect.”

So I was a hard, hardworking person, but then I also was in the right institutions because it’s not enough to just have a mentor and work hard, whether it was the Boston Consulting Group when I graduated, to Motorola, another iconic American company, to ASEA Brown Boveri, which was big in — a European company, big in power and industrial equipment. I learned a lot about different industries. And then my luck, I joined PepsiCo. Great consumer brands. I went from industrial and electronics to consumer. And some people look and say, what the hell are you doing in a consumer company? With BCG and the training you get in consulting, you can go into any industry as long as you understand the value drivers. You can go in and make a difference right away, which is what I did in PepsiCo.

I never went in saying I want to be CEO. I said, I’m going to nail this job. So my bosses would say, this is how the work should be done. That’s all I wanted to do. And when they promoted me, I’d always say, do you really want me to be promoted now? I’m happy doing what I’m doing. And I became CFO. I’m like, do I really want to be CFO? I’m happy being head of strategy. And Roger Enrico was CEO at that time. “Just get your ass into that office and start your CFO on Monday.” So if you start saying, I want to be a CEO in 10 years, you get obsessed with that as opposed to do the job you’re doing very, very well and everything else will take care of itself.

On the Love of Work and the Challenge of Consumer Business

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: And it sounds as if you love to work.

INDRA NOOYI: I actually enjoy it. Being challenged to do the impossible, I loved it. Loved learning new industries, new businesses, zooming out, zooming in. I loved that.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: But there are challenges in any job of that kind.

INDRA NOOYI: Massive.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: And talk about some of those because you were in a very competitive business. I mean, the challenges before consumer businesses in the United States, again, in the United States, Americans have all kinds of choices. This is another thing that is very American. I remember —

INDRA NOOYI: Too many choices.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Too many choices. I remember bringing a group of Russian emigres. I helped Russian emigres relocate in Colorado in graduate school. It was one of my jobs because I spoke Russian. And I took some of them one day to the grocery store and they said, “Well, which one’s coffee?” I said, “Well, they’re all coffee.” And they said, “No, but which one is coffee?”

So one of the problems if you’re running a consumer brand is there are a lot of choices, and you have to win the audience, you have to win the customer, and that can be challenging. So how did you think about the relationship between what you were doing in the company and this great, vast country of consumers and how one attracts them to what you do?

Transforming PepsiCo: A Vision for the Future

INDRA NOOYI: Well, I was blessed in that I inherited a portfolio of fabulous brands, which had been built and invested over decades. And so I was not functioning with one hand tied to my back. I had this great portfolio of brands. But there’s a problem because none of them were in trouble. So I inherited a successful company. And to me, keeping a successful company successful is more difficult than turning around an unsuccessful company.

So I had this successful company and I sat back and I said, do I just keep running it the way it was run? I mean, I was president before I became CEO, or do I have to pivot in some way because the world is changing? And so the first thing I had to do is figure out how is the world changing or going to change over the next 10 or 15 years? And do I have to pivot?

And by Jove, I discovered that as you look at the edges of our marketplace, lots of changes were happening. And we were focusing very narrowly on a core and sort of ignoring the edges which were nibbling away at our core. And that’s what led to us thinking more future back. How do we change our products? How do we shift the products to a healthier offering? How do we make our business more environmentally palatable? And how do we create an environment in the company where people want to come to work for PepsiCo as opposed to go to work in Silicon Valley or Wall Street or consulting. And so there were lots of things we needed to change about the company.

Now, this goes back to the earlier question you asked me. You see, because I was the first colored woman to run a Fortune 50 company, there was way too much focus on me. And anything I did right, they didn’t really talk about it. But anything I may not have done right, they played it up like, “Oh my God, she should never have been CEO of this company because she’s not that capable.” So it would be that undertone that would show up in articles. It was very difficult to be in the public eye and to effect a transformation.

This again goes back to mentors. In this case, it was the board of directors. They basically said, “We agree with the strategy. This is the only way to run the company. We have your back. You just keep doing what needs to get done.” And that required transforming our R&D, transforming our product portfolio, buying new brands. It was constant learning, constant innovating, figuring out how to extract growth when the market was only growing 2 to 3%, how to get another point or two of growth constantly.

What I discovered through this process was growth is oxygen and innovation drives growth. And so you had to create that spirit of growth inside the company. So innovation was everything we did — innovating products, processes, platforms, people practices, innovating on every aspect that we could in order to create a new company for the future, as opposed to running an older company, just screwing it tighter. “No, let’s remake this company for the future.” And that’s what we did.

The Immigrant Fear as a Driving Force

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I often wonder too, if the willingness to take risk, even in a company where you have great brands and it’s an iconic company — you took some risks to come here as a young person from India and to get yourself into Yale’s Management School. Do you think that risk-taking, that ability, that willingness to not stay where you are but to keep moving forward — it seems to be sometimes a very — it’s not just an American thing, but you see it a lot in America, and it maybe was one of the things that attracted you to the United States, that word of mouth that your friends were giving you about what it meant here. Did you ever have to draw on that as you were moving through?

INDRA NOOYI: Interesting. More than the risk, it’s the immigrant fear. We all have an immigrant fear as a first-generation immigrant that you might fail and you’ll bring so many people shame because you failed. In my case, I didn’t want to let women down, women of color down, immigrants down, Indians down, my family down. I mean, everybody was looking at me saying, “I hope she succeeds.” So in my case, I was taking huge risks, but I also knew there was a lot on my shoulder. And so I had that immigrant fear in me that propelled me to do better and better all the time.

Interestingly, that immigrant fear has not gone away even today. I still have it, which says, I’ve got to make sure that I do the right thing. I am a guest in the United States. They invited me in. I’ve got to live by the ideals of the country. I’ve got to prove to the country that they made the right bet on me. That’s just me. I can’t change that. I feel that way.

In many ways, that was a positive propellant rather than a negative detractor for me. So I feel relieved that I had that driver in me all the time. And so I took calculated risks knowing that I might lose my job sometimes. But then we never lived high. We lived simply. And even if I’d lost my job, we could have lived on one salary, not an issue. So we both were very comfortable that the risks I was taking were calculated and it was worth fighting for. And that’s what we did through our career.

Reflecting on American Democracy and Its Founding Ideals

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: You know, it’s the 250th anniversary of the United States, and people mistakenly say that’s when our democracy was born. Well, actually, that was our revolution.

INDRA NOOYI: Right, exactly right.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: But the Constitution, the institution that would be born later to protect those rights and to protect that ability and that willingness to take risks — do you ever reflect on that part of America, not just the kind of spirit and culture, but the institutions themselves, the way that we govern ourselves? And did you talk to your kids about it?

INDRA NOOYI: Well, I’ve been reading books written on past presidents. David McCullough wrote some great books. I’ve read those, and I’ve read a lot about how people came over from Europe and then how they crossed the country, and they took massive risks. They gave their life. They built the infrastructure that we know today. And I think waves of immigrants are coming now and building new infrastructure. It was a physical infrastructure then, then it’s a software infrastructure, now it’s a new kind of AI infrastructure. All of these different groups of immigrants are now helping lay the tracks for the new United States.

But through it all, through all of these changes that happened in the country over time, I read about the leadership. I mean, when I read John Adams, the book about John Adams, and they were trying experiments in the country which had never been tried before — writing the Bill of Rights, writing a Constitution — all of these are risky things to do really, because you’re asking a country to live by a code and a framework which the country never had before. And for all the supporters, you had detractors too. But those leaders had the courage to do this for the sake of the country.

And to me, these founding fathers and the founding leaders had a sense of country that you don’t see in too many countries. I wish many more countries had that deep sense of country that the founding framers had in this notion of the United States of America.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: They were pretty remarkable.

INDRA NOOYI: They were.

The U.S.-India Partnership: Natural Allies in a Democratic World

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: They really were. And you grew up, of course, in a place which is a democracy, a place that has had, as a result of that, its trials and its tribulations, but also an interesting relationship with the United States itself. And I spent a lot of time on U.S.-Indian relations. I remember when President Bush said at one point, “India is the largest democracy, and the United States is the oldest democracy, and therefore, we should, in some ways, find ourselves natural partners.” Do you see that as someone who was born in one country, born in India, and has lived your life in another? Do you see those connections between the two?

INDRA NOOYI: I don’t know any other model but democracy. I didn’t live in any oppressive regime. I grew up in a young India that was just liberated from colonial rule — 350 years of colonial rule — because I was born 7 or 8 years after independence. So I was born into free India, a democratic India. And that’s the only model of governance that I know, which is great.

I think that the US and India are natural partners, should be natural partners. Because India being the largest democracy today, population is the largest, with an incredible demographic dividend where 50% of the population is less than 35 years old, and the largest English-speaking population — because when you have 1.4 billion people, even if 20% of them speak English, that’s a large population. And the number is more than 20%. So it’s a country that is going to be pivotal for the future of the world, whether it’s engineering graduates that come out, software people, people working in AI. Indians and Indian diaspora are going to be contributing quite a lot.

I think all countries go through ups and downs in their relationships over time, and it has to be reset every now and then. I just hope that whoever’s in the leadership position in the United States walks a mile in the shoes of the leader of India. And I do hope the leader of India always walks a mile in the shoes of the leader of the United States, because each one has to look at each other’s country through that lens. And before any action is taken either way, out of pride or out of economic necessity, you just have to understand the other’s point of view as opposed to immediately getting hurt, both sides.

So I think it’s a very, very important relationship for both countries, and I hope it stays that way. And I think to the extent that we remain in a geopolitical competition or race versus China, I think India becomes a very pivotal country because you don’t want that part of the world being taken over by China, which is a logical partner. I think given the bad neighborhood that India is in, it’s critically important the United States protects India and allows democracy to thrive.

Competition, China, and the American Spirit

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Thrive, yes. Because India and America are democracies, and you’ve never had to live in a country that was not democratic, I didn’t have to live in a country that was not democratic — it is a place where you can try to be yourself. And one of the elements of it, and something I think that will ultimately be hard for China, is competition almost in every aspect, whether it’s in sports or in the arts — competition’s a part of who we are. And it is in part awfully important, of course, in the business world. How did you think about yourself in that regard? Are you a competitive person? I have a feeling you are.

INDRA NOOYI: Positively competitive. I’m not competitive in that I want to kill others. I want to be competitive to move ahead and move my agenda forward.

Let’s talk a little bit about China and India, because I think in that Asian context, it’s very important. If you go to China, the competition is pretty aggressive inside China. Even in beverages, the number of Chinese brands that used to be on the shelf was fantastic. And so anybody who thinks there isn’t competition in China is mistaken. There isn’t hyper-competition like you have in the United States. The US is the most hyper-competitive environment, and that’s what makes it so exciting. You could die faster if you didn’t stay nimble and vigilant. But in China, it’s still very, very competitive and companies look to kill each other through technology, through the next offering. And that’s why you see faster cycles of innovation in China. So China is actually, for a centrally planned country, a very exciting, competitive-ish market.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Yeah, competitive and these days adversarial, which is a problem.

INDRA NOOYI: In a way, they’re going to keep us on our toes.

Why American Students Should Discover India

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Yes, maybe they’ll keep us on our toes. That’s a great way to think about it, because they are very competitive. But I want to go back to the India experience because — and India and China — we have lots and lots of students who wanted to study in China at Stanford and who wanted to learn Mandarin.

INDRA NOOYI: Chinese students?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Chinese students coming to the United States and American students going to China — not as many because language is hard for Americans, but we did have lots and lots of students studying Mandarin. We’ve had far fewer students who’ve wanted to go to India, who’ve gone to India, and I’ve always thought that that was a missed opportunity because India is such a dynamic and interesting society. You made a very good point — not one language, not one religion. It’s actually an extremely diverse society. How would you tell American students, “You really ought to spend some time in India”?

India, China, and the Beauty of Democracy

INDRA NOOYI: I think the interesting thing about China is that it’s relatively homogenous. Chinese, okay? There might be different versions of Chinese, but it’s a relatively homogenous country. As a visitor going there and spending some time, it’s easier to do that in China than it is in India. India is a chaotic country. The beauty of India lies in its chaos, absolute chaos. And if you are familiar with India, you’ve traveled in India before, and you like that chaos all around you, you go back. It’s like a drug. You get addicted to it.

But if you like order, if you like clean living, India is going to be impossible to take. When you see cows on the road along with the cars, you go, “What the hell is going on here?” Hey, we know how to dodge the cows and keep going, okay? That’s life in India. I think Indians have a, “Hey, this too shall pass.” Maybe India will develop some more, but all of these cows on the road are part of life. We just take it for granted.

We’re very spoiled in the United States. That’s another thing I tell my kids. Look at our environment. Look at the orderliness that exists here. In spite of people critiquing ourselves, don’t. We have it so good here. Our stores are open 24/7. No other country in the world is it open 24/7. Our malls are open 7 days a week. You go to Europe, they shut down half the time. So I sit here going, you have no idea how well you have it here. So just enjoy those freedoms.

But China versus India, I respect the Chinese system for what it did to pull China out of the dark ages. And they’ve become a world power because they did it centrally. India is still struggling to be a world power because democracy rules. And when everybody has a vote and everybody has a say, progress is slow, but I’m glad it is that way.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I’m glad it’s a democracy because the one thing that an authoritarian regime does not have is it has no peaceful means to transfer power.

INDRA NOOYI: True.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: And that has been for autocrats a fatal flaw many, many times in history. Whereas democracies, as messy as they are, and they are messy and cacophonous, even American democracy is cacophonous. We know that at some point we can say, “We don’t want them.”

INDRA NOOYI: “We want someone else.” Somebody told me a very interesting observation. They said, “If you go to any town in the United States, there’s always a courthouse.” Yeah, that’s right. Okay? You go to any town in India, decent-sized town, there’s always a courthouse. There are no courthouses in China because the government is your rulemaker and your decider. And so that’s where it becomes problematic. And that separation, the fact that we have a judiciary that’s so visible, is what gives people comfort that they have a right in the country.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: And as we’ve seen, a willingness to use it.

INDRA NOOYI: Oh, totally, yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Civil Society, Philanthropy, and Giving Back

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: But there’s another side of America that I’d like to spend just a couple of minutes on. And that’s something that you, particularly since you stepped down as CEO of PepsiCo, you’ve been very involved in what we would call civil society, the arts. You’re on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering. When de Tocqueville came to the United States in 1835 to understand what these Americans were like, he said that one of the things that was puzzling were these voluntary associations where Americans got together just to do good, and we have a lot of them, and people give of their time, as you do. How do you think about that part of who we are, the philanthropic side, the willingness to give a hand up to those who don’t quite have enough? How do you think about that?

INDRA NOOYI: My observation from all the towns I’ve lived in, and I’ve lived in Illinois and I’ve lived here on the East Coast, there’s an incredible sense of town, community, your neighborhood, your state, and then the country. There’s an incredible pride and ownership. The way people band together to solve a local issue is unbelievable. The way they put their hands up to address the town library going down and how to fix it, or the park is in disrepair, how do we band together to go fix it? You don’t have to force people to do it. They just do it, because they say, this is our community. This is our town. Why did we let it get there in the first place? Any time there’s a crisis, people just band together to go and work on these issues.

So to me, the sense of neighborhood, town, community, state, country is unique in the United States. It might happen in parts of Europe too. I don’t know. I haven’t lived there as such to see this happening, but it’s manifested itself in spades in every walk of life that I’ve been part of.

I mean, I’ll speak for myself. I retired as CEO and I actually felt that I owed the country my time because the country enriched me when I was CEO. I’ve given back in every possible way. I was teaching up at West Point, the most fulfilling learning experience, whether it’s on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the National Gallery of Art, whatever it is. If I’m called to do something, I will do it because at the end of the day, I owe this country my gratitude. And to me, it’s infectious. I watch other people do it, only in America, do I want to step up and say, count me in, I want to contribute too.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It’s a beautiful part of being American, that sense of some obligation to your city, your state, your country, but also to your fellow citizens.

INDRA NOOYI: Absolutely.

The American Story

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It really gets us through a lot sometimes. So if I were to ask the young Indra Nooyi, what would you have expected in life? And then to the more mature, I never say older, what would you say about the wondrous journey that America allowed? In other words, what is your American story?

INDRA NOOYI: I tell you, a young Indra Nooyi would never have imagined reaching the dizzying heights that I reached. Because it was beyond my vista. I never had that kind of vision. I didn’t know what the United States was. To me, coming to the United States and evolving and growing in my journey was like being a kid in a candy store. Every experience was like, wow, is this what I’m going through? So while I was doing that, I had to have one foot firmly planted to say, let me not get carried away by all of this.

And that’s where my family played a major role, with my mother always saying, “I don’t care if you’re a big shot, leave your crown in the garage because you don’t need to bring your crown into the house. You’re the mother, you’re the wife, you’re the daughter, the daughter-in-law. Don’t forget those roles.” Okay, Mom, I remember that. Don’t forget it. She’ll remind me all the time about it. So that anchored me.

I also never forgot my immigrant roots in the sense that I always reflect back on how I came with so little and the journey. I think back on that journey a lot. And I think back of the difficult times and the good times. The difficult times and who pulled me out of it, and the good times and who lauded me for it and kept me going.

So all of that together in my new form as being the more mature Indra Nooyi, the older Indra Nooyi, I can say that, the older Indra Nooyi. I look back with a sense of gratitude, but I just hope people look at my journey and say, that’s a life well-lived, but also a life amply contributed in every aspect of my life. I hope that’s the message they take away rather than, oh, she became CEO. No, I became CEO, I earned my way into being CEO, and along the way, I mentored people, I pushed, pulled people up, I pushed people, I contributed to society, I contributed to my community. Anybody who called upon me, I contributed. And so I hope people look at that and say, it was a life well-lived, but it was a life amply contributed to also.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: Well, Indra Nooyi, you are an American story, and your story of why America is the place that so many of us have a story that probably could only have happened in America. Thank you for spending the time with us and with the Hoover Institution to think about that.

INDRA NOOYI: I think of that great song which said, “Only in America you can dream in red, white, and blue and have the freedoms.” I believe in that.

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