Nooyi's midnight shift at Yale

Indra Nooyi arrived in the U.S.in the late nineteen seventies to study graduate-level management at Yale University.She worked the midnight to five a.m.

Why she worked so hard

Nooyi and her fellow classmates from developing countries came to study and work hard, not for social life. Their goal was clear: study, work hard, get great grades, and land a job.

“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.”

The cost of an Ivy League degree

At the time, annual tuition was equivalent to about twenty thousand dollars in today's dollars. Nooyi's parents told her they couldn't help her out financially, so she had to pay her own way.

Respect came from hard work

When Nooyi and her classmates got consulting or investment banking jobs, people looked at them differently. Respect went up purely because of the hard work and efforts they put in.

“Respect just went up, purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in…People realized that this was a grueling experience for us, and they respected us for that.”

America's streets paved with possibility

Nooyi believed success wasn't guaranteed in America, but opportunity was. The streets might not have been paved with gold, but they were paved with the possibility of ambition.

“Maybe they weren't paved with gold, but they were paved with the possibility of ambition.”

From Yale to the corner office

Nooyi graduated from Yale in nineteen eighty with a degree in public and private management. She worked at Johnson and Johnson, Boston Consulting Group, and Motorola before joining PepsiCo in nineteen ninety-four.

Leading PepsiCo through growth

Nooyi became PepsiCo's chief financial officer in two thousand one and CEO in two thousand six.During her tenure until two thousand eighteen, sales grew eighty percent.

Leadership as a learned skill

Nooyi said leadership wasn't an innate gift but a skill developed over decades of observation, practice, and experience.

“Leadership requires you to have people wanting to follow you, wanting to follow you with passion, wanting to follow you until you fall off the edge of the earth.”

Leadership like training for Olympics

Climbing the corporate ladder and becoming a respected manager is akin to training for elite competition. It's a lifelong process of watching, experiencing, practicing, and being put in situations where you follow and lead others.

“It's literally like practicing for the Olympics or some sort of sport. Leaders are made through a very tough process, if you want to call it that, over many, many years.”

Other CEOs who started at the bottom

Nooyi isn't alone.Former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon unloaded trucks at a distribution center as a teenager.

“No task is beneath me. I used to be a dishwasher. I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets.”