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

Indra Nooyi is renowned for her accomplishments in business, most notably for serving for 12 years as CEO of PepsiCo, one of the world’s largest corporations. In her memoir My Life in Full, Nooyi provides a detailed account of her life story: growing up in Madras, India in a disciplined and high-achieving family; her early years as a business student and employee in India; and finally, her demanding corporate career in America.

Nooyi’s background and decades of experience as a corporate executive make her a uniquely insightful source of women’s experiences in the upper echelons of corporate professions. When Nooyi was building her career as a consultant, strategist, and executive in the 1980s and 1990s, she had few female colleagues at her level. Except for her assistants, she worked almost exclusively with men. Indeed, when she was promoted to PepsiCo’s top job in 2006, Nooyi was one of only 11 women CEOs of a Fortune 500 corporation. She recalls the intense scrutiny and attention she received from the media as she joined this “tiny club” of female CEOs.

The author’s experiences throughout her career show how bias and discrimination—both intentional and subconscious—negatively affect women’s personal and professional well-being. In many of her jobs, Nooyi experienced blatant discrimination, such as being excluded from workplace men-only retreats or being belittled with nicknames. Other experiences of sexism were less obvious, but no less consequential. For instance, she learned that she was being paid less as an executive at PepsiCo than male colleagues in similar positions. Later as CEO, she observed HR staff consistently pay female employees slightly less than male counterparts, something she tried to remedy. Nooyi’s anecdotes provide persuasive support to her arguments about supporting women’s advancement in the workforce, and society generally, by eliminating explicit and subconscious bias in the workplace.

Nooyi is also well-known as one of the few immigrants and people of color to lead a Fortune 500 company. In her memoir, she takes the opportunity to explain the frustrations—and gratification—she experienced as she helped to pioneer this shift in corporate culture. She often felt that her identity as an Indian woman was alienated and sensationalized in the American media, as journalists speculated about her fashion choices and approach to business. She recalls: “When I rose to CEO in 2006, the press was again thrilled to celebrate my exoticism as a woman and Indian immigrant. […] I was often described as some sort of zany outsider with a penchant for traditional Indian dress” (193). While Nooyi suffered through these inaccuracies and insensitive remarks, she was also proud of her status as PepsiCo’s first female CEO and believes that her career trajectory could only have happened in America.

Because Nooyi’s professional journey reflects broader ongoing social trends in the US, her book functions as a personal window into statistics. Her experience of overcoming barriers as an immigrant and a woman of color to achieve success at the highest corporate level makes Nooyi hopeful for the future, lending her work a positive and motivating tone. She explains: “[T]his country welcomed me and, despite some early bumps in the road, let me flourish and make a name for myself. […] I am very proud of how far we’ve come and where we can go next” (282).