Washington: Soft drink major Pepsico's Indian born CEO Indra Nooyi is one of the 18 women who have shattered the glass ceiling to lead America's 500 largest corporations, according to Fortune magazine's latest ranking.
Nooyi, who leads the 41st biggest company in America, is listed fourth among top women executives by the leading US business magazine. She "has overseen a shift in focus from soft drinks into less profitable, albeit healthier, snack foods market in recent years,"
Others on the list that includes more women CEOs than ever before are Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard (10th) and Ginni Rometty of IBM (19th), both of whom started within the last year.
Also on the list are Patricia Woertz of agricultural processors Archer Daniels Midland, Irene Rosenfeld who heads up Kraft Foods and Ursula Burns who is CEO at Xerox and Sherilyn McCoy at Avon.
Rometty is IBM's first female CEO and Xerox chief Ursula Burns is the first African-American woman to head a Fortune 500 company. The top five female CEOs on the list all held positions in strategic planning before being appointed.
There are an additional 21 female CEOs in the Fortune 501-1000, some managing steel, oil and energy companies. About 10 percent of the top 500 US companies, and almost 40 percent of Canada's 500 largest companies have no women on their boards, according to Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization advocating for more women in business.
Indra Nooyi spent her childhood in Chennai. Her father worked at the State Bank of Hyderabad and her grandfather was a district judge. She did her BSc. in Chemistry from Madras Christian College and subsequently earned a Master's Degree in Finance and Marketing from IIM Calcutta. Indra Nooyi also holds a Master's Degree in Public and Private management from the Yale School of Management.
Before joining PepsiCo in 1994, Indra Nooyi was Senior Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Marketing for Asea Brown Boveri, and Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning at Motorola. She also had stints at Mettur Beardsell and Johnson & Johnson. At PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi played key roles in the Tricon spin-off, the purchase of Tropicana, the public offering of Pepsi Cola bottling group and the merger with Quaker Foods.
Indra Nooyi spent her childhood in Chennai. Her father worked at the State Bank of Hyderabad and her grandfather was a district judge. She did her BSc. in Chemistry from Madras Christian College and subsequently earned a Master's Degree in Finance and Marketing from IIM Calcutta. Indra Nooyi also holds a Master's Degree in Public and Private management from the Yale School of Management.
Before joining PepsiCo in 1994, Indra Nooyi was Senior Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Marketing for Asea Brown Boveri, and Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy and Planning at Motorola. She also had stints at Mettur Beardsell and Johnson & Johnson. At PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi played key roles in the Tricon spin-off, the purchase of Tropicana, the public offering of Pepsi Cola bottling group and the merger with Quaker Foods.
