Indra Nooyi smiles through the BS

In this week’s episode of Art of Power, host Aarti Shahani sits
down with Indra Nooyi, who became the first woman and immigrant to
head a Fortune 50 company when she was named CEO of PepsiCo in
2006. Nooyi and host Aarti Shahani discuss her unusual family –
where the men pushed her to be more ambitious. Aarti asks Nooyi how
she manages to stay so light-hearted when people cut her down at
work. (It’s something she does over and over again.) Her answer?
It’s not what Aarti expected. Indra Nooyi’s book, My Life In Full,
has a provocative passage. Describing the times she’s been invited
into rooms with the most influential people on the planet, she
writes: “The titans of industry, politics and economics, talked
about advancing the world through finance, technology, and flying
to Mars. Family – the actual messy, delightful, difficult and
treasured core of how most of us live – was fringe. This disconnect
has profound consequences…In a prosperous marketplace, we need all
women to have the choice to work in paid jobs outside the home and
for our social and economic infrastructure to entirely support that
choice.” (emphasis added) Aarti dissects that call to action with
her. It sounds like the call of a feminist or labor leader. Nooyi
posits her argument is simple economics. “If you think like an
economist, not a feminist, then you say you want the best resources
available, which means that men and women, the best talent, have to
be in the service of the economy,” Nooyi says. “And that requires
some social support. … If you don't provide them a support
structure, and then lament about the great resignation, it's
crazy.”