No. 3 Indra Nooyi
As Chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo since 2006, Indra Nooyi oversees a worldwide food and beverage corporation that sells products to nearly every country in the world and employs 185,000 people globally. Under her stewardship, Pepsi has pursued what it dubbed "performance with purpose,” seeking to drive greater diversity within the company and an ethos of environmental sustainability throughout its global operations. She is, according to Fortune, an “entirely different kind of CEO” known for singing through the hallways and for being “cosmopolitan, rigorously educated, and a strategic thinker.” Aside from her corporate perch, Nooyi, who was born in India, is Chairman of the U.S.-India Business Council – a non-profit organization representing 300 U.S. firms doing business in India, and roughly 24 Indian firms that invest in the U.S. As such, Nooyi is situated at the center of one of the most important emerging bilateral relationships in the world – one driven in large measure by commercial ties. Not surprisingly, she counts Henry Kissinger as a friend and is rumored to be in the running for a post in the Obama administration.
