Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Indra Nooyi:

And I think there’s a lot that needs to be done to teach students that net worth is not self-worth, that you have to worry about society at large. All companies have limited liability because they owe society of duty of care, but somehow people have forgotten the duty of care part.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Indra Nooyi. She’s the former CEO and chair of PepsiCo, a company she led for 12 years. In that time, she made waves through her initiatives to transform the company’s human and environmental impacts. Nooyi was the first woman of color and immigrant to run a Fortune 500 company. She’s been ranked among Forbes’ Most Powerful Women multiple times, and just last year was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. She’s also, unsurprisingly, a bestselling author. Last year, she wrote her memoir, My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future. We talked about moving to the United States from India, the importance of corporate citizenship, and how to improve the workplace for families. That’s coming up, stay tuned.

Preet Bharara:

Hey, folks. Some of you may have heard the news that my new children’s book is now out. It’s called Justice Is. The book is a kind of guide for young truth seekers. It showcases trailblazers throughout history from Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells to Malala Yousafzai, and John Lewis, and it’s in illustrated by Sue Cornelison, who brings them to life on every page. I’m donating all my proceeds from the book to the New York Legal Assistance Group, a leading civil legal services organization that advocates for people experiencing poverty or who are in crisis. Head to justiceisbook.com to buy your copy of Justice Is for the budding leaders of tomorrow.

Preet Bharara:

Now, let’s get to your questions.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes from Twitter user Hula Bunny. Great name. How much do you need to anticipate what legal challenges a target may raise before you issue the charges? Like a chess game, or do you plow forward with a plan and react to the challenges as they raise them? And then Hula Bunny further comments, “I imagine any charges against Trump require a lot of anticipation of his countermoves.”

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a great question, and I suppose in certain jurisdictions where there’s an on-the-scene arrest and charges are brought particularly by DA’s Offices, you have to charge right away and then you see what challenges arise as they unfold. But in my experience at the Southern District of New York and in federal cases, in the kind of case that may ultimately be built against someone like Donald Trump that’s complicated, it happens over time, and that requires a good deal of investigation, you absolutely focus on and anticipate the legal challenges and legal defenses in advance of bringing the charges. In fact, I think it would be irresponsible not to, and this happens in many contexts.

Preet Bharara:

For example, in my experience overseeing the case against a terrorist named Ahmed Ghailani, there was a question about whether or not certain statements made during his time at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba might be suppressed. In gun cases, there are often issues of suppression and sometimes those legal arguments are quite compelling, and you have to take that into account before you decide to charge. In some of the cases that you are familiar with, that we’ve talked about on the podcast and on the Insider Podcast with Joyce, for example, the case against the killers of Ahmaud Arbery. I’m certain the prosecutors thought deep and hard about the self-defense defense of those folks, made the correct determination that, that wasn’t a viable defense, if the jury was thinking about it properly, and brought their charges. In fact, it’s not just anticipation of particular legal arguments, but the shape and form of the defense narrative.

Preet Bharara:

Now, in fact, I was taught when I was a junior prosecutor that you need to consider and anticipate what you’re going to say in summation and rebuttal, even before you finish writing the charging document. So I would not only put together the facts for purposes of marshaling them for an indictment or a complaint, I would keep a running document of arguments I would make to rebut the arguments that I anticipated the defense would make. And, in fact, often, in meetings when people were presenting cases to me that were significant enough for me to weigh in on, I would say to them, “Well, that’s sort of interesting. Can you hum a few bars of your summation?” I think that strengthens the charge, that’s the responsible thing to do, and that’s how I think good prosecutors go about doing their job.

Preet Bharara:

With respect to Donald Trump, if there’s ever going to be a charge that relates to his conduct on January 6th, and the days leading up to January 6th, as one example, a defense and legal challenge will be, he was engaged in normal political speech. And depending on what other evidence there is, that’s a legitimate defense argument. And before anyone, whether it’s a DOJ or any place else, decides to bring a charge against Donald Trump, and I’m not saying there ever will be, you have to consider the case law, the precedent, the arguments about that First Amendment defense, certainly. Now, once you get to trial, you hone and refine and craft your arguments and response to the arguments made by the defense, but you absolutely have to consider them in advance, if you can.

Preet Bharara:

This question comes in a tweet from Marymadog, another great name. Marymadog asks, “What, if any, are the legal ramifications of all that Trump said in last week’s Texas rally?” So I won’t limit myself to the Texas rally, but Donald Trump has said things in writing, in statements that he’s put out and at the rally that, in combination, I think, are not insignificant. Remember, a key issue in holding Donald Trump accountable for the insurrection of January 6th hinges upon what his state of mind was, what he wanted those people to do. And so some of the evidences, the speech he gave on 1/6, some of it is his inaction for 187 minutes when people were overtaking the capital chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” looking for Nancy Pelosi, trying to overturn the election. That has been the focus of everyone’s interest. And so when Donald Trump puts out a statement and says, essentially, Mike Pence should have, in Donald Trump’s words, “overturned the election.” That’s a word that now Donald Trump has adopted. That, in many people’s minds, that’s akin to an admission that, that was what he wanted and that’s centrally important to his state of mind when he made the comments he made on January 6th.

Preet Bharara:

Similarly, when he said on January 6th, that he loves the insurrectionists, he said, “I love you,” that was an indication that they did what he wanted them to do. We have further proof of this when you hear Donald Trump dangling explicitly the possibility and indeed likelihood that if he gets elected president again in 2024, he will pardon the insurrectionists. That is a data point for people to argue that on the day of January 6th, he wanted them to do exactly what they did. That’s not great for him. As further evidence that he wanted Mike Pence to overturn the election, he has suggested that Pence should be investigated for not doing what Donald Trump wanted him to do.

Preet Bharara:

So you take all these things together: overturn the election, pardon insurrectionists, investigate Mike Pence, protest if Donald Trump is indicted, which is sort of a repeat of 1/6, which he seems to be advocating for, you put that all together, is it dispositive? No. Is it the thing that gets you over the finish line with respect to a charge against Donald Trump? Probably not. But you add it to all of the other actions and communications and statements, and you get a pretty good picture of what Donald Trump wanted.

Preet Bharara:

You added also, by the way, to the evidence that Donald Trump was personally involved in the plan for three different cabinet agencies to seize voting machines, although he didn’t end up doing that, and you combine it with his calls to Georgia State elections officials, you put all of that together, you start to get a pretty thick portrait of what Donald Trump wanted, and what he wanted was an insurrection to overturn the election. So the question is who’s looking aside from the Fulton County district attorney in Georgia? What is DOJ doing? But, certainly, prosecutors would be paying attention to these statements. You always pay attention to the statements of a target. Vitally important.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned, there’s more coming up after this.

Preet Bharara:

Hey, folks. We have a job opening at CAFE. It’s a dual role. We’re looking for a law and politics nerd to be an assistant for me and an operations coordinator for CAFE. The job is based in New York. To learn more and to apply head to cafe.com/jobs. That’s cafe.com/jobs.

Preet Bharara:

There seems to be nothing Indra Nooyi can’t do. The former CEO and chair of PepsiCo, Nooyi is also the author of the New York Rimes bestselling memoir, My Life in Full. In it. She describes her experience moving to the states, being a woman of color in corporate America, and the complicated task of balancing home and work life.

Preet Bharara:

Indra Nooyi, welcome to the show. It’s so good to have you.

Indra Nooyi:

Great to be here and thank you for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Absolutely. Long overdue. You have had a legendary career in the corporate world, in philanthropy, and all sorts of other things. I want to congratulate you on your book that recently came out called My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future. Did you have fun putting that book together or was it hard work?

Indra Nooyi:

It’s a tremendous amount of work. Anybody contemplating a book should be ready for months and months and months of hard work to get the book right. Because this is not a novel or a easily written book. It’s a book with stories supported by history, lessons derived from it, so it required a lot of thinking, a lot of planning to get this book just right. So it’s a lot of work.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I’m sure. That was the case when I wrote my book as well. So I often wonder what makes people successful, and often it’s something from their youth, and I wonder if the following you credit with some of your success. You tell the story of how, at the dinner table, your father made you and your brother give a speech … I don’t know if it was every night or some nights or many nights … in which he designated you as a president of a country or the prime minister or a minister from a country, and you had to take a position and then he would vote. Can you tell us about that and how that may have affected your later rise?

Indra Nooyi:

I think this was my mother at dinner. She would make the two daughters do this.

Preet Bharara:

Oh, it was your mother.

Indra Nooyi:

And this was just her way of living life vicariously through us because she never went to college, and had she gone to college and progressed further, she would have been CEO. She’s just super efficient and smart. But she’s interesting because, on the one hand, she’d say, “If you were chief minister, what would you do? If you were prime minister, what would you do?” Whenever she embarked on this particular line of questioning, it was a different leader. At the same time, she’d say, “But I’m going to get you married at age 18, I hope you know that, but you can dream.” Because, on the one hand, she had this foot on the accelerator, which said dream big because anybody can. On the other hand, we live in a society where people expect the elders to get the young girls married at age 18. So I feel for her because she was dealing with the brake and the accelerator. At the end of the day, the accelerator went out and we were allowed to dream, dream big, and they enabled it. So that’s great.

Preet Bharara:

Do you remember any particular leaders whose speeches you gave?

Indra Nooyi:

It’s not speeches, roles. I mean, we were naive and kids at that time so our frame of reference was fairly narrow, but we were asked to be prime minister of the country or chief minister of the country. Interestingly, chief minister’s job always started with make sure water’s available and power is available, because water was not available in Madras at that time. So the speech would always be about how I will make sure that water is available.

Indra Nooyi:

And so it’s interesting how your frame of reference and how you look at these leaders is largely based on what you are going through on a day-to-day basis, which actually is a broader lesson for today too, because you can’t look at leaders in a very lofty way. You’ve got to look at it through the eyes of the public who are struggling or have great needs and are looking to leaders to solve those problems.

Preet Bharara:

I asked you just before we started taping, if you were busy, which I realized is a silly question to ask someone like you, because you said yes, and then I asked you, has there ever been a time in your life when you were not busy and you said no. And then you said, “Well, maybe I need to think about figuring out a way to be lazy,” like me. I said I have a lazy gene. I’m generally busy, but I do have a lazy gene. Do you enjoy vacations?

Indra Nooyi:

No, I don’t, and that’s a problem.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a remarkable thing to say, isn’t it?

Indra Nooyi:

Yeah, it is. I think that anytime I go on vacations, my dream is to just sit in the hotel room reading a book or the balcony of a hotel reading a book. So as my family says, “Why do we come to an exotic place for you to sit in the balcony, reading a book? You might as well stay home.” In reality, if you really want me to go on a vacation, I just like to stay home reading. I don’t know why. That’s who I am. I love to read. I love to expand my brain all the time. And this may be one of the fatal flaws that I have. I don’t know what downtime is about and I’m wired.

Preet Bharara:

But you’re not unhappy. You’re happy working.

Indra Nooyi:

I am thrilled working. In fact, it keeps me alive, but I’m wired differently. So I’m always exploring. I’m always reading. I’m always trying to look at footnotes and figure out what it says. I have no idea why, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

So when you were on vacation, even when you were CEO and chair of PepsiCo, how often did you call the office?

Indra Nooyi:

I always went on vacation with bags of reading stuff and I probably called three or four times a day, at least, and that’s just my obsession. I was just that kind of a CEO, and I thought that if somebody needed me, I had to be available for them at every point in time. So I always went with several bags of mail. I read it all. I came back, sort of reinvigorated because I’m now caught up, not behind, so. C’est la vie.

Preet Bharara:

C’est la vie. Let’s talk about sleep and then we’ll move on to other things. It’s not surprising for me to learn that your pattern of sleep involves very little of it. That, throughout your career, you work all day, you sleep four or five hours, then for a time you play tennis, and then get to the office. And that’s always been my sense of things for very busy and successful people. That they don’t sleep very much. But I’ve lately been asking other successful guests on the show, how much they sleep and I’ve been surprised to hear how many of them say eight hours. Do you think they’re fibbing?

Indra Nooyi:

I think eight hours is a good amount of time to sleep. It helps the body repair itself and you emerge actually better after eight hours of sleep. But they also say there’s about 1% or 2% of people around the world who have got a genetic malfunction where they cannot sleep. So typically they say try to sleep early and then force yourself to sleep. So I go to bed at 9:30 saying, “Good, I’m going to sleep a whole night,” then I wake up and I go, “I feel so refreshed.” I look at the clock, it’s 11:30 and I’m like, “Oh my God, what am I going to do till the morning?” So it’s like counting sheep from 11:30 in the night to m3:00 or 4:00 in the morning then I give up. I have no idea. I honestly believe that if there’s one thing I have to learn, it’s relearn how to go to sleep. That’s something I’m committed to doing.

Preet Bharara:

What’s interesting, this is the second time now, first, when we talked about you’re not loving vacation, your addiction to work, and now your failure to sleep very much, you characterize it as a flaw and something you need to fix, even though you’re fairly late in your career. Why don’t you instead think of it as a benefit or an advantage or something that helped you?

Indra Nooyi:

Well, all of those things, you could either interpret it as “Indra is a workaholic,” or you could say, “That’s what keeps Indra alive and active.” On the other hand, everything I’m reading these days says that for the body to be healthy through your life for however long it is, it requires eight hours of sleep so that the cells repair themselves and rejuvenate themselves. So I’m going with the science, Preet, and if the science says that I need eight hours of sleep, I’ve got to inch my way to eight hours. So if I can add an hour every three or four months, I’ve done something wonderful.

Preet Bharara:

All right, well, let me know how that goes. You can help me out also.

Indra Nooyi:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So you, like me, were born in India and came to the United States. I came fairly young. You came after college.

Indra Nooyi:

Right.

Preet Bharara:

And you say something somewhere that I found interesting. You said, at some point, you got the American bug. What does that mean?

Indra Nooyi:

Well, in the ’70s … I graduated from college in 1971, then went on to Madras Christia … I’m sorry, graduated from high school, went to Madras Christine College, then IIM Calcutta. In ’76, I graduated. A lot of my classmates who were in IITs, all the IIMs, left and went to the US because at that time, everything we’d heard about the US was exciting. The US was a center of culture, music, innovation, inventions. It was a meritocracy. Anybody could grow and thrive and have their dreams fulfilled. And every one of the people that I knew that came to the US always wrote back saying, “This is such a different environment than a newly emerging India,” and people kept saying, “Indra, you belong here. You’ve got to come here.”

Indra Nooyi:

And so after a while, that infection sort of grabs you because people are writing to your constantly saying, “You’ve got to come here,” so you get infected with that bug. And you say, “I want to go and see what it’s like there.” Because I used to listen to all of the American music and loved it. I read all about the greatness of America. I’d go to the American consulate library and read all the books there, the magazines. And then, ultimately, I made my way to the US via Yale. And I must say everything that people told me then was true as it is today.

Preet Bharara:

You tell a great story in your book and I’ll quote from it. You say, “I believe in the American story because it is my story. As a CEO, I once sat in the 18th century wood panel dining room at Chequers, the British prime minister’s country manor, and was asked why I had immigrated 30 years earlier to the US and not the UK.” And you responded, “Because, Mr. Prime Minister, I wouldn’t be sitting lunching with you if I’d come to the UK.” What did you mean by that?

Indra Nooyi:

Well, I honestly believe then as I do now that the US is still one of the most welcoming countries and a real meritocracy. And, really, my background or my ethnicity didn’t really matter as long as I delivered and people mentored me and pushed me along. At that time, when I was looking at the UK, I didn’t see many people like me in senior positions or in CEO positions. So I honestly believe that I had a chance to lunch with the prime minister at Chequers only because I was CEO of a large company in the US and I would not have attained that position had I come to the United Kingdom. So I was being honest and telling him that, and he paused for a moment, thought for a while, and said, “You’re probably right and we ought to do something about it.”

Preet Bharara:

Do you think the US is as welcoming as it used to be?

Indra Nooyi:

I think so. I think if you look around the world, there’s been a protectionism that’s invaded almost every country. And relative to every country in the world, I would argue that the U … I would observe that the US is still the most welcoming country, because if you come here and you contribute, you still are given the opportunity to progress.

Preet Bharara:

But what about on the issue of immigration? Do you worry that there’s some anti-immigration sentiment in the US that was not before?

Indra Nooyi:

I think most of the anti-immigration sentiment, at least from my perspective, is the illegal immigration that people are reacting to. Very, very talented people who are going to contribute to the country, I think there’s still a very, very good welcoming environment for them.

Preet Bharara:

What was your favorite product that PepsiCo made?

Indra Nooyi:

Several. I’d say I was a huge consumer of Lay’s potato chips because I’ve-

Preet Bharara:

I’m almost shocked that you’re answering because I would thought you would say, “I love all my children,” but I’m glad you’re answering.

Indra Nooyi:

No, I love all my children, but this is one where I do have some favorites. I grew up with my I’m mom making potato chips or buying it from the local store. Then you get a bag of Lay’s, uniform quality, great taste, uniform crunch, and you fall in love with the product. So Lay’s to me was like the gold standard of potato chips. And on beverages, there’s a orange soda that’s sold outside the United States called Mirinda, that’s my favorite. It has an unusual taste that appeals to my palate. So a Lay’s and a Miranda together is sort of heaven for me.

Preet Bharara:

You and I have talked about this. You were kind enough to invite me to a book event a few months ago and the most interesting fact, and I learned a lot of interesting facts, the most interesting I learned maybe was that, at least at the present time, a bag of Lay’s potato chips has less salt than a slice of white bread. Can you explain how that’s possible?

Indra Nooyi:

So when we talk of a bag of Lay’s, don’t think of this gigantic bag of Lay’s. He was referring to a single serve bag of Lay’s, a small bag, which we people buy in a convenience store and eat it as they walk around. The big difference is that salt in a Lay’s potato chips is surface salt. Salt in a white bread slice is salt used for leavening. So you need a minimum amount of salt in that white bread in order for it to rise and be fluffy. What our scientists did with the salt was apply the salt crystals in a way that spread the salt on the chips, not densely but evenly, and also went to a smaller crystal structure for the salt so that you get that dose of saltiness in your mouth, but you don’t need a lot of salt to feel like you’re eating a salty snack.

Indra Nooyi:

So it was a scientific breakthrough that our technologists managed to pull off by going to smaller crystals and spreading them out differently on the surface of the chip. It got you the saltiness without too much salt, and so that’s why a single serve bag of Lay’s has less salt than a slice of white bread.

Preet Bharara:

I think you need to market that a little bit better because I think that’s a fascinating fact. But here’s maybe a dumb question. Why bother? Why bother to make that change?

Indra Nooyi:

Well, I tell you something. PepsiCo was known for making what I call fun-for-you products, products that historically had high levels of fat, sugar, and salt. We also made better-for-you, which was zero calorie products or baked Lay’s or baked Ruffles, and we also made good-for-you products like Tropicana and Quaker Oats. But I honestly believe that even the fun-for-you products, if we could deliver those products with less fat, sugar and salt, that’s just being more responsible.

Indra Nooyi:

So a few things we did was reduce the sugar levels in full sugar Pepsi. And in many countries, from the time I started to the time I left, there was something like 20% to 25% less sugar in a blue can Pepsi and the product still tasted great. Similarly, on Lay’s, reduce the salt level, still enjoy the product. But if America has a health crisis, why not contribute to improving the quality of the food system just a little bit? So these were incremental changes we kept making and hoping that, that would slowly start improving the overall quality of products we put out in the marketplace.

Preet Bharara:

I guess, when you were making these plans to produce products that were a little bit healthier, was that because there was an ambition a little bit to nudge people to more healthful foods or an anticipation that that’s where the market was going and you didn’t want to be left behind or both?

Indra Nooyi:

A little bit of both. I think that when we wanted to nudge people to healthier offerings or to offerings that had zero calorie or had positive nutrition, we’d put the better-for-you, good-for-you products at eye level so that they knew that those products were also available that were great tasting and priced exactly like the fun-for-you products. But the bigger challenge for us was to take these highly optimized fun-for-you products, the Lay’s, the Doritos, the Pepsi, the Mountain Dew, and say, “How can we maintain the rate taste, had zero taste deterioration, slowly take down the salt, fat, and sugar?” And if we thought the consumer would walk away from the product because we reduced any of these salt, fat, and sugar levels, we would have titrated the product formula differently.

Indra Nooyi:

But we realized that by slowly taking down the levels, you can actually have no taste degradation, get the consumer used to a slow, slightly lower level of salt, and still offer great product. So this was a desire to just produce a better pipeline of products for the American consumer … across the … I mean, actually, consumers across the world.

Preet Bharara:

Was there any pushback within certain segments of the company?

Indra Nooyi:

Not when people tasted the product and they go, “Wow, this is fantastic. Are you sure this has less salt?” “Yep, it does.”

Preet Bharara:

Did you do blind taste tests?

Indra Nooyi:

A lot. Triangular test. Typically, what happens is when you take the base product and then you take the product with slightly less salt, sometimes 50/50 people can guess what is which, but if you did a triangular test where you have three products, two of them are the same, one is different, people have a tougher time telling them apart. So in triangular tests, people couldn’t tell them apart, which was fantastic.

Preet Bharara:

It occurs to me that PepsiCo makes a lot of products. When you were CEO and chair, how many different products was the company putting out?

Indra Nooyi:

Oh, globally, we must have had 250, 300 brands, but we had 22 brands with more than a billion dollars of retail sales each. Then we had another 10 or 15 brands with more than $650 million of retail sales. So the company was a phenomenal branded products company, and I’d say perhaps one of the best marketing companies in the world. And so in the consumer products space, if you wanted to be in marketing and product management, PepsiCo was the place because it was youthful, it was exciting. You could try all kinds of new things and you got younger when you came to PepsiCo.

Preet Bharara:

But the reason I’m asking the question is you’re the head of a company that puts out actual products. It’s not software. It’s not one product. Did you feel a need to or did you try everything that PepsiCo made?

Indra Nooyi:

I would say the numbers go like this. In a typical strategy session or a visit to one of the divisions, over two or three days for any one business, it is possible that I would taste 50 different products, of which 45 may be rejected and it goes back and gets rejiggered. And if I go to the UK or Mexico or something, over two days I might taste 25, 30 products and snacks and another 10 products and beverages. So you’re constantly tasting. Constantly. But not just our products. We’re constantly buying competitors’ products and opening bags and looking at the packaging, looking at the product, tasting it. So this is a big food fest. It’s fantastic.

Preet Bharara:

Well, this is why you’re not sleeping, Indra. I’ve figured it out. If you’re drinking Pepsi all day long, then you’re not going to sleep as well.

Indra Nooyi:

It’s product of every kind, not just Pepsi.

Preet Bharara:

Was there a time that you … this is a random question … that you tried a product that your company made, you didn’t like it very much, you didn’t care for it, but everyone else said it was terrific and it was popular. Did you have that experience?

Indra Nooyi:

I’d say, a couple of times, I’d try a product and I’d say, “I don’t get it. I don’t like it,” but then people would say, “Look, let’s show you all the consumer tests. It’s come out extremely positively, so, Indra, it can’t be just your taste buds that decide the product.” And I’d say, “You know, you’re right. Go ahead and launch it.” And I hate to say this, I would say more than half the time-

Preet Bharara:

You were right.

Indra Nooyi:

… I may have been right. I may have been right, so. But this is normal. The great thing about consumer products is that the cost of failure is low, Preet, and so you can afford to try things in a small market or a small country and if it fails, pull it and launch the next product. So this is not a high cost launch and a failure.

Preet Bharara:

Is there a particular failure that sits with you? There is the failure of the competitor some years ago with new Coke. Is there anything like that, that you recall in your tenure and what you learned from it?

Indra Nooyi:

Well, one of the things I say that it took us a long time to launch was sparkling water. There were companies like LaCroix that had a sparkling flavored water, and we were very late to the table. But when we launched Bubly in 2016 or ’17, today, it’s s more than a billion dollar brand. It’s just that sometimes we are late to the game, and the reason we are late to the game is because we look at the competitor’s products and we say, “It’s not the perfect taste. It’s not passing our consumer tests.” So until we get the product right, then it would not allow us to launch products. But when we launch it, we do a damn good job.

Indra Nooyi:

Now, as a leader, I look here going, “That business is getting to half a billion dollar, guys. What’s wrong with you? Why don’t we have a product?” and I go crazy, but then the team is usually right. We have to get the product right.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Indra Nooyi after this.

Preet Bharara:

When you were CEO, did you think of yourself as a CEO who happens to be a woman, or did you think to yourself that there was something about being a woman that made you a different kind of CEO?

Indra Nooyi:

Perhaps both. I think that I viewed myself as a CEO and I said, “The fact that I’m a woman, I’m going to be scrutinized more. I’m going to be written about a lot more. People are going to rejoice when I failed,” because they told me that. “We’re going to lift you up so that when you fall down, there’s a bigger fall and there’s bigger story.” So I’d hear all of this stuff. And so I knew that I was the attention of a lot of people. Also, because I was perhaps the only woman who ran a Fortune 50 company. That caused a lot of focus on my leadership style and the company.

Indra Nooyi:

I think that I also decided I wasn’t going to change who I was. I’m an empathetic person who’s also tough. I love my people while I also hold them to high performance standards. And so I didn’t change my style. I kept running the company without remaking myself as a completely new person. And so people commented on my leadership style. People commented on my dressing. People commented on everything about me. The challenge is to stay the course and do the job.

Preet Bharara:

What was the toughest thing about being CEO?

Indra Nooyi:

God, it’s such a lonely job because there’s a problem every day, Preet. And sometimes-

Preet Bharara:

Only the problems come to you, right? Not only, but largely.

Indra Nooyi:

Well, the good things you rejoice about, but the problems you agonize over and people like me doubly worry about the problems. So when problems happen, because it’s a big company, and there’s some issue in some part of the world every day or every other day, and you can’t really come home, talk about all the issues because at some point your family goes, “God, we’re just tired of hearing all your problems.” And so if you want to have a harmonious family life, you’ve got to park some of those problems and come home lighthearted. I try to do that. Sometimes I talk about it to my husband, but even he had a job, and how much can he listen to my problems?

Indra Nooyi:

So you can’t talk about it to your peers because there are no peers when you’re CEO. You can’t talk to your Board because they’re your bosses, and you can’t talk about it to other CEOs because financial disclosure rules say you can’t share too much, especially if they own PepsiCo stock and you’re not going to meet anybody and say, “Do you own PepsiCo stock? If you don’t, I want to share something with you.”

Indra Nooyi:

So what happens is you start to internalize all this stuff. You talk to yourself. And that’s why they say CEOs have to have resilience, incredible resilience, and they’ve got to be able to shoulder all of these issues and power through them. It helps to have a supportive family and a supportive group of people around you, but at the end of the day, the bulk of the issues that you have to deal with, you have to deal with it yourself.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a good segue to talking about work, the nature of work; work life-family balance, whether that’s changing, what the proper balance is, and you tell a story about one of your daughters who once wrote you a note and you say you still keep it in your desk drawer because you were working a lot as you always did. And you say, on a big sheet of construction paper decorated with flowers and butterflies, she begs me to come home and the note says, quote, “I will love you again if you would please come home, and the word please is spelled out seven times.”

Indra Nooyi:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Preet Bharara:

How did you feel when you got that note?

Indra Nooyi:

It always breaks your heart. I mean, it breaks your heart because that the kid took the time to write this and leave it for you or give it to you, and you read this and you go, “What kind of a mom am I?” It’s a tough one, Preet. I tell you, had I quit the job and stayed home, I don’t know if my kids would have been happy to have mom around all the time. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I don’t know if I would have been a good mom just staying home. I don’t know. Because I’m just wired a certain way. I tried to be the best mother I could. I may not have been around all the time, but I will tell you, when the kids needed me, I was always there.

Indra Nooyi:

And I mean, look, I gave my kids … If they had the flu, I would run home from the office three, four times a day just to give them their medicines, whatever. Irrespective of which other family member was with them. So I was a very involved mother. I was in the school board. I never missed a single Board of Trustees meeting. So I never missed a single mother-daughter liturgy, and so … Except one, I think. I was a good involved mother, but I was always traveling or busy with work, reading. As one of my kids would say, “Mom, why do you still have homework?” Because that’s the job.

Preet Bharara:

So you managed it, in some way, but as you point out in the book and as you’ve said, many times publicly there are too few women CEOs. Why is that still the case in 2022?

Indra Nooyi:

I think, first of all, you’ve got to look at the pyramid. Let’s just take the company like PepsiCo. There are about 15, 20 thousand people in managerial positions around the world. By the time you get to the CEO minus one, there’s 15 people. And from there, one person gets to be CEO. So the tyranny of the numbers is that the pyramid narrows so damn much that you’ve got to rise up to the top, not just by doing your job well, but also keeping up with all the changes and technology around you, businesses around you, the world around you, and somehow emerging to be the best person to move to the next level.

Indra Nooyi:

So it’s a real tough slog to get to the top. And if you’re trying to then balance family and work in this pyramid that’s narrowing, it gets to be very, very difficult unless you have a fantastic support structure at home and you have the courage and the resilience and the bandwidth to be able to make this journey. I think many men have a fantastic support structure at home in terms of their wives. Many of the women don’t have the support structure, especially if they want a family and want to have kids, which many people want to, and it’s a very gratifying and fulfilling experience. Many companies don’t provide those support structures for family builders. So what is the woman supposed to do?

Indra Nooyi:

Now, I will tell you, in today’s world post-COVID, with the evolution of all these technologies, remote working technologies, the smartphone has been a game changer. The fact that you can FaceTime, text, FaceTime video, you can use Zoom, whatever these tools are, makes a huge difference. You cut down your travel. You can interact with your office from home. You can interact with your kids via technology. Those didn’t exist then.

Indra Nooyi:

So I’m actually more optimistic about the future to say that what was a grand juggle between so many things that had to get done, with technology, can actually be a balance, balanced life. So I’m optimistic about the future and I really believe that this is going to give women a chance to somehow make it all work. The only big issue that has not been addressed is how do we get men to think about their role as equal partners in family development and nurturing as opposed to saying, “Family is female. It’s your problem.” The more we get men to the table to say, “We are going to lean in and help bring up the family, nurture the family,” and any sort of family is an equal partnership between the husband and wife, I think that will be good times. It was in my case.

Preet Bharara:

What about the role of companies? You talk about the three pillars. What should companies do more of and better to help families?

Indra Nooyi:

It’s companies, governments, it’s communities. It’s all of them because if you … Only 18% or 20% of people are employed in corporate America. But let’s start with corporate America. I think that paid leave is something that should be thought about. It’s a human issue, not a political issue. We need to do that. Job flexibility; because of COVID, we’ve all learned what job flexibility is, but we’ll talk about that in a second. The third is a care infrastructure. Critically important to allow all talented people to come to work and for families to be creative.

Indra Nooyi:

Now, the big challenge, Preet, and this is something is not being talked about, as we talk about a care infrastructure. In the past, when I was running PepsiCo, we put a childcare center either on-site or near-site our offices. In today’s world, if people are going to work flexibly, should childcare centers be in communities where people live, not necessarily near offices? Should it be near co-working buildings near where you live? I think in the next year or two, a lot of discussion has to happen about the workforce, the workplace, the future of work, but thinking through where should we locate all the support structures and how are we going to pay the childcare workers a living wage so that they can actually look upon these jobs as good paying jobs as opposed to subsistence jobs, where they have to take a second job working in a grocery store and a Starbucks. There’s a lot of discussion that needs to happen.

Indra Nooyi:

Now, on flexible hours, I think this is the wonderful thing about COVID, flexibility is becoming the norm, but I want to tell you that there’s a problem with flexibility, too. We have to make sure we don’t create two classes of citizens. One group that comes to work and one does not because the people who come to work shouldn’t define the culture and the people who work flexibly be left out. Second is there are many jobs where you do need people to come in two or three days a week so that you can develop people, you can get to know them as human beings. You can see what kind of leadership skills they have.

Indra Nooyi:

So I hope the next two or three years, or next two years, I’d say, not three years, CEOs are doing all kinds of experiments in different parts of their companies to see what’s the best way to think about their future of the workplace.

Preet Bharara:

Do you support legislation requiring paid leave, which is the norm in many, many other Western countries, industrialized countries?

Indra Nooyi:

Yes and no. I think that what we have to think through, the most difficult aspect to think through, is what will small and medium-sized enterprises do for paid leave? If somebody is employing 10 people and two people have to leave because there are illness in the family or one of them is having a child, how is the smaller, medium size enterprise, which is where a bulk of our employees work, How are they supposed to keep their job open and pay for this person to be absent?

Indra Nooyi:

So I think, Preet, our country is known for innovative thinking. We even got a telescope up in space to study satellites and planets way out in the universe. If we can do that, I think we can get a group of people sit down and say, “What do we need to do for small and medium size enterprises to be able to put in place paid leave?” To me, that’s what needs to be solved. When it comes to companies and paid leave, big corporations and paid leave, it’s a no-brainer.

Preet Bharara:

And how much paid leave should be offered?

Indra Nooyi:

I would say, I would start with the 12 weeks for maternity care, maternity or paternity care, whatever you want, but that’s just table stakes. We just have to look at this as a human issue. I’m a product of paid leave. When my father was dying of cancer, I was given paid leave. I was given paid leave for my two kids’ birth, and when I was in a car accident. But in every case, I came back and I was an even more dedicated employee than I was before I left on paid leave. And so I think if we view it as a human issue, and we don’t say this is something people want to exploit just to goof off, if we don’t approach it that way, I actually think paid leave can be a great retention tool and a great way to keep a great employee base working for your company.

Preet Bharara:

Did PepsiCo offer 12 weeks?

Indra Nooyi:

Yep.

Preet Bharara:

And you think all companies should, of a certain size?

Indra Nooyi:

They should look at it very, very hard.

Preet Bharara:

I want to talk to you about corporate citizenship. It’s a complicated issue. You talk about the role of companies in part to make society better. And I wonder, my first broad general question, and then I’ll get more specific, is what is the proper balance with respect to a good sized company, doesn’t have to be as large as PepsiCo, balancing attention to the bottom line versus a better country or world?

Indra Nooyi:

You see, that shouldn’t be a choice. So let me give you an example. Let’s say there’s a company, a small or medium size company, that has to dump a whole bunch of chemicals in this effluent stream from the company. Okay? If it’s focused on the bottom line, it dumps those chemicals in the local canal. Saves money, dumps the effluent stream there, and generates a fantastic return for the shareholders. Who’s going to pay for all those people who are going to get poisoned by those chemicals in the canal?

Preet Bharara:

Right., But then in that example, that’s a short-term strategy and the general counsel of the company will tell you that’s not a great idea when it comes to future liability.

Indra Nooyi:

Well, let me just tell you, many companies do that.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Indra Nooyi:

Even today. General counsel notwithstanding.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Indra Nooyi:

Still happens today where people-

Preet Bharara:

They should listen to their general counsels more on behalf of all lawyers, I’m saying that.

Indra Nooyi:

I’m not sure every general counsel is like Preet Bharara. I think there are many general counsels who help you navigate these issues to somehow weasel out of it. So I think that’s just a tip of the iceberg. At every point, let’s think about plastics, when we generate plastics. If we don’t pick up the plastic and create a closed loop, these plastics are going to go into the landfill. Today’s landfill is somebody’s foundation tomorrow.

Indra Nooyi:

So we have to think very, very hard about, what is the impact to society of our actions? And if you think that way, I think you’ll actually do different things and make different decisions as a company. Now, I will tell you, if you say, “I’m just going to make money any which way I’m going to put pedal to the metal, make all the money I can, and guess what? I’ll set up a foundation in my company that gives money to some charitable organization.” There is a place for that too. That’s giving away the money you make.

Indra Nooyi:

All that I’m saying is companies ought to rethink how they make the money. How they make the money. And think about every aspect of their supply chain and say, “Am I doing the right thing?” I mean, the best example is sourcing. If you’re sourcing from a country where this child labor is prevalent, I’m not saying overnight, change your sourcing. How do you go into that country and work with them to see how do you send these children to school? How do you make sure the family gets an income when those children are not working, but make sure that you put in those standards that are synonymous with good companies into that country.

Preet Bharara:

Are corporations in America and around the world, doing enough on the issue of climate change?

Indra Nooyi:

I think the noise and the actions of companies that have actually stepped up in the last few years, I’m seeing actual progress in this area. People are talking about it more. Maybe because of the ESG Investor. Maybe because CEOs are getting more aware and conscious of the issues. But I’m seeing more action from corporate America the last two or three years.

Preet Bharara:

So further to my earlier question about corporate responsibility and, again, I know you’re going to say that these are not choices, but there are a lot of stakeholders. You have the shareholders. You have employees. You have customers. You have society. How did you think CEO of those different constituencies?

Indra Nooyi:

That’s what makes the CEO job so difficult and so exciting because the shareholder gets a return because you focus on all of the other stakeholders. If you didn’t have customers, there’s no shareholder return. If you didn’t have employees, there’s no shareholder return. But you can’t keep growing at the expense of those people. So let me give you one example, Preet, and this is something that’s near and dear to my heart.

Indra Nooyi:

If you look at a lot of medical systems today, they’re being bought up by private equity, which is great. I love private equity. They’re a great force for growth and innovation. But then you cut costs. You cut costs. You cut costs, you deliver a great shareholder return. What happens to those patients? What happens to service to people who need it the most? So I think if you don’t serve the customer right, all your shareholder returns are short-term, and at some point you’re going to find that customers just leave you, or, worse still, society is going to be badly off because you enriched a few shareholders.

Indra Nooyi:

So I think at every point in time, you’ve got to tell yourself, without customers, without consumers, without society, without communities, without suppliers, without employees, you don’t have a company.

Preet Bharara:

This phenomenon people have been referring to as the great resignation, do you have any comment about that or conclusion about that?

Indra Nooyi:

The key thing is not to talk about the great resignation as a one blob of people. I mean, we throw out these numbers of three million people have left or four million people have left. Let’s break it down into pieces. I think there’s about 10% or 15% of the people who are not really the great resignation, but the great redeployment. They’ve gone off to do things that they always wanted to do. I think there’s another slice, which is still struggling with COVID. They are ill, they haven’t come back to the workforce. But I think 60% to 70% of the great resignation are people who just don’t know how to go to work because the pay is not good, they don’t have childcare, they think working conditions are not conducive for them to just go and work and then come back totally drained and unable to take care of their families. So I think we have to worry about this group of people who serve hospitality, the care industry and the critical industries that make the quality of our life possible.

Indra Nooyi:

So I think it’s very important we take slices of this great resignation and really focus down to … For example, this morning I saw the article on nurses. The number of nurses that have quit because they say they just can’t do it, can’t do it. So we have to go slice by slice and ask the question, what’s causing them to quit, what do we need to do for them, and how do we bring them back to the workforce? I think we are in an economy where we could actually get down to 2% or 3% unemployment if we can support our employees the right way and not grow on the backs of the essential workers.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think we’re teaching the right things in American business schools?

Indra Nooyi:

That’s a loaded question. I actually believe-

Preet Bharara:

Well, we should talk about the fact, we’ll put it on the table, that you went to the Yale School of Management. You have endowed the deanship there. I believe the deanship is in your name.

Indra Nooyi:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Preet Bharara:

And I will also say that based on my experience, not to offend other business schools, I have experienced speaking at many top business schools, I feel that there’s a greater interest at the Yale School of Management generally than at some other schools, in public interest and not everyone just jumps into finance. So with that preface, now answer the question.

Indra Nooyi:

I actually believe that business school education is badly in need of a re-look. Business school education is fantastic. The two years you go there teaches you so much, and you go in as a student to come out as a business executive. So it teaches you a lot. But business school education hasn’t moved much in the last decade or so, and I think there’s a lot that needs to be done to teach students that net worth is not self-worth, that you have to worry about society at large. All companies have limited liability because they owe society a duty of care, but somehow people have forgotten the duty of care part. And they’ve also got to be taught that problems are complex.

Indra Nooyi:

Preet, I’ll tell you, when we do cases in business schools, we race through cases. We raced through them. We never paused and say, “Let’s study this case for two weeks.” Why don’t we bring this head of the environmental engineering department to come and talk about environmental issues on this particular case? Or, have the economics department, the political science department talk about the issues related to the politics of this country? Bring somebody from the law department to talk about the legal issues underpinning this case. Instead, what do we say? Just make all the money you can, and if everything fails bring the divinity school to pray for you. Doesn’t work that way. Does not work that way. So I would really urge a re-look on business education.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any advice for would be CEOs?

Indra Nooyi:

Today’s CEO is in a tough environment. The world around us is changing so profoundly. Technology is racing forward, it’s very hard to keep up with it. Yet you have to adapt and adopt those technologies inside your company. You have to become a foreign policy expert yourself because the world around us is changing in many ways. Where we thought the world was flat, now it’s flat with lots of barriers between countries. The role of the multinational has to be carefully thought through, judiciously thought through.

Indra Nooyi:

So today’s CEO is dealing in a complex world. It’s operating in a complex world. Has to be a learning CEO with lots of curiosity, ability for lifelong learning, and has to have the incredible ability to zoom out and zoom in. Constantly look at the world in a broad way or an issue in a broad way and zoom in and say, “How can I implement it in my company?” So the CEO of the future has to be special, and I hope we are developing people with broad experiences and exposing them to all kind of situations so that they can be this kind of CEO.

Preet Bharara:

So it was very easy, in other words.

Indra Nooyi:

Yes, Preet, I’m glad I’m not a CEO now.

Preet Bharara:

Indra Nooyi, thank you so much for joining us on the show. The book is terrific. People should get it. It’s called My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future. Thank you so much.

Indra Nooyi:

Thank you for having me, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Indra Nooyi continues for members of the CAFE Insider community. To try out the membership free for two weeks, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

Preet Bharara:

I want to end the show this week with a story from the world of book publishing. No, it’s not about the banning of books. I’ll leave that for another day. It’s terrible and deplorable and un-American. But, instead, I’m going to tell you about an uplifting story about publishing. It’s about an enterprising and highly imaginative eight-year-old, second grader from Boise, Idaho named Dillon Helbig.

Preet Bharara:

Let’s begin with this past December when Dillon, using an empty notebook given to him by his grandmother, embarked on a four-day whirlwind of writing and drawing to complete an 81 -page story book. I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but there’s a memorable moment in the book when Dillon describes himself decorating the family Christmas tree only to have the star on top explode and transport him through a mysterious time portal to the very first Thanksgiving in 1621. Sounds like a page turner.

Preet Bharara:

Like any author, Dillon wanted people to read his work. So he took the logical if, as he puts it, “naughty-ish” measure of sneaking his newly minted book onto a shelf at the Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library in Boise. By the way, he titled the book, The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis. Christmas spelled, of course, C-R-I-S-M-I-S. Here’s what he told the local Boise television station, KTVB, last month about the covert operation.

Dillon Helbig:

There was a lot of librarians that I had to get past, so do you know what I did?

Speaker 4:

What’d you do?

Dillon Helbig:

I covered this part and covered the back with my body and just snuck it in.

Preet Bharara:

But that night he confessed to his parents why his book was no longer in their home. The next morning they called the library with hopes of retrieving Dillon’s work, which they had assumed had been discarded, but had maybe found its way to the lost and found bin. But to everyone’s surprise, the librarian said that their son’s debut effort was more than worthy for a spot on their shelf. In fact, per the Washington Post, Dillon’s book became one of the most sought after works at the library.

Preet Bharara:

What’s more? Publishers have even expressed interest in officially publishing the book and the library has even given Dillon its first ever Houdini Award for best young novelist, an award they created just for him. There’s also a proposed project in the works that would have Dillon team up with a local author in Boise to form a workshop that encourages young aspiring writers to pursue their storytelling dreams. I’m happy to report that the Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis is not only highly in demand at the local library, but thanks to some national coverage, it’s inspiring children across the country to take initiative in putting their own pen and/or a crayon to paper.

Preet Bharara:

And so I’ve got to say amidst, what has been a discouraging wave of book banning taking root across the country. It is really encouraging and inspiring and heartening to hear a story like Dillon’s. And I, of course, look forward to Dillon’s follow-up book, which he says will be about the Grinch and will feature his dog, Rusty.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Indra Nooyi.

Preet Bharara:

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #askpreet. Or, you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or, you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. And the CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Chris Boylan, Sean Walsh, and Namita Shah. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.