“Dear mom, I love you. Please come home. Please, Please, Please, Please, Please come home. I love you, but I love you more if you come home.”
The above quote is actually a letter written to Indra Nooyi by her daughter when she was just a young girl. For those who don’t know, Indra Nooyi is the Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. She is one of the tiny 4% of women who currently holds a CEO position in a Fortune 500 company.
Last week, I had the opportunity to listen to Indra during the 7th Annual Women in the World Summit. Women in the World is an annual summit launched in 2010 by Tina Brown, the British-born former editor in chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Talk, Newsweek and The Daily Beast and author of The Diana Chronicles, a biography of the Princess of Wales. First held at New York's Hudson Theater, the summit now takes place at Lincoln Center's David Koch Theater, convening women leaders, activists and political change-makers from around the world to share their stories, and offer solutions to building a better life for women and girls. Former ABC news producer Kyle Gibson is senior executive producer and managing editor of the event.
I knew in my heart that I needed to bring not only a woman in a position of influence to this event but a [leader] who would be excited to be a [student] with me for the entire day. So, I invited Ann Marie Almeida SVP of Marketing and Development at Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) organization.
Each speaker spoke to us in so many ways but it would be too long for this blog post. But what I do want to share is (7) key points that were stated in Indra Nooyi’s conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter (President and CEO of New America) and moderated by Norah O’Donnell, Co-Anchor, CBS This Morning.
RahGor's (7) FAVORITE KEY POINTS FROM INDRA NOOYI
1. Companies need women in the work place because they are 50% or more of the population, 60% of the graduating population of many colleges, and 75% of the top grades.
2. Be careful about all the choices you are making because you will look back and it will hurt like hell. And it does.
3. People will talk about you behind your back or call you more difficult – But that is the price of climbing up the ladder of leadership.
4. If you don’t have women working with you, you don’t have a business.
5. We must ask ourselves, create, and provide an environment that productively and gainfully allows women to use their FULL TALENT.
6. Society is aging and more women are working. So we need to find a common ground to bring elders to help in this area.
7. If we don’t come up with solutions now, no one will.