Indra Nooyi is an entirely different kind of CEO, a product of her native India as well as of PepsiCo's family-values approach to grooming CEOs. She is not hung up on pay. She's not shy about asking for help when she needs it.
She's 52 years old and does not plan for this job to be her last. Her friend Henry Kissinger predicts that it's only a matter of time before she is plucked for a big Washington post, possibly a cabinet job, and Nooyi acknowledges that at some point, she'd like that. She's cosmopolitan, rigorously educated, and a strategic thinker - her background is Boston Consulting Group - much more interested in the burgeoning markets in Russia and China than in the noisy U.S. cola wars. A dinner gathering at her house is as likely to include Tony Blair and government ministers from India or Mexico as traditional pinstriped business types.
As a vegetarian who for years has been talking about the importance of "gut health,"she's not who you'd think would be leading a maker of sugary soda and salty snacks - but that's why she's taking the company in a different direction.
