Twelve years at the top of PepsiCo, from 2006 to 2018. A woman. An immigrant. Almost nobody fitting that description has ever run a company that size, which meant every decision she took was read as a referendum on more than the business.
Performance with Purpose was her framing: move the portfolio toward healthier products and cleaner operations while still delivering the numbers Wall Street expected each quarter. Corporate responsibility as strategy rather than as a page in the annual report, years before that became fashionable.
She argued that a company could deliver returns and do right by health and the planet — and made it strategy, not slogan.
She did it while handling activist investors, a consumer market shifting under her feet, and a portfolio spanning most of the world. She also talked candidly in public about leadership, immigration, and what is actually asked of working women — subjects most sitting CEOs avoid.
Since leaving she has sat on major boards and written about the collision between career and family. The influence continues as mentorship now, and her career remains the reference point people reach for when arguing about what a global chief executive can look like.