July 9, 2026
Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi Says Overnight Campus Job Shaped Her Worth Ethic
Nooyi reflected on arriving in the United States from India in 1978 to pursue a master's degree in public and private management at Yale.
Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi said the overnight campus job she worked while attending graduate school at Yale University helped shape her work ethic and earned her the respect of classmates, offering new insight into the experiences that laid the foundation for her corporate leadership, Fortune reports.
In an interview with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Nooyi reflected on arriving in the United States from India in 1978 to pursue a master’s degree in public and private management at Yale. To help pay for her education, she worked as a dormitory receptionist from midnight until 5 a.m. before attending classes each morning.
“We worked our tail off because to us, we didn’t come there for the social life—we came there to study and to work hard and to move ahead,” Nooyi said. “So the goal we had was very, very clear: study, work hard, get great grades, and somehow land a job. That’s all the objective was at that time.”
Nooyi said the demanding schedule ultimately changed how classmates viewed international students who balanced work and academics.
“When we got consulting jobs or investment banking jobs, people looked at us and said, ‘Hey, these are brainiacs,'” she said. “Respect just went up—purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in… People realized that this was a grueling experience for us, and they respected us for that.”
She also reflected on the opportunities she found after immigrating to the United States.
“I remember back in the old days, people would say they thought the streets might be paved with gold. Maybe they weren’t paved with gold, but they were paved with the possibility of ambition,” Nooyi said.
After graduating from Yale in 1980, Nooyi held leadership roles at Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and Johnson & Johnson before joining PepsiCo Inc. in 1994. She became chief financial officer in 2001 and chief executive officer in 2006, serving until 2018. During her tenure, company revenue grew substantially, and she became one of the longest-serving female CEOs in the Fortune 500.
Nooyi said leadership is developed through experience rather than innate ability.
“Leadership requires you to have people wanting to follow you—wanting to follow you with passion,” she said. “It’s a lifelong process. You have to watch, experience, practice, be put in situations where you have to follow leaders, and then you have to have people follow you.”
She encouraged aspiring executives to observe experienced leaders closely, learn from both their successes and mistakes, and continuously refine their own leadership skills.
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