Indra Nooyi doesn’t look like the person you’d assume as head of one of the world’s biggest soda companies. But the India-born, snappily-dressed CEO of Pepsico (NYSE: PEP) was a no-brainer when she was promoted from CFO in October 2006. She was given the additional title of Chairwoman in February. After being raised and educated in India, Nooyi came to the U.S. to attend the Yale School of Management and landed (as all good future CEOs do) at a blue-chip consulting firm, Boston Consulting Group.

With only 10 women at the helm of Fortune 500 companies, Indra is in the cross-hairs; even more so given her role as champion of so many highly useless food items. What do you do when you’re the Chief Executive of Corn Syrup? You start talking about your customers like so many corn fields. Indra has actually been working to construct her company’s junk food a little healthier,

moving to trans-fat free oils for frying Frito-Lay’s chips, introducing chips made from fruit and overseeing the purchase or development of several healthy beverages like Propel Fitness Water, lower-calorie Gatorade, Naked Juice, and Izze Soda. She calls it the “sustainability” of the consumer. Keep ‘em healthy: they’ll be able to drink fruit-juice-sweetened soda until they’re 100! Brilliant.

Love women CEOs or not, you can’t argue with the appreciation in Pepsi’s stock price since Indra took by; it’s by 25%, revenues are up by 70%, and net profit has more than doubled. Those are some healthy numbers, though it’s too soon to tell whether it’s a sugar high or the company will have energy for the enlarged haul.

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Original post by Sarah Gilbert

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