Promoted female Pepsi chief told to ‘get some milk’

On the day she received word that Pepsi was chosen to name her its president, Indra Nooyi left work early (about 10pm) to go home and share the thrilling news with her family.

Her mother stopped her at the stairs. “Let the news wait,” Nooyi remembers her saying. “Can you go out and get some milk?”

Even though Nooyi’s husband had been home for hours (“He’s tired,” her mother reasoned) and the family employed several housekeepers at the time, she dutifully went to the store and returned shortly thereafter, slamming the carton on the kitchen counter.

Finally spitting out news of her promotion and balking at the errand, Nooyi’s mother remained nonplussed. “Let me explain something to you,” Nooyi recalls her saying. “You might be president of PepsiCo. You might be on the board of directors. But when you enter this house, you’re the wife, you’re the daughter, you’re the daughter-in-law, you’re the mother. You’re all of that. Nobody else can take that place. So leave that damned crown in the garage.”

This exchange typifies the elusive balance between career and motherhood that she still struggles to navigate every day, Nooyi said in a candid interview this week at The Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

“Motherhood is a full-time job. Being a CEO of a company is three full-time jobs rolled into one. How can you do justice to all?

“I don’t think women can have it all. I just don’t think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all... every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you.”