Their fascinating conversation captivated the audience at the third annual Eileen Peters Farley ’68 Endowed Speaker Series for Women and Business. At the event, Quinnipiac honored Nooyi with the M&T Bank Center for Women and Business 2025 Impact Award.

Following an insightful discussion with Olian, Nooyi answered questions from Bobcats and faculty seeking advice on launching careers, the future of entry-level work in the age of AI and reaching the C suite despite hurdles such as gender or race.

Each year, the center selects a distinguished businesswoman for the center’s impact award. The annual speaker series on the Mount Carmel Campus celebrates the memory and legacy of Farley, an accomplished entrepreneur and a long-term president of the Southern California Quinnipiac University Alumni Chapter.

Director of M&T Bank Center for Women and Business Tuvana Rua introduced Farley’s daughter and accomplished entrepreneur Jessica Geis, who spoke about Farley’s impactful life and work. Geis said she and her late father, Stephen Farley, wanted to ensure that her mother’s love of Quinnipiac and community were linked to her love of giving back. They established the endowment in 2018.

“It honors her legacy of impact and of self-belief — knowing that even if you don’t look like everybody else in the room, what’s going to limit you are the beliefs and the limitations you put on yourself,” said Geis.

Geis said she was thrilled to join the Quinnipiac community for the chance to listen in on the day’s conversation between Olian and Nooyi.

“We’re so fortunate to be able to have this opportunity in this series to bring in people like this, who model what you can be if you believe in yourself, follow your instincts, and always invest in yourself,” said Geis.

In 2015 and 2017, Fortune named Nooyi the world’s second most powerful woman. Nooyi was CEO and chairman of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2019 and president and CFO between 2000 and 2006. She served on the PepsiCo board of directors from 2001 to February 2019. After leaving PepsiCo in 2019, she continues to make an impact on boards and advisory councils serving top national and global corporations and institutions.

School of Business Dean Holly Raider said Nooyi and Olian are individually accomplished leaders committed to the success of the people they work with and those they serve.

“As you explore their biographies and listen to the conversations, you will hear how they have championed their organizations, led innovations, led turnarounds, helped the state of Connecticut recover from COVID, have been philanthropically active, and are tireless in their commitment to bringing the best to what they do,” said Raider.

Olian welcomed Nooyi back to Connecticut following Nooyi’s recent visit to her native country of India with a delegation of state officials and business leaders. Led by Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, the delegation met with executives of companies and key government officials to discuss strategies to build stronger economic ties between Connecticut and India.

Nooyi and Lamont were classmates at the Yale School of Management, where Nooyi earned her Master of Public and Private Management. Before coming to America to attend Yale in 1978, Nooyi earned degrees in physics, chemistry and mathematics at Madras Christian College of the University of Madras. In 1976, she earned her MBA from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.

After earning her master’s degree in 1980, she was hired by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as a strategy consultant. Nooyi said consulting is a great career starting point for an MBA student.

“It exposes you to so many industries, to so many different issues, and you’re consulting at the highest level of the company, so you learn how to interact with people who are in the seats of power,” said Nooyi.

In succeeding years, she went on to join Motorola as vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning, followed by going to Asea Brown Boveri as senior vice president of strategy, planning and strategic marketing.

In 1994, Nooyi was named PepsiCo's senior vice president for strategic planning. From 1996 into 2000, she served as senior vice president for corporate strategy and development. In 2000, she began her role as PepsiCo CFO and president until 2006, when Nooyi was named CEO.

As an immigrant from an emerging market and a person of color, Nooyi said there wasn’t anyone like her in corporate America at the time.

“I didn’t realize that I was breaking so many barriers. The only way to do it at that time was by being better than everybody else by a mile. Otherwise, it’s too risky to take somebody so risky and put them in the job,” said Nooyi.

Nooyi was PepsiCo’s fifth CEO. When some critics questioned Nooyi following four CEO’s who had all been white, Christian males and former military members, she said her former boss Steven S. Reinemund supported her leadership ability.

“Steve wrote back saying, ‘The board picked the best candidate. Would you have liked us to have done differently?’ That Steve Reinemund, a Marine, would write back a letter like that just shows the meritocracy that PepsiCo was, and the forward-thinking and more importantly, the mentorship of Steve, who basically said, ‘I think she will take the company to a new place,’” said Nooyi.

Olian also remarked on the breadth of knowledge Nooyi developed over the course of her career to inform decision-making with firms involved in many different types of products and services. Nooyi credits the ability back to her earliest days working at BCG.

“You can’t hire a strategy consultant because they’re an expert in your field. What a strategy consultant brings to the table is the framework and a way of looking at an industry,” Nooyi said. “BCG taught me how to go in there, and using principles of microeconomics, how do you understand the value drivers of the business? How do you dig deep, and how do you zoom out to see what the implications are for business?”

At Motorola, Nooyi hired a professor for pre-workday sessions to teach her about the company’s automotive and electronics tech so that she could “speak the language” of the industry.

“If you didn’t speak the language, people discount you. I had to put the time in. I did that for nine months and got to a level of understanding and being able to communicate with all of the technology people and engineers. It allowed me to develop a subject matter expertise and then bring my strategy expertise on top of that,” said Nooyi.

Olian also asked Nooyi about leading acquisitions and divestments. At PepsiCo, Nooyi handled multi-billion- and multi-million-dollar transactions such as acquiring Tropicana for $3.3 billion and Quaker Oats for over $13 million; and divesting of restaurant business brands including Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“You’ve made some major decisions in your roles there,” Olian said. “What are the general principles you’ve used surrounding when to bring something into the fold, and when to push it out because it would be better for PepsiCo?”

Nooyi said an acquisition’s deal-making courtship period may be exciting, but that’s only 5 percent of the whole process.

“It’s the post-merger integration that’s more important, and that’s hard work,” said Nooyi. “So never get carried away by the deal-making. Think about the post-merger integration, because if you can’t get two or three times the synergy that you thought you were getting, you didn’t do a good job.”

When Nooyi became CEO of PepsiCo, the company had already divested of its bottling system. Due to a changing marketplace, Nooyi made the critical decision to buy it back.

“When I chose to buy back the system, the whole marketplace had changed so profoundly, that even though I would be called a flip-flopper, I realized we had to do it to control our destiny,” said Nooyi. “So don’t worry about how the market is going to perceive you. Do it if it’s right from a macrotrend perspective.  Always anchor it on an external view of the marketplace.”

Constantly studying the signals of the marketplace also led Nooyi to developing the project of which she was most proud during her tenure with PepsiCo, the consumer goods chessboard. Developed in 2001, the chessboard involved laying out all of the potential deals that could be done by industry food and beverage companies to strengthen their position.

“We would do this exercise to anticipate what other companies might do and therefore where PepsiCo might end up,” said Nooyi. “We wanted to stay one step ahead of the pack. I think that’s what you have to do if you are to remain competitive.”

OIian highly recommended audience members delve into Nooyi’s top-selling business biography, “My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future.” Copies of the book were provided to attendees.

“You really get the essence of the person and the awesomeness of what Indra has accomplished throughout her life,” said Olian.