Review: My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future by Indra Nooyi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: An Autobiographical account of the journey of a first generation Indian American woman moving to the zenith of corporate America as CEO of PepsiCo

Straight and simple, Indra goes through her journey starting from the swing in her Chennai home to landing up in the Americas breaking stereotypes and setting a trend at every step from education, higher education and so on. The humility shows for she always attributes a strong support system that helped her soar which ties back to her often out of context quote that is printed - women can't have it all. She means humans can't have it all and we need a village to achieve success and she was blessed to have one as per her.

The book doesn't delve much into the challenges she went through but speaks more of the ideas she tried out in Pepsico - the PwP - performance with purpose which she attributes to her claim to fame gets sizeable coverage in the book. One interesting fact is being true to oneself - she wore sarees in her consulting role because she didnt have budget for a proper suit and she didnt shy away from getting her job done. That's one thing she iterates through the book - people worked with her for what she brought to the table and not who she was.

One of the most hardest hitting lines is when she is made President of PepsiCo and she comes home to tell her mom - her mom chides her for not getting milk to the home along the lines of "You may be the President of PepsiCo but you are my daughter at home."

Whether there are takeaways from the book that I can apply, not too sure - but an interesting read into the journey of an individual who broke a lot of stereotypes to get where they are.

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