The CEO Forum Group Magazine Business 2023 (1) - Flipbook - Page 29
Chairman & CEO, PepsiCo
Robert Reiss: As CEO, what do you see as
priorities for PepsiCo?
Ramon Laguarta: I would say the most important
thing we’ve done in the last few years is build on
PepsiCo’s legacy of leading with diversity. We’ve taken
diversity and elevated it to a top strategic priority for
the company. In fact, diversity and our sustainability
commitments—such as our net zero commitment—
make up the core of our positive mission with
PepsiCo Positive (pep+), the strategic, end-to-end
transformation of our business. For us, diversity is
not only the right thing to do, but it’s how we win in
the marketplace. And that has been fundamental.
Our commitments to diversity have been embraced
by every leader across the organization and are
now part of our operating processes. It’s part of
how we measure the business, which is part of
the responsibility of every single leader in the
organization. That has been transformative for us.
But our own commitments to diversity are just one
part. The second element is that we see ourselves
as not only responsible for moving diversity in
PepsiCo, but moving diversity as part of a much
bigger ecosystem. Obviously, with our scale, we have
a lot of influence on our suppliers, and we have a lot
of influence on our customers and our communities
that we operate in. We see ourselves as inspiring
those communities, those suppliers, and those
The CEO Forum Group
has selected Ramon
Laguarta, Chairman &
CEO, PepsiCo, for the
Transformative CEO Award as The Top 10
Businesses in America, 2023 in the category
of Food and Beverage. This has been bestowed
for PepsiCo’s leadership in products, services,
culture and brand integrity.
organizations to move along with us at the same
speed. These two elements have been fundamental.
Obviously, we’ve also put some more tactical elements
now, including training, taking a look at our facilities
and our care centers, and making sure that our female
associates feel empowered and have opportunities to
thrive. So we’ve done a lot of things on culture, a lot
of things on facilities and infrastructure, and a lot of
things on training and development.
“In the end, this is about courageous
leadership. At a certain point, no
matter how much infrastructure
and culture you put in place, there
ultimately has to be real leadership
in the organization making the
tough decisions.”
What are examples of how leadership is executing
on these priorities?
In the end, this is about courageous leadership. At a
certain point, no matter how much infrastructure
and culture you put in place, there ultimately has to
be real leadership in the organization making the
tough decisions. I’ll give you a couple of examples.
We had the opportunity to change our organization
in our largest business, our U.S. snack business.
Steven Williams, who leads that organization, and
I thought about the opportunity to change the
profile of our leaders. Right now, if you look at our
organization in the U.S. snacks business we have
at PepsiCo, six of six of our field sales leaders are
females, and five or six of our supply chain fields
are women. And sales and supply chain were two of
the less represented functions in the company. So, a
massive leadership decision by Steven and myself to
push that out at that particular time.
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