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

After her car accident, Nooyi spent several weeks in intensive care before returning home to continue her recovery. She was relieved that Boston Consulting Group continued to pay her salary and that she had good health insurance through her job. However, she also knew that the intense demands of her consulting job no longer worked for her and her family, and she decided to accept a position at Motorola. Over the next eight years, the company’s CEO, Gerhard Schulmeyer, became a valuable mentor to Nooyi, helping her acquire skills and new opportunities that advanced her career.

Nooyi and her husband struggled when her mother decided to return to India, leaving them without childcare for the first time. They found a local mother who cared for Preetha at her home, but they disliked leaving their daughter there for the entire day. They asked their relatives in India to come and help them and made a schedule of everyone’s time with Preetha. Nooyi realized how lucky she and her husband were that they had an extended family circle who were happy to help them.

At work, Nooyi was excited to make progress as the chief strategist at Motorola. Despite Gerhard Schulmeyer’s reputation as a difficult collaborator, Nooyi was able to establish a positive rapport with him and prioritized his many ideas as she saw fit. Nooyi worked with executives on new technologies for cars, and she was made vice president and director of corporate strategy and planning in 1988. One of her colleagues helped Nooyi learn a softer communication style, which helped her make positive connections in the workplace. Over time, though, Nooyi found her daily work “tedious” as she tried to navigate relationships with multiple managers and executives (102).

Nooyi was disappointed to learn that Schulmeyer was leaving Motorola to take a corporate job in Switzerland, and she turned down an offer to work for him there. As the months passed, Nooyi was increasingly frustrated at Motorola, as her fellow executives took a long time to make firm decisions about the company’s direction. When Schulmeyer revealed that he was shifting positions to work in Connecticut and urged Nooyi to follow him there, she agreed, leaving Motorola to work for Asea Brown Boveri (ABB) in Stamford, Connecticut. Nooyi credits her husband for prioritizing her happiness and professional success and being so supportive of her career.

Nooyi was thrilled to be reunited with Schulmeyer as she began her position as senior vice president of strategy and strategic marketing at ABB. Nooyi studied both the company and its young CEO, Percy Barnevik, learning about the industrial equipment that ABB supplied to industries around the world. During this time, Nooyi was happy to receive her American citizenship, which she celebrated with her colleagues. While Nooyi felt challenged in her new, interesting work, she was aware that she cared more about working for Schulmeyer than working for the company itself.

Nooyi and her husband rented a home in the Noroton Bay area and had their second child there. They continued to struggle with work-family balance and hired and fired several nannies. While Nooyi and her husband appreciated her mother’s help with their children, they had different parenting styles and standards, which created conflict. The author believes that with good communication and boundaries, multi-generational living can benefit elders, parents, and grandchildren.

The author remembers experiencing discrimination in the rental market in Connecticut. She was warned away from settling in Darien or New Canaan, which were both predominantly white towns. Feeling unwelcome, she and her husband chose to buy a home in Greenwich instead. Nooyi gave birth to her second daughter, Tara, and found juggling motherhood and work exhausting. She felt guilty that she had such limited time with her children, but she did not believe she could take time off her work and still have a career afterward. As much as Nooyi wanted to devote herself to motherhood, she felt she was “wired” to work compulsively, even inviting colleagues to her house on maternity leave to discuss a project (120). Nooyi and her husband were devastated to learn that their daughter was being bullied at her school—where she was one of a few children of color—with the knowledge of her teachers. The author recalls feeling guilty that she had put her daughter in an “exclusionary” environment and quickly enrolled her in a Catholic girls’ school (121).

When Schulmeyer left ABB and moved to Germany, Nooyi did not collaborate well with the new CEO and soon left the company. Ever a supportive mentor, Schulmeyer arranged for her to meet Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric (GE), but she turned down his offer of a management position since it would require her family to move. She was approached by many other companies, but she turned down their offers for similar reasons. The CEO of PepsiCo then asked Nooyi to join his team as VP of corporate planning and strategy. At first, she was hesitant, since the company’s products were so different from her previous work experience; however, the CEO’s humility and the interesting challenge of the position ultimately led her to accept.