Indra Nooyi

When I became president of PepsiCo, I think I was one of two or three.

But I was the first woman of color to run a Fortune 50 company.

Now I think there's about 54 women CEOs of the S&P 500.

You know, when you're at 10%, it's not really progress because 50% of the MBA graduates are women.

Okay, so somewhere that pipeline is leaky.

But, you know, it's a journey because you've got to make so many trade-offs.

Why did it get to the top?

But it was novel at the time I became CEO, the first immigrant person of color from an emerging market to lead a Fortune 50, iconic American company.

It might have made a lot of news, but deep down inside, I'm like, God, I better prove myself.

I lived off of that fear of making sure that I did my job right and didn't let any of these constituencies down.

To the outside world, it was big news.

I think if you decide that you want to have a meritocracy in the company, you should draw from the entire talent pool.

When you have more than 50% of the graduates are women.

Women are getting all the top grades.

They're hungry.

They want to move ahead.

And then you don't hire from that pool because you start off saying, oh, she's a woman, must not be very good.

You have these biases.

That's a problem.

So you've constantly got to check your biases at the door and say, if I had to put on a blindfold and hire people, how do I make sure that I draw from the best and the brightest?