My Life in Full: Work, Family and Our Future

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I think women are held to a different standard from men when it comes to celebrating their professional accomplishments. No matter what we do, we are never quite enough. Getting a promotion or a prize outside the home sometimes seems to mean that either that prize was easy to get or that we are letting our domestic duties slide.

everybody feel welcome and included? That requires deep involvement by all people in power to make sure that you identify bad behavior that’s not inclusive, nip it in the bud, and model the right behavior. A D&I officer can’t do it. It has to be a responsibility and a tone at the top. And boards have to ask CEOs, “Why are your metrics not trending in the right way? Are you really looking for the right Anyway, when I was at IIM Calcutta I was a year junior to Nooyi, who was then stylishly skinny unlike her wellfed American avatar. Or perhaps it's just that she has been excessively sampling Pepsi's 'food' products, like the ten yearold daughter of my impecunious household help who is already suffering from child obesity, along with countless other victims of Pepsico's successful implementation of her strategy of targeting so-called Third World countries as "profit centres", given the saturation of her North American home base. We have so much to learn from Nooyi’s remarkable story and wisdom on lifting up girls and women in the decades to come. She shares a great road map for anyone who aspires to merge social change with leading a large organization.”inclusion [D&I] vice president alone is the right approach. Diversity and inclusion cannot simply be delegated to one individual. That is a cop-out. It should be on the CEO’s plate as a priority and An extraordinary window into the life, career, and family of a brilliant business strategist. A terrific addition to the story of American business.” We are investing in your education to help you stand on your own two feet," he said. "The rest is up to you. Be your own person." (Alok: JUST the advice we've given to our daughters :) Though I enjoyed knowing about her journey, the book is not very engaging. She did not talk about any sensitive issues; there were no opinions - played very safe. It felt like the book is her way of showing gratitude to the people and organizations she worked with. I wish the focus of the book was more on her thoughts and feelings around her life experiences, her wins and, most importantly, her failures; which would have made it more insightful, and which I believe people are looking for from the experience of such great leaders. quite often when I made suggestions, someone would jump in and say, “Oh no, Indra. That’s too theoretical.” A few minutes later, a man would suggest the exact same thing, using the same words, and be congratulated for his terrific, insightful idea.

I knew we could have done even more—or done it faster—if the financial crisis hadn’t tossed us around like the rest of the global economy, but we’d handled that well too. I had worked as hard we’ve got 41 CEOs. That’s a big number. But it’s less than 9 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs. There’s lots of room for women to grow and ascend as CEOs. The other part is that being a CEO is not the only hope, dream, and aspiration of many women. Women want to be entrepreneurs. Women want to start companies. Women want to run NGOs. Women want to be in other positions in society. That’s OK. All that we’re saying is whatever you want to do, we want to make sure that there are more tailwinds than headwinds when it comes to work and family and the integration of the two. An amazing read, filled with lessons, optimism, warmth, and heart, about an extraordinary woman who rose to be a fantastic role model for all women.” hope is that by the time you reach that level, your kids are already going to college, so you can have all the time to focus on the job.

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Being brought up in Chennai myself, the author's initial tales of upbringing in Chennai was relatable and nostalgic. It was great and inspiring to read a story about the author's success, hard work ethic while grappling with traumatic incidents, family and support systems in the early stages of her career. Her strong beliefs in diversity and inclusion principles, support systems as well as putting in the work to drive actual change in this area was inspiring to see from a strong top leader. To be extra, extra, extra, extra careful, I would hide my bags under a cupboard or something like that because I wanted to make sure that there was never any paper left around the house that somebody might look at and say, “Mom, are you working on this?” You don’t want to discuss everything with your husband, because there’s only so much you can discuss that are problems. You also want to have a normal conversation with your husband. But more importantly, I think families are so vested in you. If I shared my problems with my husband and he had a negative perception of the person that I said If you really are in a war for talent, you should want these women to come into your company. If that’s the case, let’s find a way to make all of the family responsibilities equal between men and women. Let’s find a way to make it easier for women to come into the workplace and retain their jobs as opposed to dropping out in large numbers. So men in power have to start discussing these issues with a lot more heart than just saying, “Oh god, it’s a feminist issue.” This is an issue that has to be approached like an economist. It’s a resource that has to be allocated in the economy to improve the GDP of the country. The best part of the book is the 1st part, her childhood and early days in America. Here also she fails to recognise that she indeed belongs to a privileged family. As not many Indians at that time had a grandfather who is so highly educated(law professional) , but in my opinion she underplayed it.