When former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi arrived in the U.S. in the late 1970s to study graduate-level management at Yale University, she was a self-described “misfit” from India. Instead of adjusting to the rhythms of college nightlife, Nooyi was working the midnight-to-5 a.m. shift as a dormitory receptionist before heading to class each morning to pay for her degree.
“We worked our tail off because to us, we didn’t come there for the social life—we came there to study and to work hard and to move ahead,” Nooyi recalled in a recent interview with former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, recalling the experiences of her and her fellow classmates from developing countries. “So the goal we had was very, very clear: study, work hard, get great grades, and somehow land a job. That’s all the objective was at that time.”
Paying for an Ivy League degree wasn’t easy, either. At the time, annual tuition was equivalent to about $20,000 in today’s dollars (a far cry from the six-figure tuition costs of today), and her parents told her they couldn’t help her out financially. But eventually, that relentless work ethic inside and outside of the classroom paid off.
“When we got consulting jobs or investment banking jobs, people looked at us and said, ‘Hey, these are brainiacs,’” Nooyi said. “Respect just went up—purely because of the hard work and all the efforts we put in…People realized that this was a grueling experience for us, and they respected us for that.”
