Quick Words on PepsiCo.

Back on August 16th, I posted about how Pepsi promoted Indra Nooyi to CEO, making her only the 11th woman to (currently) lead a Fortune 500 company (and PepsiCo. is the largest U.S. company by market cap to have a woman in charge). I read in this week's Fortune that the culture of Pepsi is very progressive in its hiring practices. According to Fortune, "since 2001, CEO Steve Reinemund has enforced aggressive hiring and promoting rules. Half of all new hires at Pepsi have to be either women or ethnic minorities. (Half!) And managers now earn their bonuses in part by how well they recruit and retain them."

Interesting to note, too, that there have been a number of Pepsi alumna who have become CEOs relatively recently. Brenda Barnes leads Sara Lee - she was at Pepsi for 22 years and Irene Rosenfeld became the CEO of Kraft Foods - she worked at Pepsi's FritoLay snacks division. Also, Dawn Hudson is the president and CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America and ranked number 41 in Fortune's Most Powerful Women list last year.

I try to convey in this blog that being "socially responsible" is also smart for the bottom-line. It's interesting, then, to note that Fortune also mentions that PepsiCo's focus on diversity is "part of Pepsi's game plan to better understand the disparate tastes of new consumers as it continues to expand globally." Pepsi sees the potential benefit for employing this strategy.