Born in Madras, India, the future CEO of PepsiCo grew up conservative and middle-class, studying physics, chemistry, and math. Her determination to study in the U.S. brought her to Yale University's Graduate School of Management in 1978.
Despite financial aid from Yale, Nooyi worked nights as a receptionist. She went in for interviews wearing a sari because she had no money to buy clothes.
But she persevered and finished her degree, moving on to the Boston Consulting Group before joining PepsiCo in 1994. Since then, she has been a major part of reshaping the Pepsi brand, overseeing major acquisitions like Quaker Oats and Tropicana, and becoming CEO in 2001. Her salary is now in the tens of millions, dropping from nearly $20 million in 2011 to $12.6 million in 2012, after the company tied compensation to performance.