Free from her CEO position, Nooyi looked forward to working on new ventures from her personal office. In her last letter to her employees, Nooyi advised them to spend their time carefully and admitted that she sometimes regretted missing out on family time while working. Conscious of the need to take her own advice, Nooyi hoped to spend more time relaxing with her husband and finally enjoying some leisure time herself.

While Nooyi is proud of PepsiCo’s profitability under her leadership, she is most proud of PwP and the concrete improvements the company made in sustainability, reducing waste, and developing talent. Nooyi fondly reflects on all of her achievements at PepsiCo, but she also notes that there were frustrating experiences and conflicts with colleagues who disagreed with her plans. She was also annoyed by media scrutiny about her departure and how she chose a man as her successor. Nooyi reveals that she was hoping to appoint a woman as her successor, but the company had failed to produce female candidates with the right credentials, partly because two women she mentored left the company to take CEO positions elsewhere. In discussing staffing issues with other executives, she had felt that many women in middle management were being perceived more critically than their male counterparts and urged managers to help them grow their careers.