The Most Powerful Women in CPG

When it comes to the CPG industry, it is often noted that the primary consumer is of the female demographic. So, maybe it’s no coincidence that the most powerful women in the CPG industry know how to appeal to their consumers.

 

According to a Fortune 500  article titled, Career advice from Fortune 500's women CEOs, “…the female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies have doled out anecdotes and advice during their tenures.” Below is a snapshot of this list including the most powerful women in CPG.  Here are some of their greatest tips and best practices on balancing family-work life, motivating employees, and much more: 

 

Though PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi has been criticized by some shareholders for focusing less on soda and more on healthy snacks, she remains steadfast in her fight for what she calls Performance with Purpose. "Corporate social responsibility is something you do in the evening and something that can be shut down if the CEO changes or you don't have the money. For us, purpose is not something you can shut down," Nooyi told Fortune executive editor Stephanie Mehta at the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. "Performance with purpose only means deliver great performance while keeping an eye to all of the stakeholders... If you weave purpose into the way you think about your performance, that's now part of the business model."

 

"Engage the hearts and minds of employees. It is very tempting to talk about the business situation and show all kinds of charts, but at the end of the day if we can't engage people's hearts, it's very difficult to get them mobilized," Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld told executives at the 2008 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. She has turned around the company since taking over in 2006. She credits modeling expected behavior at the highest levels of the company. "The fastest way to create cultural change is to start acting the way you wish the company would start to act, and very soon it starts to catch on."

 

DuPont CEO Kullman has added sparkle to the chemical giant over the past three years - and has managed to keep her home life intact. She gives credit to her husband (who also works at DuPont) and University of Delaware students as babysitters, and Kullman acknowledges she's still learning both professionally and personally. "What I do is a labor of love, right? And you don't always get it right. You know, as a parent you don't always get it right, but you learn," she told Fortune assistant managing editor Leigh Gallagher at the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. "And I'm a big believer that people and organizations -- if they keep learning, they'll figure it out. If we stop learning, we stop growing."

 

Taking over the troubled beauty icon from Andrea Jung (the second woman-to-woman handoff in Fortune 500 history), former Johnson & Johnson executive McCoy had her work laid out for her at Avon. But, as Fortune editor-at-large Pattie Seller notes, McCoy's focus on work-life balance may be just the key for the struggling Avon. "She is known as a collaborative manager who talks openly about juggling career and family and urges people at J&J to pay attention to both... such work-life experience is practically the price of entry at Avon."

 

Morrison, whose sister, Frontier CEO Maggie Wilderotter, is also on the list, raised two daughters while ascending to the top of the food industry. Her advice to parents with young girls? "I believe the source of happiness is achievement and self-esteem. And that comes from contributing. So I took the attitude that my job as a parent was to bring my girls up to let them go," she told Fortune in 2008. And her advice for ambitious rising star women? "Ambition is a part of femininity. So you can be ambitious and you can be feminine and that's both okay."

 

 

To see this list in its entirety, click here.