Indian-American CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi has been chosen to be part of United States President-elect Donald Trump’s economic advisory council. Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick and SpaceX and Tesla chairperson Elon Musk have also been included in the 19-member Strategic and Policy Forum, Trump’s transition team told Reuters on Wednesday.
Notably, the 61-year-old businesswoman from Chennai had openly supported Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during her campaign. “I had to answer a lot of questions from my daughters, from our employees. They were all in mourning,” she had said at a conference in New York, a day after Trump won the elections.
The panel of advisors will assist the businessman in implementing his economic agenda as president. “The forum is designed to provide direct input to the president from many of the best and brightest in the business world in a frank, non-bureaucratic and non-partisan manner,” read a statement from Trump’s transition team.
The Strategic and Policy Forum will be headed by Stephen A Schwarzman, chairperson, CEO and co-founder of investment firm Blackstone. “My administration is going to work together with the private sector to improve the business climate and make it attractive for firms to create new jobs across the United States - from the Silicon Valley to the heartland,” Trump said.
After graduating from Madras Christian College in Chennai, Nooyi earned management degrees from the Indian Institute of Management-Kolkata and then from Yale University. PepsiCo is the biggest food and beverage company in the US, with more than one lakh employees and 100 plants across the country. Its annual net revenue stands at $63 billion (approximately Rs 4,19,000 crore).
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