WHEN LAXMAN NARASIMHAN was hired to be the next Starbucks CEO in September, he joined a club that includes the chief executives of some of America’s biggest and best-known companies—Brian Cornell of Target, Chris Kempczinski of McDonald’s, Ed Bastian of Delta Air Lines, Al Kelly Jr. of Visa, Ron Coughlin of Petco, Lauren Hobart of Dick’s Sporting Goods, Vivek Sankaran of Albertsons, Dave Kimbell of Ulta Beauty, Mary Dillon of Foot Locker, and Ann Mukherjee of Pernod Ricard North America.
What do these leaders have in common? They all spent significant time rising through the ranks of the same company. But they aren’t alums of the expected academy companies” known for turning out leadership talent, such as Procter Gamble, nor a buzzy tech pioneer famous for its management culture.
No, these chief executives earned their chops selling fizzy drinks, hummus, and chips at PepsiCo.
Formed back in 1965 when the Pepsi-Cola company and Frito-Lay merged, PepsiCo has produced 16 current Fortune 500 CEOs, an analysis by Fortune found. We looked at companies whose alumni now lead at least five Fortune 500 companies, and found that PepsiCo is one of the most proficient corporations when it comes to leadership development, trailing only the management consulting firm McKinsey and General Electric. And there are hundreds more C-suite executives with PepsiCo pedigrees in the Fortune 500, as well as CEOs outside the Fortune 500, like those of Petco or Boston Beer Co.
In other words, PepsiCo, which brings in 80 billion a year in revenue, is a veritable CEO factory.
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