November 17, 2022

In this episode of Recipe for Success, we’re talking about sustainability at PepsiCo Foods North America. Our guests Chief Sustainability Officer David Allen and Sustainability Senior Director Rachael Howe-Lawrence discuss PepsiCo’s mission to drive positive action for the planet and people and walk us through their seasoned career journeys. If you are interested in learning about sustainability at PepsiCo, or what it takes to make a successful career pivot, you are in for a treat!

 

Jillian (0:02)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to PepsiCo Foods Podcast Recipe for Success. I'm your host, Jillian Emens, and I'm so glad you've joined us. In each episode, I'll talk to PepsiCo employees who share their unique career journeys. By the end of each episode, you'll learn something new to add to your own recipe for success.

Myron Music Mix (00:22)
Are you ready?

Myron Music Mix (00:24)
To keep on

Myron Music Mix (00:25)
dreaming? To keep on believing. I'm here to motivate you. I'm here to push you.

Jillian (0:33)
Today, I'm so excited to talk with PepsiCo Foods Vice President of Sustainability, David Allen and Sustainability Senior Director, Rachael Howe-Lawrence. David and Rachel each have career paths that led them to PepsiCo's mission to strive for a more sustainable future. So let's get the conversation started. For our listeners, we're here together today at our Plano Headquarters studio.

Jillian (0:59)
I know, David, you've had 26 years at PepsiCo and years with the official 15. Right? So very impressive. David, if you can introduce yourself and tell us, like what your first role at PepsiCo was and a little bit about your journey so far.

David (1:17)
Sure. Yeah. 26 years goes by quickly. The days are short and the years are even shorter. Like you said, I started 26 years ago, a campus hire. So shout out to all my campus hire friends out there. But a campus hire here in Plano Engineering and spent about three years doing that and then made a transition out into the field of supply chain and spent about a decade in manufacturing and a decade in market operations and then back into manufacturing.

David (1:47)
And then finally, some 20 years later, made it back here to Plano and Dallas, first leading Quality in Food Safety and then now in the role that I'm in. So right now I've got the privilege of leading our PFNA Sustainability Team.

Jillian (2:02)
And Rachael, if you can do the same, just give a little intro and how it all began here at PepsiCo and where you are today.

Rachael (2:09)
Sure. So I'm Rachael Lawrence, and I've been with the company for 15 years. I keep wanting to say 14, but 15. And I started as a marketing coordinator for Stacy's Pita Chips right after we acquired them. So I worked above the plant as kind of a smaller marketing team. We're very nimble, very different, and trying to adhere to more of the PepsiCo way, if you will.

Rachael (2:33)
And then about a year into that gig, I moved to headquarters here at Plano. I was in marketing for the majority of my career. I've done tons of roles in innovation and brand, shopper marketing, you name it. And now I am a Senior Director of Sustainable Packaging under David, which I love.

Jillian (2:50)
So, what really inspired you or led to you moving from marketing to supply chain?

Rachael (2:55)
I've done a lot of roles in marketing and I love understanding how the business works. And I love the fact that in this role I can use all the things that I learned in marketing and the way that business operates and understanding how our brands function to kind of get things moving on the packaging front. So being able to apply all my knowledge in a different way, but mostly learning new things and some of the things on sustainability are really challenging and that excites me.

Jillian (3:21)
And David, I know you just gave the highlights of your career so far. Tell us about was there ever a point that you were at a crossroads and where you were going to go next in your career? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

David (3:34)
Absolutely. I've had a couple of those, and I'll say that my career doesn't look like anything I thought it was going to look like when I first started. And that's a good thing. So really, the first crossroads of my career came about three years in after having worked in engineering as a project manager, you know, supporting plants across the country, I had to decide, did I want to continue that path or did I want to go learn more about the business like Rachel was just talking about?

David (4:03)
And after consulting with some peers and a mentor and some managers, I made the decision that I wanted to go learn how to lead teams, how to manage people, and learn more about the business. And so I made a big transition and actually left headquarters and opted to go work in our Bakersfield, California, plant.

Jillian (4:21)
Wow. And that was pretty early on. So what would you say to those managers or mentors now that you took their advice? Like what would you say to them now?

David (4:31)
Oh, I tell them they were right. They all gave me the advice and challenged me to be open to learning, be open to getting different experiences. And the more, you know about the business, the greater future opportunities that you'll have in your career. And, you know, I absolutely believe that. And I give that advice to anyone that I talk to.

Jillian (4:51)
That's great. As kind of the first people in your current roles at PFNA, how would you describe those matching up to your own personal passions?

Rachael (5:01)
One thing that I feel proud of as an organization is the work that we're doing on sustainability and so being able to not only tell other people about the work that we're doing but knowing how passionate it is for our organization and how much we're standing behind what we say that just inherently in everything that we do, it elicits my own personal passion.

Rachael (5:24)
But in addition to that, I have a five year old daughter and she's learning about recycling. So being able to tell her that Mommy's working on packaging and having her feel that pride, I think is a pretty cool thing too.

Jillian (5:36)
That's amazing. And to pass that on and see her, I'm sure, sharing with friends.

Rachael (5:40)
For sure. It’s a very tangible thing and it's exciting to think about how we're changing the future for her future, which is amazing.

Jillian (5:50)
Absolutely.

David (5:51)
I think you said it exactly. This is the perfect intersection for, you know, what I care about personally and my professional experience. You know, my personal mantra is to be a good human, you know, whether that's at work or in life. I really care about what happens in our community. I really care about what happens in our planet.

David (6:10)
And then now in this role, I've got the opportunity to really lean in and think about and work on things that will affect positively our community, our planet, and our business all at the same time.

Jillian (6:22)
And before having a role and position in sustainability, David, can you share how you were a part of kind of promoting sustainability at PepsiCo and what we call PepsiCo Green Teams and talk about that?

David (6:35)
Sure. So as I look back on my career, I have been involved with sustainability projects either intentionally or unintentionally throughout my career. And so what you just referenced, when I worked in the current plant as a maintenance supply chain leader, I was involved in the current Green Team at that point, working on our pollution prevention and landfill waste elimination programs.

David (6:59)
That was my first introduction into some sustainability initiatives, and then that carried forward when I was a Zone Operations Manager or an In-Market Operations Director in Southern California. We did first generation electric trucks, we did solar panels on our distribution centers. We turned one of our distribution centers into a LEED certified or an environmentally certified facility. So throughout my career, I've had these, you know, had these experiences to where either directly or indirectly through Green Teams.

David (7:29)
And this community of people that are looking to make a better impact have been able to do so.

Rachael (7:34)
I think the beauty about Green Teams too is it’s starting with the employee and their personal passion and bringing that to work. So you asked how we're passionate about our roles, but if you can bring that into your every day in the culture at your team, I think that there's a lot of power in that. So if you're passionate about it, you might as well tap into it and bring it to life where you are.

Jillian (7:53)
And I believe there was an intersection. I know you guys have had very different career paths, but at one time you were in the same area.

Rachael (8:00)
Yeah. So I was working in a marketing field sales. We actually had that for PepsiCo Foods, North America at the time, and David was apparently in SoCal as well. And our paths crossed and all this time we didn't know it, and connected the dots like, you know, a couple weeks ago. So small world.

David (8:17)
That's a beautiful thing about PFNA and PepsiCo. You never know whose path you're going to cross, who you're going to work with, who you're going to work for in the future.

Jillian (8:27)
Can you guys describe what does Pep Positive mean for PepsiCo?

Rachael (8:31)
It's an end-to-end transformation. Now, I say that in a tongue in cheek way, but being out and talking about PepsiCo Positive and the importance of it, I think it's really about not just sustainability as an afterthought or attack on, it’s sustainability incorporated into everything that we do. PepsiCo has not been a stranger to sustainable practices, but I think that this transformation is really about making sure that it's ingrained in every aspect of our business and the way that we do business.

David (9:04)
Especially as we relate it to this conversation about careers, is that you don't have to be on our team to make an impact. We've talked about Green Teams, but regardless of your role, regardless of your function, there is an opportunity to affect our Pep Positive and sustainability agenda. If you're integrating sustainable thinking and execution and eliminating waste in your role, then you're making a positive impact and then, you know, potentially eventually, as you think about experiences that that you want in your career, different cross functional roles, then there's potentially an opportunity to be on our team.

David (9:43)
But everyone, regardless of your function and role, can make an impact.

Jillian (9:46)
And I think it's just something we're building on more and more. Even if you think of events that you may support or participate in, you know, do we have the recycling stations or what are we doing to be more green or sustainable at those events? And I think the more we all do it, the more it's going to go into everything that we do.

Jillian (10:05)
What advice would you give to other employees navigating the next step in their career to kind of shift to just overall career advice?

David (10:13)
For me, I've had the opportunity to have a couple roles that previously didn't exist on an organizational chart. So my advice for employees as you're thinking about your career is spend less time thinking about I want this person's specific role because our organization is dynamic. Our leaders continue to shape and reshape the organization in order to serve our customers, serve our consumers, and support PepsiCo.

David (10:42)
So that role may not exist or a role that you are really interested in, you know, could exist in the future. So my encouragement is to when you have those developmental conversations with your manager, talk about the experiences and the learnings that you are looking for and talk about what motivates and engages you.

Jillian (11:04)
Good advice and I think for both of you, what has been clear to me is that you guys were willing and raised your hand to get the new experiences or go do that new thing. That I'm sure was scary in many ways, but you did it.

Rachael (11:19)
I think it's about being comfortable taking a risk and willing to fail, and that's okay. You know, not everything is going to be a slam dunk and not everything is going to be perfect. But you might surprise yourself about how awesome a role or an opportunity could be. I always joke that I'm in supply chain as a marketer, but it actually is amazing and I do love it and it's fun and I'm learning every day.

Rachael (11:40)
So that part's great too.

Jillian (11:41)
And your strengths coming from a different background then only serve your team now.

Rachael (11:46)
Absolutely. And you know, I'm a little bit of a square peg in a round hole, but in a way, you take advantage of that because there's different things that you can offer at the organization and to the team, which is awesome.

Jillian (11:56)
And Rachel, I wanted to ask you specifically, what do you credit to having advocates? Or you've used the word sponsors before. Describe what an advocate or sponsor is.

Rachael (12:08)
I kind of get on a soapbox about it's important to have mentors in your career, but there's a difference between a mentorship and a sponsorship. And in my opinion, it's really important to have a sponsor because a sponsor is someone that brings you with them, a sponsor’s someone that's invested in your career, it's someone that will lean in and help you get a role because they're invested in your career.

Rachael (12:29)
And so being able to change and make a mentor more of a sponsor, I think will help people as they start thinking about kind of what is that next role or a next opportunity in a sponsor will help you unlock that.

Jillian (12:40)
So can you describe an example of if you feel like you have a mentor or is it a manager role or how do you grow a mentor into a sponsor?

Rachael (12:50)
So for me, my sponsors have always been previous managers because they know how you work, they understand and they start to get invested in you as an individual. But I think it's important to make sure that they are an advocate of you. And so whether it's maybe it's a mentor and and somehow you do a project with them or you get more heavily involved in, in something that they're working on, or you maybe do an ERG or something that they are also invested in.

Rachael (13:19)
But definitely someone that will see your work and can be an advocate of your work is really important. And I think that's how you step change from a mentorship to a sponsorship.

Jillian (13:27)
And then of course, I have to ask, how would you each describe your own recipe for success at PepsiCo?

David (13:34)
The three ingredients for me in my recipe number one is listen and learn. There are so many great people in this organization. And that's why I joined the company 26 years ago, and that's why I continue to stay. There's so much talent. Take the opportunity to listen and learn from others and incorporate those learnings then into your leadership style and into how you deliver results.

David (14:00)
The second thing is be collaborative and deliver results with others. And then finally it goes back to number three. What we talked about earlier is be willing to take that risk, be willing to go learn a different part of the business, because in those roles where you're uncomfortable initially in those roles where you're a little bit scared, that's where the majority of your growth happens.

David (14:24)
And as Rachel said earlier, you could very quickly try a new role and find that that becomes a passion and that becomes an area that you want to stay focused in.

Jillian (14:37)
Be bold and do the next thing, even if it is scary.

David (14:41)
Absolutely.

Jillian (14:41)
And Rachel, what would you say? What is your recipe for success?

Rachael (14:44)
I would say I would echo the take risks because again, like you just never know what's behind that next door and you don't have to know everything. We all are smart people and we can learn a lot of things. And so I think along the way, if you're taking big risks, you need to ask a lot of questions.

Rachael (15:00)
I think we have a culture of making sure that I know everything and you don't have to know everything. You have to ask the right question and you have to ask the right people the right question. And so if you keep asking questions, you'll learn. So I’d say take risks, ask questions. It's not really about finding a mentor or a sponsor.

Rachael (15:16)
While I think those are all very important. As I just said, I think it's important to have a role model and something that you kind of strive to want to achieve. And what are the qualities in a leader that you want to be and being able to know that. And I think that's really important.

Jillian (15:29)
Absolutely. And I love that you said ask questions because it is true when you say no question is a dumb question. Even if you feel that way, chances are someone else is asking that question or is keeping it to themselves. And we don't get better without leaning on each other and asking questions when we need them answered. So we're going to build on some of the things we've already talked about.

Jillian (15:48)
What are some of the unique things that PepsiCo is doing to create a more sustainable future?

David (15:54)
How much time do we have? (Group laughs). We can turn this into a six-hour podcast if you want with chapters or recurring.

Jillian (16:04)
To extend. Bonus episode!

David (16:05)
There is so much going on and PepsiCo Positive is about from seed to shelf, literally. And so there are exciting things going on from an agricultural standpoint. We were just at a farm earlier this week partnering with key farmers who are figuring out how to deploy practices that are more sustainable, that make the farmers more resilient, that makes our crop more resilient.

David (16:32)
And we're able to use fewer inputs, less water, less nitrogen. There's technology on the farm. Just a lot of exciting things. We're electrifying our delivery fleet. We're decarbonizing and moving from diesel vehicles to renewable natural gas vehicles and electric vehicles. We're doing great things in the plant to change the technology and reduce the amount of water that we need to run our operations.

David (16:57)
We're evolving our packaging from fossil based packaging into plant based packaging as an example. So there's something going on everywhere. But that's what makes it really, really exciting because we're not just thinking sustainability in one part of our business. As Rachel said earlier, we're thinking about sustainability across our entire enterprise.

Jillian (17:19)
That's amazing.

Rachael (17:19)
As a global organization, it's really important for us to ensure that, you know, we are leading the path because one, we're a big organization and we're global and we touch a lot of the world. And so how do we make sure our business practices are sustainable? But also, just as a human, this is probably more important than ever to make sure that we are planning for our future now, because our future is upon us and it's right smack in the face.

Rachael (17:46)
And if we don't start thinking about it and doing things differently, we won't be ready.

Jillian (17:50)
So it's PepsiCo's corporate responsibility, but mixed in with everyone and their individual responsibility.

Rachael (18:00)
Absolutely.

Jillian (18:04)
Well, each of your stories are so inspiring, and I know we'll be inspiring to others just how you've been willing to do new things and are continuing to do that here at PepsiCo. So thank you guys so much for being here today.

Rachael (18:11)
Thank you. It was fun.

David (18:12)
Yeah. Thanks for talking to us.

Myron Music Mix (18:14)
Are you ready?

Jillian (18:15)

That's a wrap. I hope today's conversation has inspired your own recipe for success. Thanks again to David and Rachel for encouraging us to never stop learning, asking questions and trying new things. You never know what will become your next passion. Catch you next time on Recipe for Success.

Myron Music Mix (18:35)
The top. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Everybody keep working.