Innovation with Purpose: PepsiCo Foundation’s C.D. Glin On The World’s Most Successful Purpose-Driven Business Models
An Interview With Russ McLeod
Being local is about getting proximate to the issue or challenge by focusing on those with lived experiences and the issue at hand. It involves understanding the unique circumstances, cultural nuances, and pressing concerns, and then tailoring your solutions to directly address those issues in a meaningful and effective way.
In today’s business landscape, companies that integrate purpose into their core strategy are gaining significant traction. These businesses go beyond profit to create positive social and environmental impact, proving that doing good and doing well can go hand in hand. What are the key elements of these successful purpose-driven business models, and what can other companies learn from them? I had the pleasure of interviewing C.D. Glin, President, PepsiCo Foundation & Global Head of Social Impact at PepsiCo Inc.
C.D. Glin leads the social- and community-driven impact efforts for the PepsiCo Foundation, the philanthropic arm of PepsiCo and a portfolio of global employee engagement programs designed to harness the expertise and passion of the company’s 290,000+ employees to create positive, enduring change in communities around the world. Glin joined PepsiCo in 2021 and oversees the Foundation’s strategic direction, detailed in its Global Impact Report.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share a bit about your background and what has led you to this moment in your career?
Three things have shaped and guided my life and career: being of service to others, creating opportunities for others and having the biggest impact as possible on others.
Fittingly, I begin my career in service as a Peace Corps volunteer in the first South African program while the country was under the transformational leadership of Nelson Mandela. Serving in South Africa gave me a firsthand perspective on the term “giving of oneself.” My two years of service shaped what I’ve done for the past 20 years and what I get to do today while leading social impact for one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies.
Since my time with the Peace Corps, I’ve continued my journey at entities in the nonprofit sector like the Rockefeller Foundation and in government via appointment in the Obama administration leading the U.S. African Development Foundation. These experiences taught me the power of scaling impact through strategic partnership and local solutions while creating opportunities for others along the way.
Now, I have taken my experience to the private sector at PepsiCo. Prior to joining PepsiCo I only ever had a “.org” or “.gov” in my professional email address. Now I have the pressure and the privilege to leverage the size, scale and reach of PepsiCo and our great brands from Pepsi, Gatorade, and Lay’s to Doritos and Quaker Oats to make meaningful change and have a positive impact on people and the planet. In some instances, I’m doing what I’ve always done — serving, creating opportunities and impacting others. But now, I am able to serve on a larger scale to have a greater impact globally.
Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that inspired you to integrate a sense of purpose into your professional journey?
I can’t say there was one singular moment that inspired me to integrate a sense of purpose in my professional journey, but rather the culmination of having grown up in a purpose driven household. Over the course of my childhood, my siblings and I lived in four different countries as my father served almost 30 years in the U.S. Air Force while my mother had a degree in social work. Their mission driven lives inspired us each to integrate a sense of purpose into our personal and professional journeys.
While it was a big move for me to join the Peace Corps and to choose to live in African village for two years after undergrad, it wasn’t a big surprise. That experience instilled in me the importance of cross-cultural understanding, contributing to sustainable development efforts, and fostering goodwill. But many moments throughout my upbringing shaped the purpose driven rolls I’ve had in my career journey and continue to reinforce the fact that we can personally do good and professionally do well, and vice-versa, with no trade off. “Service above self” was an instructive and inspirational mantra from birth that inspires me to this day.
Can you describe your company’s mission? What societal problems are you solving? What customer problems are you solving?
At PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation, we believe that every individual and community has the potential to thrive and we help feed this potential through our philanthropy, our people and our products. As a large global food and beverage company that creates opportunity throughout our supply chain, we can be positive force for good. As we use water and source crops such as potatoes (Lay’s), corn (Doritos), and oats (Quaker) to make and move great products, we do so knowing that food insecurity, water, scarcity, and income any quality exist in the communities where we live and work.
The three pillars of our social impact efforts are focused on increasing access to nutritious food, safe water and economic opportunity. The Foundation and PepsiCo‘s business teams, work together to ensure our social impact goals are aligned across the organization to deliver positive change for customers, consumers, and the community.
Do you have a big hairy audacious goal for your organization and its impact on the planet?
Our goal at PepsiCo and the PepsiCo Foundation is to create value and drive growth by putting emphasis on sustainability and human capital while we operate within planetary boundaries and inspire positive change for people and the planet.
We have an impact-driven positive agriculture ambition anchored by a goal to spread regenerative farming practices across 7 million acres, approximately equal to our entire agricultural footprint. We estimate the effort will eliminate at least 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by the end of the decade.
We’re also working to increase our global impact for the most amount of people every year. In terms of food security, we’re on a mission to realize zero hunger. To do this, we’ve committed $100 million USD to in positive agriculture and food security initiatives through 2030. We’re also focused on providing safe water access for 100 million people, improving the livelihoods of more than 250,000 people in our agricultural supply chain and sustainably sourcing 100% of our key ingredients.
Can you please describe some of your successes to date?
We’re making substantial progress across all our goals and I’ll share some success particularly from the Foundation’s recent 2023 Global Impact Report. In 2023 alone, the Foundation provided more that 16 million meals on a consistent basis to over 371,000 people, reached more than 450,000 female farmers and members of the community and helped over 10 million people access safe water. Here in the United States, we granted 845 scholarships to underserved students and supported over 1,000 local restaurants and small food and beverage businesses.
How would you describe your business model? How is impact engrained in the business model?
The PepsiCo Foundation’s efforts put people and their communities at the center of our mission as we aim to enable our communities to thrive far beyond our interventions. But our philanthropic funding alone cannot enable lasting impact. In 2024, we are connecting both our existing and new programs to additional resources and organizations to sustain our impact. This includes exploration of co-investment to leverage funding from others with an ultimate goal of unlocking market-based solutions and/or sustainable government funding. And we are emphasizing capacity-building at the local level to sustain ongoing impact.
Together with other actors in the system, we can help drive lasting system change and ensure we are leaving behind the capabilities and structures necessary to sustain impact. To achieve this, we work with over 380 partner organizations and leverage the local expertise of our PepsiCo teams and associates across the globe to deliver solutions with maximized local impact. This approach — delivering localized impact, globally — has allowed us to deliver results at the scale that we have.
Social impact at PepsiCo is defined as the collective positive effects PepsiCo has on people and communities, especially the underserved in communities where we live and work, that happen as a result of our intentional actions, programs, or policies. PepsiCo is on a journey to create “shared value” for all stakeholders — that means positive societal impact and positive value for the business through leveraging PepsiCo’s unique assets and expertise. This is the virtuous cycle necessary to sustain meaningful, lasting impact in our communities around the world.
Can you share an example of an innovative solution your company developed that aligns with your core purpose?
One innovative example I’m especially proud of that aligns with our purpose is our Quaker Qrece® program which has a clinically proven intervention model that has been shown to help prevent and overcome mild and moderate malnutrition in children ages 2–5.
To overcome malnutrition, we created a specialized food based on peanuts, eggs, milk, Quaker Oats and minerals to be distributed free of charge to children with mild, acute or chronic malnutrition. This specialized food is delivered monthly and must be consumed daily for 12 months, during which there is a hygiene and nutrition education program for parents or guardians.
It was clinically demonstrated that the consumption of the specialized food in conjunction with the educational program can prevent and improve nutritional status in preschool-age children.
Many purpose-driven businesses have struggled to achieve growth. What are some of the biggest mistakes purpose-driven businesses make in their business model and approach to selling to customers?
I believe the biggest mistake businesses can make is not embedding purpose into everything they do — from how they lead to their day-to-day operations. Take supply chain for example, at PepsiCo our supply chain is an end-to-end process. We think of this from seed to smile — we source a potato seed from a farmer in our community, plant it, and then go through a multi-step process that eventually leads to a bag of chips in your home that brings a smile to your face. Throughout this process, we’re always thinking about how we use our supply chain to make, move and sell our products in the most efficient, sustainable and affordable way to support the communities we’re sourcing from.
When working with these communities we’re sure to be mindful of their needs, especially if they are facing food insecurity, lack of access to safe water and inequality. By including purpose in our supply chain, we can go one step further to help our communities reverse these issues and create more equitable opportunities while being a positive vehicle for change and transformation.
What does work is being authentic and focusing on end-to-end thinking. Being purpose-led means:
- Being curious, committed, and caring. As a leader looking to bring about change through purpose you must be inquisitive when listening to the needs of a community, be dedicated to staying the course, and be empathetic to the communities you are serving.
- Being intentional and authentic in how you show up, how you involve your employees and how your impact your communities.
- Providing solutions to the issues we think we can add value to.
With the design of your business model, what has allowed your organization to achieve growth and deliver on impact?
For a company of our scale and size, following the community’s lead in specific projects and creating philanthropic models with and through communities — not just for communities — is critical to delivering lasting impact. We’ve been able to achieve growth and deliver on impact with a focus on the totality of our giving by prioritizing high-impact programs, optimizing our giving and investments, coordinating internally and communicating to our target audiences.
We also know that no one company or nonprofit can solve an issue alone, and we must listen to the communities that we aim to serve to ensure our solutions are locally tailored for lasting impact. And we know that the whole of PepsiCo’s global social impact is greater than the sum of its parts. We work together to provide collective insights, investments, influence and impact.
What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Purpose Driven Business Model”?
One, two and three are easy — take a local, leading and lasting approach to having a positive impact on people and communities and to create a successful, purpose driven business model.
Being local is about getting proximate to the issue or challenge by focusing on those with lived experiences and the issue at hand. It involves understanding the unique circumstances, cultural nuances, and pressing concerns, and then tailoring your solutions to directly address those issues in a meaningful and effective way.
Being leading allows you to catalyze others to act with, through and alongside you. Leading alongside others who will bring collaborative value is key.
And being lasting is critical. To drive purpose, you should aim to take a community-based approach that goes beyond short-term projects and ensures you become a trusted long-term partner that is leading systemic change.
And example of utilizing this approach is our work with Didem Esmer, a farmer in Türkiye. Didem has been farming peppers to provide for herself and her children for over a decade and after the earthquake many producers like Didem lost the funding to continue production. But, the PepsiCo Foundation found an opportunity to be local, leading and lasting through a partnership with Anadolu Meralari to develop regenerative agriculture practices in rural Türkiye through a demonstration farm, training modules and resources provided to local farmers. In the first year, we impacted 1,000 and in 2023, we proudly renewed our partnership and reached 400 more like farmers like Didem and their families.
Four is a focus on shared value. Addressing a community’s needs with corporate assets creates a business opportunity and produces value for society by addressing its challenges. An example of this is our PepsiCo Community College program, specifically our SMILE scholarship program. The SMILE program provides scholarships to community college grads transitioning to four-year institutions and provides them with internships and prospective full-time jobs. This program creates a shared value as we are addressing a need in our communities, and in turn find new talent to potentially bring into our business, creating a shared value for success.
And five is the mindset of being top down and bottom up. It’s critical to get alignment from those on the front line and those at the highest level of the organization to ensure everyone is enrolled and sees a pathway to their own success in the strategy. For example, at Pepsico we align to our PepsiCo Positive (pep+) pillars that guide us on our efforts to drive positive agriculture, positive value chains and positive choices.
What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to create a successful purpose-driven business model?
There are three primary areas: results, relevance and relationships.
Focus on results by driving tangible measurable change — move beyond inputs and outputs to outcomes and impact.
Strive for relevance in the needs and challenges of the people you seek to serve. Align your efforts, programs, and initiatives with the specific, real-world problems and priorities of the community or population you are targeting.
Build Relationships by being rational vs. transactional. Prioritize building meaningful, long-term relationships over short-term exchanges. Seek to foster ongoing partnerships where both sides benefit from shared goals and there is continuous dialogue and a sense of commitment. It’s about creating genuine connections and fostering trust that leads to sustained impact.
Can you share a story of a mentor or a leader who inspired you in your journey?
I’m a firm believer in Ubuntu, a South African philosophy meaning “humanity to others.” Its essence is captured in the quotes: “People are people, because of other people” and “I am, because we are.” Thus, it’s hard to focus on any single mentor that has helped shaped my life journey, as there have been many.
I am who I am because of so many people, but one person who comes to mine immediately is Mr. Earl Yates. He was my Peace Corps Country Director when I served in the first group in South Africa in the mid-1990’s. He’s a man of a quiet demeanor, a great listener who embodies the phrase “listen and learn before attempting to lead.” I gained so many things from him serving under his leadership for those two years in South Africa and from the opportunity to periodically seek his advice and counsel over the past 20 years.
A big area of impact of note is on “perspective and reflection.” As Peace Corps volunteers, we often thought about our service, what we were doing there and what difference we were making living and working in far off communities. What Mr. Yates helped us focus on was our perspective and reflection. Our work was often described as volunteering, which came across as very ambiguous, but Mr. Yates encouraged us to think less about our titles and more about being a resource to the communities we were serving. This allowed us to realize we were also international development workers, giving of our time and talents, helping to shape the future of South Africa one village one community at a time. This mental pivot, the reflection and change in perspective, was extremely insightful and gave an enormous amount of confidence to me and my fellow volunteers who had strong desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Earl Yates’ advice and counsel and how he placed importance on reflecting on things beyond current circumstance through multiple perspectives has stuck with me and shape many aspects of my career.
How can our readers further follow your work or your company online?
I post on my LinkedIn @cdglin, and you can also follow @pepsicofoundation on LinkedIn for updates on our ongoing programs. Check out our 2023 Global Impact Report for more information on our impact last year.
This was great. Thanks for taking time for us to learn more about you and your business. We wish you continued success!
About the Interviewer: Russell McLeod is an experienced business leader, social entrepreneur, and mentor. A champion of profit with purpose, the circular economy and of collaboration for positive progress. Russell is the founder of Mightyhum a Toronto-based impact enterprise dedicated to supporting growing organizations. And, while it’s not a requirement, the Mightyhum team has a passion for collaborating with purpose-driven businesses. Mightyhum specializes in providing consulting services and turning hairy audacious concepts into achievable ventures & projects. The Mightyhum team work with C-suite executives and leaders, developing new product offerings, effective go-to-market strategies, building for profitability, and streamlining operations. Before Mightyhum, Russell was involved in the world of social enterprise as the Executive Director of ME to WE, one of Canada’s best known and most awarded social enterprises. While at ME to WE, the team demonstrated that being profitable and impactful was indeed possible. During his tenure, ME to WE delivered $20M in cash and in-kind to WE Charity, helping transform the lives of over 1 million people through access to clean water; the lives of 200,000 children with access to education; and 30,000 women-led businesses launched globally.
Russell’ personal mission is to inspire others that there is ‘a better way to do business,’ ‘that through business we can solve some of the world’s problems at the same time.’ You can follow Russell’s work at https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-mcleod1/ or www.mightyhum.com.
