Amazon has added former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi to its board of directors. The company announced the move on Monday through an SEC filing.
Nooyi served as CEO of PepsiCo for 12 years, and stepped down October 2018. From 2001 to 2006, Nooyi was the company’s chief financial officer. In addition to sitting on Amazon’s board, she will sit on its audit committee.
Amazon added Starbucks COO Rosalind Brewer to its board earlier this month. With other directors Jamie Gorelik, Judith McGrath, and Patricia Stonesifer, that brings the number of women on the Amazon board to five out of a total of 11, or 45%.
That is an unusually high percentage for the tech industry. Overall, women make up less than a fifth of board members for S&P 500 companies, according to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Multiple studies have shown that having a higher percentage of women on boards has a correlation with better financial performance for businesses. There have been some efforts to bring more women onto boards in the last few years, with 38.3% of newly-named directors being female, according to Quartz. However, that still means it will take years for major corporations to achieve even representation.
