PepsiCo chief executive officer Indra Nooyi and journalist and author Fareed Zakaria are among six Indian-Americans named recipients of this year’s Ellis Island Medal of Honor. A total of 88 honorees were announced on March 21. Joining Nooyi and Zakaria are Harman International Industries Chairman and CEO Dinesh Paliwal, cardiologist and a Professor of Cardiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City Dr. Annapoorna S. Kini, Yashvant Patel, Mohan H. Patel, and Pakistani American Dr. Adil Haider.
The National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations – NECO is the sponsor of the Ellis Island Medals of Honor that are presented each year on historic Ellis Island to a select group of individuals whose accomplishments in their field and inspired service to our nation are cause for celebration.
Nooyi has been the CEO at PepsiCo since 2006 and chairman since 2007. She was previously the president and chief financial officer at the company, as well as senior vice president, and senior vice president of corporate strategy and development, reported Connected to India, an online publishing platform serving NRIs and Indian diaspora.
Nooyi has also worked at Asea Brown Boveri, Motorola, The Boston Consulting Group, Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell Ltd. She earned a Bachelor’s from Madras Christian College, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata and a Master’s from Yale University.
Zakaria is the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” as well as a columnist for The Washington Post. He has also served as a columnist at Newsweek, an editor at Newsweek International and editor-at-large of Time.
Paliwal has worked and lived in six countries on four continents, including the United States, China, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, and India. Dr. Kini performs over 1,000 minimally invasive coronary interventions annually (the highest number by a female interventionalist in the United States) with extremely low complication rate, less than 0.5 percent.