Ramon L. Laguarta is the Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo. PepsiCo products are enjoyed by consumers more than one billion times a day in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. PepsiCo generated more than $67 billion in net revenue in 2019, driven by a complementary food and beverage portfolio that includes Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. PepsiCo's product portfolio includes a wide range of enjoyable foods and beverages, including 23 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.
Ramon, a 24-year PepsiCo veteran, has served as CEO since October 2018, and Chairman of the Board since February 2019. As Chairman and CEO, he has begun pivoting the company toward accelerated growth, embracing a new corporate mission—to Create More Smiles with Every Sip and Every Bite—and adopting a new vision that captures PepsiCo’s competitive spirit, intense focus, and shared values: to Be the Global Leader in Convenient Foods and Beverages by Winning with Purpose. “Winning with Purpose” reflects PepsiCo’s ambition to win sustainably in the marketplace and embed purpose into all aspects of its business.
To help achieve these aims, Ramon is positioning the company to become Faster, Stronger, and Better: Faster by being more consumer-centric and investing to accelerate topline growth and winning in the marketplace; Stronger by transforming its capabilities and culture; and Better by continuing to integrate Purpose into its business strategy. As part of this focus on building a Better company, Ramon has spearheaded PepsiCo’s Beyond the Bottle strategy, which aims to offer consumers a range of great-tasting beverages, while making the company’s packaging more sustainable and fueling future growth. This strategy includes Aquafina Water Stations, Pepsi Spire, and the acquisition of SodaStream, the world's leader in at-home sparkling beverage preparation.
Under Ramon’s leadership, the company is also adopting new leadership behaviors that are focused on driving high performance and building competitive advantage. These behaviors include: be consumer-centric; act as owners; focus and get things done fast; voice opinions fearlessly, raise the bar on talent and diversity; celebrate success; and act with integrity.
Prior to becoming CEO, Ramon was President of PepsiCo. In this role, he was responsible for shaping the company’s corporate strategy, working closely with business units to deliver top-line growth, driving productivity to enable this growth, and investing in new areas of disruptive innovation. In this capacity he oversaw PepsiCo's Global Category Groups; its Global Operations, Corporate Strategy, and Public Policy & Government Affairs functions; and the PepsiCo Foundation.
Between 2015 and 2017, Ramon served as Chief Executive Officer of the sector formerly known as Europe Sub-Saharan Africa (ESSA), one of PepsiCo’s most complex businesses, with responsibility for leading the company’s beverage, food and snacks business in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. In that role, he successfully transformed ESSA’s beverage portfolio, developed the company’s juice business, and advanced the company’s sustainability mission.
Prior to serving as CEO of ESSA, Ramon held a variety of positions of increasing responsibility in Europe, including leading the acquisition and successful integration of the company’s dairy business in Russia. Before joining PepsiCo in 1996, he worked for Chupa Chups, S.A., a Spanish leading confectionery company, where he held a number of international roles in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.
In addition to being a member of the PepsiCo Board of Directors, Ramon also currently serves as a director of Visa Inc.
Ramon is a native of Barcelona and holds an MBA from ESADE Business School in Spain and a Master’s in International Management (M&M) from Thunderbird School of Global Management. He and his wife, Maria, are the proud parents of three sons.
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational food and beverage corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company and Frito-Lay, Inc. PepsiCo has since expanded from its namesake product Pepsi to a broader range of food and beverage brands, the largest of which includes an acquisition of Tropicana in 1998 and a merger with Quaker Oats in 2001—which added the Gatorade brand to its portfolio.
