As senior vice president for the global supply chain operations of one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, Rich Beck ’80 has helped advance PepsiCo’s ambitious “Performance with Purpose” agenda. This guiding ethos for strategy and operations strengthens all its businesses, including Pepsi-Cola, Quaker Oats, Frito-Lay, Gatorade and Tropicana, by focusing on three planks: environmental sustainability, human sustainability and talent sustainability.

Beck will present “Performance with Purpose” on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 11:45 a.m. in Waterman's Memorial Lounge as part of the School of Business Administration Dean’s Leadership Speaker Series. 

UVM Today spoke with Beck about his undergraduate experience at UVM, his career, sustainability issues, the business landscape and UVM’s new MBA in Sustainable Entrepreneurship (SEMBA).  

UVM Today: What exactly is “Performance with Purpose?”

Rich Beck: The performance part of Performance with Purpose is about what shareholders and institutional investors that follow our stock look for from us. So the performance side is about growth, market share, earnings per share, return on invested capital, cash flow -- all the things that investors analyze. We’ve announced 10 straight quarters of meeting or beating earnings estimates, so there’s a lot to be proud of on the performance side.

To position PepsiCo for sustainable financial performance for generations to come, Performance with Purpose is our guide. Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s chairman and CEO, introduced Performance with Purpose in 2007. It is PepsiCo’s recognition that the company’s success is linked to society’s success. It’s based on three planks: human sustainability, environmental sustainability and talent sustainability.

Human sustainability is providing a range of foods and beverages from treats, like Lay’s, Doritos, Pepsi and Mountain Dew, to healthy options, like Tropicana, Quaker Oats and Naked Juice. Our environmental sustainability focus is on finding innovative ways to minimize our impact on the environment and lower our costs through energy and water conservation, as well as reduced use of packaging material. Talent sustainability is about developing our employees and investing in the local communities in which we operate.

Have we reached a point where two parts of “Performance with Purpose” are so interconnected that you have to be good at both sustainability and profit to survive?

Yes, they are completely interrelated. On the environmental plank, we’ve had significant progress in lowering our water and energy usage, and if we hadn’t done that it would have cost us hundreds of millions of dollars more to operate our business.  We have also given safe water to three million people and have a goal of doubling that to give safe water resources to six million people in the world. We are a top company in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), which is an indicator of management quality and company quality to investors. There are investment groups now that won’t consider you if you aren’t part of DJSI. We’re also heavily LEED certified, and we’ve won numerous awards including the Stockholm Water Prize, which is the most prestigious award for water management.

The new SEMBA cohort should be well prepared to help companies in both the profit and sustainability arenas when they graduate, assuming they don’t start their own company. Do you think there’s a need for professionals like them at companies around the world?  

There is always a need for great talent and leaders who can deliver business performance. On top of that, sustainability is very important to any company’s success. So the combination of the two is a compelling offering to any enterprise.

There have been fluctuations in the history of sustainability as it relates to business. Have we reached a new era in terms of consumers choosing products based on corporate social responsibility?   

Consumers make choices on the basis of a variety of factors. For many consumers, sustainability is very important, but it does not always win the day. For example, several years ago we introduced a bag for SunChips that you could compost, but consumers did not like the bag because it was too noisy. So I am not sure we are in a new era. I think the key to success is working in partnership with consumers, retail customers and communities to find the win-wins that make for sustainable success. 

How was your experience at UVM?

When I think back on UVM, the combination of the education as well as the development of better social and people skills was really good. I majored in industrial engineering in a program called EMBA, which stood for engineering, math and business administration. I really enjoyed it and had a lot of fun just being around great people and doing interesting things. The Vermont environment was great because the skiing in the winter and the hiking up the Notch in the summer was fantastic. Downtown was great. There was a place called All American Hero and another called Hannibal’s --  they were both located near the original Ben & Jerry’s -- that was great.  I loved UVM. I haven’t been back in over 15 years, so I’m really looking forward to seeing the campus.