Top left, Rachel Ferdinando; top right, Cara Keating. Bottom left, Mike Del Pozzo; bottom right, Brett O’Brien
The North American divisions of PepsiCo – Frito-Lay North America (FLNA), PepsiCo Beverages North America (PBNA) and Quaker Foods North America (QFNA) have announced several key leadership changes that will take effect July 1st, including a new president of PepsiCo Foods Canada (PFC), a new president of the Gatorade Performance Portfolio within PBNA, and new chief customer and chief marketing officers at FLNA.
Rachel Ferdinando, currently chief marketing officer for Frito-Lay U.S., will join the PepsiCo Foods Canada organization as president, backfilling Cara Keating. Ferdinando will oversee PFC HR, finance, customer development, field sales, marketing, supply chain, IT, R&D, foodservice and transformation. Ferdinando’s five-year PepsiCo career has focused on end-to-end marketing leadership and portfolio transformation and builds on a multi-decade career across global category and sector leadership as well as general management. Before joining PepsiCo in 2017, he was vice president and global sector leader for family care at Kimberly-Clark Corp. She has also held various global marketing and general management leadership roles at GlaxoSmithKline.
Cara Keating, current president of PFC, is joining the FLNA business as chief customer officer, backfilling Mike Del Pozzo. In her new role, Keating will lead the sales function overseeing strategy, sales planning and commercialization for Frito-Lay’s U.S. customer sales organization, with responsibility for retail, e-commerce, PepsiCo Customer Teams, Hispanic Business Unit, and Foodservice businesses. Keating, an 18-year PepsiCo veteran, has a wealth of critical experiences in various geographies and general management, customer insights, field and customer leadership roles. Since joining PepsiCo in 2004, she has served in progressively senior roles in customer development and field leadership across Canada.
Mike Del Pozzo, currently chief customer officer (CCO) of Frito-Lay U.S., will be returning to PBNA as president and general manager of the Gatorade Performance Portfolio, which includes Gatorade, Propel, Muscle Milk, Evolve and current and future innovation portfolio. Del Pozzo’s 20-year PepsiCo career has included many leadership roles across the business. Prior to his current role as CCO of Frito-Lay U.S., Del Pozzo was senior vice president, Commercial Planning across PBNA, having responsibilities over revenue management, e-commerce, and innovation planning and governance. He has the unique distinction of having worked across all PepsiCo business units, including PBNA, QFNA, FLNA and PepsiCo global.
Brett O’Brien, the current general manager and senior vice president of the Gatorade Performance Portfolio (GPP), will succeed Ferdinando as the Frito-Lay U.S. chief marketing officer. For more than a decade, O’Brien has led the Gatorade and Propel brands, and has grown the portfolio to now include Muscle Milk, Evolve and other breakthrough innovation that addresses the needs of athletes. Since joining PepsiCo in 2001, O’Brien has held marketing roles across juice, energy, lifestyle programming and Pepsi Music.
