When Ronald Connor first began at Pepsi, it was expressed by a manager that he would grow to be a force within the company. His manager was right.

Starting at Pepsi in 1996, at the age of 22, Ronald stocked shelves and packed coolers. He continuously moved up the company ranks, being promoted once every two years. Now as the unit sales manager for Pepsi’s Frederick, Maryland location, Ronald has 56 workers – a team that distributes 2.5 million beverages in the surrounding county areas.

“I’m very grateful for the mentors I’ve had throughout the years. It’s not all about what you can do – it’s about what you can teach people to do,” said Ronald.

PepsiCo’s Vice President of Global Design and Development for Nutrition Ventures, Dr. Dondeena Bradley, feels very fortunate to be living in New York City. It gives her the opportunity to live out her and PepsiCo’s commitment to health, wellness and nutrition. In passing her corner market every morning, she is presented with countless, colorful fruits and vegetables. It’s something PepsiCo emulates with its organic garden located directly on campus. Dondeena says this passion for affecting people is what drew her to PepsiCo.

“My job is about bringing health and nutrition into the everyday lives of consumers around the world. One of the things we’re striving to do is to make our calories the best calories on the shelf,” said Dondeena.

As a nearly four year employee from Southern California who started as a Route Salesman, Christian made the move to Arizona and now manages a shift of nearly 75 people.

Christian’s dedication to Rise, PepsiCo’s Native American affinity group, and his passion for environmentalism drove him to becoming a key player in helping the Sun Chips facility achieve LEED certification (Leadership in Energy Environmental Design) – not an easy feat for a 25-year-old plant.

Under Christian’s leadership, the facility was retro-fitted to achieve zero landfill and was also the fastest to achieve LEED

Richard Lawrence began his career with PepsiCo in the United Kingdom with the Walkers brand. Later, his involvement with the launch of the Naked Juice Products in the UK opened the door to new possibilities abroad.

Based in Bangkok, Thailand, Richard serves as Marketing Manager for Snacks in the Asia-Pacific division of PepsiCo. He recognizes that the way he grew up doing things in Western Europe isn't necessarily the way things may work in Japan, Korea, Pakistan, and the Philippines. "A big part of my job is just being curious about the world and the countries that we go to," he said.

As a Project Manager at Quaker Oats in The Netherlands, Helen understands the meaning of "keep your eye on the prize." Day-to-day, she collaborates with a team of food technologists to create new and improved products in the lab. The ultimate gratification, she says, is seeing the product she has helped develop turn up on the grocery store shelf and knowing how much hard work went into it.

Helen's passion and work ethic extends beyond her job, and she has more than 20 national medals in track to prove it. Rather than joining co-workers for lunch, she's more often found lacing up her running shoes and heading outdoors to train, all in hopes of making it to the Olympics.

For Ricardo, PepsiCo has not only provided a career path, it has guided him down a life path. Fifteen years after joining the company at age 25, he was asked to move from his home country of Brazil to Buenos Aires to take on a regional Chief Financial Officer role.

Now, Ricardo's managing four different countries in South America with four different currencies, learning about new cultures, and gaining valuable, enriching life experiences alongside his wife and children. Despite the vast differences, sharing the expat experience with his family has helped to bring them closer together.

How do you keep pace with one of the fastest growing economies? Juliana Grizzi, a supply chain project leader in PepsiCo’s Brazil office is answering this question while taking on the challenge to improve the region’s increasingly complex supply chain and distribution process. She’s looking at how food and beverage products are being distributed to figure out the best, most creative and effective way to get customers and consumers what they want.

“I get to take the big picture – the lifespan of a product – and oversee in detail how it functions in the world. Then I get to recommend ways we could do it better.”

Perusing an open air fruit market in Moscow, Kristina Rossova sees and smells possibilities everywhere. As part of PepsiCo’s research and development team, she oversees the creation of fruit and vegetable products for regions including Greece, Turkey, Romania, and the Ukraine. It’s actually part of her job to notice that apples are in season, ripe and ready to go into a PepsiCo apple juice product.

Kristina is highly attuned to the tastes and traditions of developing markets and how local foods may translate into to a new flavor or product. Before focusing on fruits and vegetables, she worked in PepsiCo’s Snacks division developing unique region-specific flavors for Lay’s potato chips – Red Caviar and Mushroom & Sour Cream chips both became hits in the Russian market.