Arguably the most important female marketer in sports, Pepsi president and CEO Dawn Hudson is the keeper of keys to a deep marketing arsenal. Among Pepsi’s sponsorships are NFL and Major League Baseball league and team deals, along with Mountain Dew’s seminal and continuing support of action sports. Hudson is responsible for all functions of the organization’s operations.

She also serves as CEO of the PepsiCo Foodservice Division, which integrates the relevant units of PCNA and Frito-Lay North America – together with Quaker, Tropicana and Gatorade. Rooted in PepsiCo’s “Power of One” principles, PepsiCo Foodservice leverages the scale and breadth of the corporation’s brands to provide a unified voice to its customers and deliver competitive advantage in the fast-growing foodservice and vending channels.

Hudson was promoted to CEO of both PCNA and PepsiCo Foodservice in March 2005 and has been president of PCNA since June 2002. During that period, she has shepherded great innovation and physical volume gains across a broad assortment of carbonated and non-carbonated products. While a strong supporter of innovation, she also has promoted incremental, ongoing growth through greater focus on core brands and activities.

At the same time, Hudson has championed increased scale and interdependence in the vast system of bottlers through which PCNA beverages go to market. She has made a personal commitment to maintaining open and aligned relationships with PCNA’s bottling partners – heightening sales, manufacturing and information technology capabilities to better serve an evolving retail marketplace. Hudson works across the corporation to grow its collective business with PepsiCo’s biggest retail and foodservice customers.

Prior to taking the PCNA helm, Hudson was SVP-strategy and marketing. In that role since 1998, she led channel strategy and marketing, product innovation, R&D, joint ventures and marketplace initiative development. Hudson previously served PCNA as SVP-marketing, flavor brands, new products and joint ventures.

One of the country’s preeminent marketers, she has more than 20 years of strategic brand-building experience behind some of the world’s best-known consumer products. From the “Joy of Cola” to the return of the “Pepsi Challenge,” Hudson has driven PCNA’s efforts to create high-impact, sustainable programs while guiding major advances in its advertising and communications.

She joined PepsiCo in 1996 as executive vice president-sales and marketing for Frito-Lay, where she worked on Rold Gold’s successful “Pretzel Boy” advertising and developed a global campaign for Lay’s Potato Chips.

Before coming to PepsiCo, Hudson was managing director at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in New York. Prior to that, she was one of three managing partners in the New York/Chicago offices of DDB Needham, where she also was director of account management and integrated marketing. Hudson was a partner at TLK in Chicago and a brand manager for Bristol Myers in the early 1980s.

Hudson serves on the boards of the American Beverage Association, LPGA, Lowe’s Corporation and the American Film Institute. In 2005 she was listed among Fortune's “50 Most Powerful Women in Business.” In 2002, she was named “Advertising Woman of the Year” by Advertising Women of New York. She also has won the “B*East” award from District Two of the American Advertising Federation, has been named twice to Advertising Age’s list of “Top 50 Marketers” and has been inducted into the American Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement.

Hudson is sold on sports marketing as one of the best weapons to beat consumers’ growing disaffection for 30-second TV ads. Since Pepsi products are staples for the youthful targets that sports properties also covet, she has influence with many top sports execs.