The board of directors of PepsiCo on Monday announced that it has elected CEO Indra K Nooyi, 51, as chairman of the board too, effective from May 1.

The current chairman Steven S Reinemund, 58 retires on May 2, as he had announced last August.

Nooyi, who assumed the position of CEO of the more than $32 billion global convenient food and beverage company in October, will thus become the fifth chairman and CEO and the first woman in PepsiCo's 42-year-old history, following Reinemund (2001-2006), Roger A Enrico (1996-2001), Wayne D Calloway (1986-1996) and Donald Kendall (1971-1986). Herman W Lay served as PepsiCo's first chairman from 1965-1971), while Kendall served as chairman.

Nooyi, who joined PepsiCo in 1994 and directed the company's strategy for over a decade and was the primary architect of PepsiCo's restructuring and transformation, including the merger with Quaker Oats and the acquisition of Tropicana, and was instrumental in pushing for the addition of some of the world's strongest health and wellness brands to PepsiCo's portfolio, said, "I'm incredibly honored by the board's confidence, and extraordinarily fortunate to follow in the footsteps of Steve Reinemund and all my illustrious predecessors."

In the statement released by the company, Nooyi added: "PepsiCo is on a sound strategic course with solid momentum thanks to Steve's leadership, and along with every PepsiCo associate, I'm looking forward to building on the lasting legacy credited to him, Roger, Wayne, Don, and Herman."

Reinemund said: "PepsiCo is in extraordinarily gifted and capable hands."

He noted that Indra's record of transformational leadership is second-to-none.

He predicted that Nooyi "and her team will take this great company to an unprecedented level of success, and I look forward to continuing to cheer their continuous achievements."

While PepsiCo Inc. is ranked 61st currently on the Fortune 500, according to the Catalyst organization, Nooyi ranks Number 2 among the top 10 female CEOs of the biggest Fortune 500 American companies, and is second only to Patricia A Woertz, the chief of Archer Daniels Midland Company, which is number 56 on the Fortune 500 list.