The Biggest Career Advice From 5 Icons Who’ve Made It

In 2016, LinkedIn interviewed a group of global personalities from former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi to actor Priyanka Chopra and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates about their road to success. What emerged were some insights into their ideas and beliefs and sound career advice for the rest of us to follow.

Here is what five personalities had said in LinkedIn’s Career Advice series in 2016:

Indra Nooyi on facing complex situations

Indra Nooyi, a corporate leader of Indian origin, said she becomes a student when faced with complex situations.

“If I go back through my entire career, anywhere where things were too complex, it always came to me,” Nooyi had told LinkedIn.  “Indra, you simplify it first. You tell us how to navigate through this extremely complex problem. That was my skill then. It is today.”

The former PepsiCo CEO added: “Why can I do that? Somebody gives me a complex problem I become a student. I don’t care that I’m CEO, or president, or CFO. I become a student.”

Priyanka Chopra on accepting one’s uniqueness

Indian actor Priyanka Chopra, who has also made a mark in Hollywood, had an important message about accepting one’s uniqueness in a foreign country.

“For people who come like when I was twelve years and the advice that I would give myself is, don’t think that there’s something wrong with you,” she told LinkedIn. “Because when you come into a new country, everyone’s different, everyone talks differently, everyone speaks differently. You have to accept your uniqueness and not think of it as baggage when you come into a new country.”

Bill Gates on “agents of change” science, engineering and economics

Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, advised: “To the degree you like science, engineering and economics, pick as much of that as you have an appetite for because those are the agents of change for all institutions.”

Hillary Clinton on the opportunity she wants everyone to have

“I got out of law school with debt and I had one of these income-based repayment plans,” the former United States secretary of state and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate told LinkedIn. “That’s why I could go to work for the Children’s Defense Fund and make very little money, why I could teach law at the University of Arkansas Law School and make very little money, because I could afford to take a job I wanted to do to pay back my loans as a percentage of that income. I want everybody to have that same chance.

General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt on always improving

Immelt told LinkedIn that one of his personal philosophies is that he can always get better. “I can always improve, I can always learn, I can always get better and people who embrace that, we’re gonna help them,” he added.