She will remain as chairwoman of the board of directors until early 2019. Nooyi, 62, will be replaced by Pepsi's (PEP) global operations chief Ramon Laguarta, 54.

Nooyi, who was born in India, is one of a handful of people of color to lead a Fortune 500 company.

She helped turn Pepsi into one of the most successful food and beverage companies in the world. Sales grew 80% during her 12-year tenure. She spearheaded Pepsi's transition to a greener, more environmentally aware company.

Nooyi has been with Pepsi for 24 years. Before becoming CEO, she led the company's expansion through acquisitions, including its 2001 purchase of Quaker Oats. She earned $31 million last year, and $87 million over the last three years, according to company filings.

"Growing up in India, I never imagined I'd have the opportunity to lead such an extraordinary company," she said.

Nooyi grew up in a middle class family in India. When she and her sister were young, their mother challenged them at the dinner table each night to give speeches about what they would do if they were prime minister or another world leader, a Pepsi spokesperson said. After the speeches, their mother would vote.

Her departure leaves only 24 women leading Fortune 500 companies, after Beth Ford became the CEO of Land O'Lakes just last week. Just more than a year ago, there were 32 women leading Fortune 500 companies.

Since the middle of last year, several high-profile female CEOs have announced they were stepping down, including Marissa Mayer at Yahoo, Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelez (MDLZ) and Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

Laguarta, Nooyi's successor, has served as president of PepsiCo since September 2017, overseeing global operations, corporate strategy, public policy and government affairs. Laguarta is also an immigrant, having been born in Spain. He had previously been CEO of the European and sub-Saharan African unit of Pepsi before being named the company's president.

Nooyi's 12 years as CEO is fairly long by standards of the job. A study by Equilar found that the average tenure for a CEO at large companies is only five years.

Nooyi praised her successor, calling him "exactly the right person to build on our success." She also received praise from analysts following her announcement.

"We have had the privilege of knowing Nooyi for over a decade and have been very impressed with her leadership acumen and very thoughtful approach to managing PepsiCo through what has been a period of very choppy waters for broader consumer packaged goods," said Bonnie Herzog, senior analyst at Wells Fargo. "Nooyi has been an exemplary CEO and sets the bar high."

Still, Pepsi's stock lagged the broader market in recent years, and it has trailed rival Coca-Cola (KO). Shares are down 1.8% this year, compared with a nearly 7% rise in the S&P 500 index. Both Coke and the S&P also have slightly outperformed Pepsi during Nooyi's tenure. Shares of Pepsi were slightly higher in early trading.

Americans' growing distaste for sugary sodas has hurt both Coke and Pepsi. In 2014 activist investor Nelson Peltz pushed for Pepsi to spin off its snack business as a separate company. But Nooyi fought calls to break up the company. It turned out to be the right call, according to Neil Saunders, a managing director of GlobalData.

"Nooyi will leave a company stronger than the one she inherited 12 years ago," Saunders said. "It was her insistence on building up and maintaining a strong snack business that was most prescient. With demand for soda under pressure, PepsiCo can now take comfort in the fact that it has a balanced portfolio of products."

Nooyi has stressed the importance of shifting Pepsi toward healthier food and snacks, saying it was important for the company's future because of consumers' increasing attention to health.

She broke the company's offerings into three categories: Fun For You includes traditional, higher-calorie soft drinks and snacks. Better For You includes diet drinks and lower-calorie snacks, such as potato chips that are baked instead of deep-fried. And Good For You includes foods such as Quaker Oats oatmeal, Sabra hummus and Naked Juice smoothies.

In 2010, Pepsi set a goal of tripling sales of its healthiest offerings to $30 billion by 2020. By 2017, sales had grown only 75%, to $17.5 billion.

In 2016, Pepsi revised the goal. It now wants sales growth of healthier products to outpace traditional drinks and snacks by 2025.

-- CNNMoney's Paul R. La Monica and Julia Carpenter contributed to this report.

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The views expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Asian Diversity.

The Department of Justice filed a brief Aug. 30 to support several Asian-American plaintiffs involved with a group called “Students For Fair Admissions” in a racial discrimination case against Harvard University. The DOJ’s actions united the Trump administration with anti-affirmative action activists, who have long claimed that elite Ivy League colleges are denying Asian-Americans admittance on the basis of their race.

The reaction from liberal publications was mixed, but one bizarre critique generated the most buzz: the idea that with this lawsuit Asian-Americans are really just “being used” to advance the causes of white people — because they have become, in fact, much like white people.

An article in The Atlantic suggests the alignment of white activists and Asian-Americans against affirmative action exemplifies a trend provocatively called “whitening” — that is, expanding the white race to “swallow up” other races and assimilate them into the dominant white cultural narrative.

This view has spilled into mainstream culture to become one of the left’s defining narratives of the Asian-American experience. The film “Crazy Rich Asians,” a Hollywood blockbuster released on Aug. 15, includes a scene where a wealthy Singaporean mother insults an Asian-American by calling her a “banana”: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. The implication is that Asian-Americans are just accomplices to white hegemony, not true racial minorities.

Perhaps Asian-American “whitening” makes sense in an identity-politics, white versus minority worldview. After all, if you’re a non-white person who supports the issues the left believes perpetuate white supremacy, you’re supporting the enemy, and therefore, you must want to be like the enemy. Yet such a prognosis is wrong, no matter how much the left wants it to be right.

For one, much of what progressives accuse Asians of doing in “appealing to white tastes,” as The Atlantic article puts it, isn’t so much kowtowing to whites as it is simply fighting for the self-interest of our own race. Asian-Americans fought affirmative action long before white Americans like Abigail Fisher (of Supreme Court fame) came to the forefront. Scholarship focused on Asian resistance to affirmative action has circulated since at least 1995. Our fight against affirmative action is not just about white people — it’s about ourselves, and what we believe the true meaning of “equal protection under the law” should be.

But there’s a larger point here about culture and the way Asian-Americans adopt mainstream American culture and behaviors. Is this culture a “white” culture, one that “swallows up” Asian identity? Progressives would like you to believe so.

But this isn’t true. If you don’t believe me, just turn on your radio. R&B music from artists like Rihanna and Camila Cabello (both from the Caribbean) dominates the airwaves. Manga, a Japanese comic book form, and the Korean martial art Taekwondo are hobbies for many Americans of all races. Hookah, an instrument for vaporizing tobacco popular in the Middle East, has emerged as a popular alternative for Americans who smoke cigars and cigarettes. The trend for Americans is not toward “whitening” but toward a great blend of cultures — and liberals should not resent the Asian-Americans who simply wish to participate.

That doesn’t mean that integrated Asian-Americans are the same as everyone else. Deference to parents is much more important among those of East Asian heritage than among Caucasians. Asian-American (especially Chinese) excellence in education stems back to ancient cultural norms, where civil service exams determined political status. These are long-inherited traditions that distinctly define the Asian-American identity.

Our discourse deserves a radical alternative to progressive “whitening” theory, one that is actually not radical at all, but deeply ingrained in the history of America. It is called the Melting Pot, in which every culture can maintain its distinct identity while contributing to the larger American cultural fabric. Various cultures of all kinds have done this throughout America’s history. The Irish, for example, have integrated fully into the American fabric while maintaining their traditions (likely found at a pub near you). When you immigrate to America, you don’t have to give up your heritage, but you vow to learn a new one as well.

And this is a good thing. According to a 2018 study by The American Sociological Review, U.S. immigrants acclimate to their status as an American faster than immigrants to almost every other country in the world, becoming fully economically adjusted in less than 20 years. Contrast this with countries like Germany and Sweden, where the failure to assimilate immigrants has created almost feudal conditions of social separation between natives and migrants — no-go zones where migrant rule is so strong even the police don’t know to regulate them.

The evidence is clear. America does it better. So when Asian-Americans fall in love with American ideals while maintaining their enthusiasm for their heritage, this isn’t “whitening.” This is the American ideal.

Kenny Xu is a junior mathematics major at Davidson College. He has also written for The American Conservative and Lone Conservative. You can follow his writing on race and culture on Twitter at @kennymxu and on Facebook at @thekennethxu.

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The views expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of Asian Diversity.