Celebrating WiM's 15th Anniversary - Jana Gessner Shares Her WiM Story

In honor of WiM's 15th anniversary year, we had the chance to talk with Jana Gessner, Senior Vice President, Environmental, Health and Safety at PepsiCo, to honor and share her WiM story. Susanne served as WiM Board Chair in 2024 and has been a strong supporter of women in the manufacturing industry. Read her feature below.

Jana Gessner

Senior Vice President, Environmental, Health and Safety, PepsiCo

WiM Board Chair, 2024

Why is WiM important to you?

As I was looking for an organization that really married my love of manufacturing with finding an organization that has the specific needs of women in manufacturing, WiM was it. I quickly realized after interacting with the WiM folks, as I first got involved, that it really married that love of manufacturing with a group of like-minded women and men. An organization that was looking to share best practices and inspiring stories about how to have a more successful career. And just the interaction with everybody. These are top-notch professional women and men who you can tell right off the bat want to connect and build each other up, and that's very hard to find in a manufacturing setting. I've been in manufacturing my whole career and it's ebbed and flowed from 30 years ago where I was the only woman in the room to now having more women available to be a part of the organization. WiM really married together those two things that I was looking for.

What is a highlight moment or a favorite memory from your time with WiM?

I'd have to say for me, last year, because I was chairman of the board. At SUMMIT last year, at the kickoff meeting when I knew I was going to speak as being the chairman of the board, right before I got up on stage, WiM had a video made for me of all my friends and family who made comments about my career and me being involved in WiM. That got to me. I started crying. It was such a massive connection point to say, wow, you get up on stage and there were 2,000 some ladies and men out there in the crowd, and to think that I am able to impact an organization of that magnitude and all of these different functional areas of manufacturing and all these different types of manufacturing. For me, it was like the pinnacle of my career to be able to say, 'I'm helping lead this major organization and my contributions are affecting other people.' That's so inspiring.

How has WiM affected you personally and professionally?

I feel like it's helped me grow as a human being and as a leader. You know, you get in your day-to-day job, you work for the company that you work for and that company has its own culture. By being a part of WiM with so many different entities of manufacturing and so many different roles — for example, I lead global environmental health and safety, and there's operations, there's HR, there's finance, there's logistics — being able to be around professional women at these high levels outside of PepsiCo, that has helped me grow from an individual to understanding business more, understanding where my role fits, what can I do to be a better leader. So it helps me from a personal perspective, because it helps me leave a legacy. I can take what I've learned in WiM, bring it back into my own team of 650 people, disseminate it, and help raise up all the people, all the ladies, at PepsiCo as well.

How would you describe WiM in one word?

Passion. Make passion for what the agenda is, what the values and the vision of WiM is. Every place you go, you meet people of passion. We all want the same things. The compassion of the collective is to me what is awe inspiring.