Roberto Azevêdo is Executive Vice President, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at PepsiCo. In his role, Azevêdo oversees Public Policy and Government Affairs, Communications, and The PepsiCo Foundation, while also working closely with the Sustainability team. His areas of focus include solidifying PepsiCo’s engagement with national and international governments, regulators, international organizations, and non-governmental stakeholders, all of which is informed by his political skills and technical knowledge of the complex social, political, and regulatory environments impacting companies like PepsiCo. He assumed the role in September 2020.
Prior to joining PepsiCo, Azevêdo worked as a career diplomat, most recently serving as Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since 2013. During his tenure, the WTO expanded its membership with the inclusion of half a dozen new members and worked to improve the service the WTO provided to members. He also delivered the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement, and decisions on food security, in addition to eliminating agricultural export subsidies, and enabling more goods and services exports from least developed countries. Under his tenure, new and creative platforms allowed the launching of negotiations on e-commerce, facilitation of investments and domestic regulation of services.
Before that, he was Brazil's Ambassador to the WTO, and he has held several posts in the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, including roles overseeing Economic and Technological Affairs and Dispute Settlement, where he was Brazil’s chief litigator in WTO disputes. He first joined the Brazilian Foreign Service in 1984.
Azevêdo graduated from the University of Brasilia with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He also holds a degree on diplomacy from the 'Instituto Rio Branco', the graduate school run by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations. He and his wife have two daughters and five granddaughters. Azevêdo is based in Purchase, N.Y.