Athina Kanioura

Chief Executive Officer, Latin America Foods and Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer PepsiCo

Last Reviewed: October 3, 2026

Executive Summary

Athina Kanioura runs two jobs at PepsiCo. Since December 2025 she has been chief executive of Latin America Foods, overseeing the region’s operating units, and since 2020 she has been chief strategy and transformation officer, responsible for company strategy, digitalization, company-wide transformation and PepsiCo’s data products, platforms and talent. An econometrician with a PhD from the University of Sheffield, she spent 15 years at Accenture building its applied intelligence practice and finished as its chief analytics officer. Her move from strategy into running a region is notable: PepsiCo gave operating responsibility to an executive whose background is data science rather than consumer goods.

Career Highlights

• Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo Latin America Foods since December 2025.
• Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer of PepsiCo since 2020.
• Chief Analytics Officer and Global Head of Applied Intelligence at Accenture, 2019 to 2020.
• Global Data Science Lead at Accenture, 2017 to 2019.

Professional Journey

Kanioura earned a PhD in econometrics and quantitative economics at the University of Sheffield, and has held lectureships at UMIST, Imperial College London and Sheffield, according to her PepsiCo biography.

She joined Accenture in 2005 and spent 15 years there, as global marketing and commercial analytics lead, running sales and customer analytics globally, and from 2017 as global data science lead. From 2019 to 2020 she was chief analytics officer and global head of Applied Intelligence, a function PepsiCo says she grew from a subspecialty into a global group. Her client work spanned telecoms, oil and gas, financial services and consumer goods, including companies such as Mondelez, Unilever and P&G.

She joined PepsiCo in 2020 as executive vice president and chief strategy and transformation officer, overseeing strategy for the company and its key markets, its digitalization strategy and company-wide transformation focused on profitable growth and cost efficiency, along with data products, platforms and talent.

In December 2025 she added the role of chief executive of PepsiCo Latin America Foods, overseeing the operating units of the LatAm Foods region, which PepsiCo says is innovating with digital-first solutions and AI. PepsiCo sells food and beverages in more than 200 countries and territories through six reportable segments and employed about 306,000 people at the end of 2025, according to its annual report. She is a member of the Royal Statistical and Economics Society and sits on the board of the Institute of Marketing Sciences. PepsiCo’s 2025 annual report lists her among its nine executive officers.

Education

University of Sheffield

Doctor of Philosophy, Econometrics and Quantitative Economics