Indian-born and educated Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi was a guest at a small dinner last Thursday with Barack Obama and a handful of foreign policy experts and top aides, a source said.
Laura Rozen reported last night on the dinner with experts specializing in Iran and South Asia.
It’s an interesting group, with other guests perhaps slightly to the left of the Clintonite names that have surfaced as likely State Department appointees. The guests at the dinner, convened by former Rep. Lee Hamilton at his Wilson Center, include Samantha Power, still in the mix, if behind the scenes; :Iran scholar Haleh Esfandiari; and Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid.
Nooyi, originally from Chennai, is a former management consultant who didn’t support Obama publicly during the campaign.
Two top Obama security advisors, General Scott Gration and incoming NSC chief General James Jones, were also present.
The suddenly-ubiquitous Wilson Center Mideast scholar Aaron David Miller, mentioned in Rozen’s piece, wasn’t there, I’m told.
