David Novak

David Novak is best known as the co-founder, retired chairman, and CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc., the world's largest restaurant company with more than 45,000 restaurants in over 135 countries and territories. Before his leadership in the restaurant industry, Novak built a career in advertising and consumer marketing. He served as president at KFC and Pizza Hut and held senior management roles at Pepsi-Cola Company, including chief operating officer and executive vice president of marketing and sales. Novak is also credited with the invention of Crystal Pepsi, a clear cola product.

When PepsiCo spun off its restaurant brands, Novak became vice chairman and president of the new company, Yum! Brands, and was later promoted to CEO. During his tenure, Yum! Brands doubled in size to 41,000 restaurants and expanded its global presence, with international profits growing from approximately 20 percent to nearly 70 percent. The company maintained industry leadership in return on invested capital, achieved a compound annual shareholder return of 16 percent, and saw its market capitalization grow to nearly $32 billion from just over $4 billion. Novak attributes much of this success to a people-first leadership philosophy centered on recognition culture, emphasizing genuine, timely recognition as a key leadership tool. He implemented unique recognition programs for employees, such as presenting rubber chickens and cash bonuses at KFC and foam cheese heads at Pizza Hut.

Novak's leadership has been recognized by Chief Executive Magazine as CEO of the Year, by Barron's as one of the world's 30 Best CEOs, by Fortune as one of the Top People in Business, and by Harvard Business Review as one of the 100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World. He received the Horatio Alger Award for his commitment to philanthropy and higher education and became a lifetime member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans. Novak is also the recipient of the UN World Food Program Leadership Award for Yum! Brands' World Hunger Relief effort and the national Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship.

As an author, Novak has written several books on leadership, including the number one New York Times bestseller "Taking People With You," "O Great One!," and "How Leaders Learn." He has donated all proceeds from his books, speaking fees, and his autobiography, "The Education of an Accidental CEO: Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office," to the United Nations World Food Programme. His leadership program was tested over fifteen years on more than 4,000 managers at Yum! Brands, which employs 1.4 million people across 135 countries.

After retiring from Yum! Brands, Novak founded David Novak Leadership, a leadership development company that offers modern team leadership training through online courses, books, and live workshops. He is also the host of the business podcast "How Leaders Lead with David Novak." In philanthropy, Novak and his wife Wendy donated $21.6 million to the University of Missouri's School of Journalism to establish the Novak Leadership Institute, supporting leadership education for future professionals. His other philanthropic initiatives include Lead4Change and Global Game Changers, with Lead4Change recognized as the largest privately funded leadership service program in middle and high schools.