Legendary sales and marketing executive Richard Montañez has spoken before Fortune 500 companies, Ivy League colleges, and even a team of government scientists involved in highly sensitive work.

But Montañez, the featured speaker for NSBA’s National Hispanic Council of School Board Members luncheon during Annual Conference in San Diego on Saturday, greeted attendees as “my kind of audience. I never went to college, but I’m a huge advocate of education,” he said.

Montañez led multicultural sales and marketing as vice president across Pepsi North American divisions before retiring in March 2020. His inspiring journey of growing up on a farm worker camp in California and parlaying a position as a janitor at a Frito Lay manufacturing plant into increasingly senior roles in the Pepsi and the Frito-Lay divisions of PepsiCo, is the stuff of Hollywood legends. In fact, Montañez’s story and his role as the creator of the Flamin’ Hot line of snack products, will soon make its way to movie screens via a biopic from Fox Searchlight Films.

Whether he was working in the fields, the factory, or as an award-winning corporate executive, Montañez says honoring his family’s name was always foremost in his mind; “Do it for your last name. That’s who you are.”
A four-time recipient of PepsiCo’s Chairman’s Award, the highest honor given to employees based on performance and work ethic, Montañez was a dedicated mentor and leader during his 42 years with the company. A sponsor of PepsiCo's Latino and Hispanic employee group, Adelante, Montañez supported and nurtured the careers of hundreds of PepsiCo employees.

His leadership know-how, he said, is rooted in his upbringing. “I learned leadership from the women in my life and from the hood. I’m ghetto,” he says proudly, “but ghetto rich.”

Leaders, he’s learned, fall in two categories: pharaohs, who try to make everyone in their own image, and deliverers, “who come in your life to help deliver who you should be.” The ultimate leader, he says, is the purposeful leader. “A leader who helps others find their purpose.”

As for his role behind a snack innovation that has resulted in a billion-dollar business and a cultural phenomenon, Montañez says, “all you need is one revelation to have a revolution.”