Adrienne Mosley Named Top General Counsel Following Strategic Navigation of Corporate Storms at PepsiCo Foods
Adrienne Mosley, the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of PepsiCo Foods U.S., has been recognized as the 2025 DFW General Counsel of the Year for a Large Legal Department, a distinction awarded by the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook. This accolade punctuates a twenty-one-year tenure at the food and beverage giant, highlighting a recent period defined by aggressive acquisition strategies and complex internal restructuring.
Mosley’s rise to the top legal seat for PepsiCo’s U.S. food division—which encompasses powerhouse brands like Frito-Lay and Quaker—was far from a linear ascent through a stable corporate ladder. Instead, her recent promotion to General Counsel occurred during what former colleagues describe as a “perfect storm.” Mosley took the helm amidst a massive restructuring that combined North American food and beverage legal operations, a complete overhaul of the executive team, and a volatile economic environment for the consumer packaged goods sector.
In 2025 alone, Mosley steered the legal strategy for the company’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Siete Foods, a Mexican-American food company, signaling PepsiCo’s aggressive push into heritage-inspired markets. Simultaneously, she managed the legal frameworks for significant rebranding efforts across the Lay’s and Tostitos portfolios. These initiatives required navigating a labyrinth of regulatory compliance, intellectual property hurdles, and supply chain adjustments that often plague multinational food conglomerates.
Despite the celebratory nature of her recent awards, the role of a General Counsel in the modern food industry is fraught with high-stakes challenges that go beyond standard corporate governance. Legal leaders in this sector face increasing scrutiny regarding health claims, data privacy in digital marketing, and the ethical implications of supply chain procurement. Mosley’s background, which includes serving as senior counsel for employment law and leading the Global IT Legal Department without prior privacy law experience, suggests a career built on managing these specialized, high-risk operational pivots rather than remaining in a single legal silo.
Mosley’s foundational experience includes a clerkship for U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. and five years practicing employment law at Morgan Lewis in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania. Her trajectory from an external employment litigator to the strategic legal architect of a multi-billion dollar food portfolio underscores a shift in corporate law, where general counsels are increasingly judged by their ability to drive business growth and navigate crisis management rather than solely by their capacity to mitigate risk.
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