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WOMEN OF COLOR NEED TO SHED MESSAGES THAT DON'T SERVE THEM
I love the person I've become, because I fought to become her.
-Kaci Diane
About
Deepa Purushothaman was a “first” senior partner at Deloitte, where she focused on women’s leadership and inclusion strategies to help women of color navigate corporate structures. She was the first Indian-American woman and one of the youngest people to make Partner in the firm's history.
After leaving Deloitte in 2020, Deepa co-founded nFormation, a company for women of color by women of color. nFormation is a membership-based community for professional women of color, offering brave, safe, new space and helping place women of color in C-suite positions and on Boards.
Deepa is currently writing a book, The Firsts, The Fews and the Onlys: Why Women of Color Need to Redefine Power in Corporate America being published by Harper Collins in Fall of 2021.
Deepa is a Women and Public Policy Program Leader in Practice at the Harvard Kennedy School where she concentrates on research to combat systemic racism in corporate structures to help Women of Color rise.
Deepa has degrees from Wellesley College, Harvard Kennedy School, and the London School of Economics.
Deepa spent over 20 years at Deloitte working with clients on large bet-the-company projects in the Telecommunications and Technology sectors. She spent several years growing Deloitte's Social Impact Practice and served for three years as the National Managing Principal of Inclusion and the Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte's pioneering, globally renowned Women's Initiative. In these roles, she advised Fortune 100 clients on Inclusion strategy and focused on acquiring diverse talent and developing strategies to help the 100,000 employees in the US firm stay, belong, and succeed.
Deepa practices what she preaches. As a founding board member of Avasara, India's first leadership academy exclusively for young women. She has also served on the Board of the San Diego Chamber of Commerce and as a member of the UN WEP’s Leadership Group. Deepa has been featured at national conferences and in publications including Bloomberg BusinessWeek, The Huffington Post, and Harvard Business Review.
She and her husband Manoj live in Los Angeles with their four dogs. She has a garage full of power tools and when she's not working or writing, you're likely to find her hanging drywall in a house she's renovating.