Videos
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Writing Your Story of Success -
Finding Your Superpower in Moments of Pressure
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Redefining the Story of Work
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Finding Our Power
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Shed Inspires
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Cornell 2
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Entrepreneur Women Who Inspire
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HBR
Learn More About Deepa Purushothaman
Leadership today unfolds under conditions few organizations or leaders have experienced before. AI, rapid technological change, economic uncertainty, and heightened expectations for leaders are reshaping how decisions get made and how power moves through organizations.
“More and more, it feels like nothing is linear and certainty is a luxury,” says Deepa Purushothaman. “Leadership now requires holding competing truths, making decisions without perfect information, and staying grounded when pressure, scrutiny, and ambiguity collide.”
Economist by training, partner by accident, and researcher by design, Deepa spent more than two decades at Deloitte helping leading technology, telecommunications, and media companies navigate transformation, growth, and change. She became the first Indian American woman and one of the youngest partners in the firm’s history, later serving as the US Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte’s renowned Women’s Initiative.
In 2026, Harvard Business School published a case study examining Deepa’s decision to leave her corporate career, launch the re.write, and challenge traditional assumptions about ambition, power, and success. The case, Deepa Purushothaman: Rewriting the Rules of Ambition, Power, and Success, was developed for a class titled Change Agents.
Today, Deepa examines how pressure changes decision-making, how influence and authority operate inside organizations, and what gets rewarded in moments of uncertainty. Drawing on her own research, interviews with thousands of leaders, and firsthand experience advising senior executives, she helps leaders better understand the unspoken assumptions shaping modern workplaces.
“My work is about pattern recognition,” explains Purushothaman. “I help leaders see how power and influence move, what behaviors organizations reward, and who gets positioned to lead in high-stakes moments. I understand those pressures because I’ve lived them.”
Deepa is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. She is also the Founder & CEO of the re.write, an unconventional think tank examining the stories, systems, and assumptions shaping women, power, and work.
Her ideas and research have appeared in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, TIME, PBS, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. She also co-hosts Egon Zehnder’s CEO Compass podcast, featuring conversations with CEOs on leading in uncertain times. Her TED Talks have garnered more than 3.5 million views, and she has spoken to audiences around the world including TED, the United Nations, Amazon, Salesforce, Pfizer, and SXSW.
She serves as a founding board member of Avasara, India’s first leadership academy for girls, and on the board of the Rutgers University Center for Women in Business. She also advises the Aspen Institute on leadership and emerging trends at work.
Leadership Under Pressure: What the Patterns Reveal
Organizations today are navigating levels of volatility, scrutiny, and change that are reshaping how leadership operates in real time. Drawing on research with more than 350 global leaders and her experience advising senior executives, Deepa examines how these forces create intense pressure points for leaders.
Her work explores what leadership looks like when clarity is limited and teams are searching for stability. In these moments, leaders must act quickly, balance competing priorities, and make decisions that reveal both their judgment and their leadership style.
“Under pressure, organizations tend to default to old habits,” Deepa shares. “The challenge for leaders is learning how to navigate uncertainty without losing judgment, trust, or the ability to bring people with them.”
Through keynotes and advisory work, she helps leaders navigate high-pressure moments with greater clarity, make stronger decisions with imperfect information, and build trust and credibility across teams.
Sustainable High Performance: Ambition Without Burnout
Research suggests people remain deeply ambitious, but definitions of ambition are changing as the demands of leadership expand. Today’s leaders are expected not only to deliver results, but also to manage conflict, navigate uncertainty, and support teams through constant change shaped by layoffs, AI, and evolving work cultures.
Drawing on research with more than 500 senior leaders conducted in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Business School, Deepa examines the expectations shaping modern leadership, including constant availability, emotional labor, responsiveness, and the pressure to sustain performance with fewer resources and more complexity.
Many of today’s workplaces reward visibility, endurance, and constant availability while overlooking the long-term costs those expectations place on leaders and teams.
Deepa helps organizations reset expectations, protect focus, strengthen leadership capacity, and build healthier cultures that support long-term resilience, sustained high performance, and stronger leadership over time.
Women, Power, and the Hidden Rules of Advancement
Women have made progress at work. But the hidden rules shaping who rises, who stalls, and who is recognized still hold too much power.
“Too many leadership models still ask women to shape-shift to get ahead,” says Deepa. “I’m interested in what becomes possible when organizations expand their definition of leadership and women no longer feel pressured to compromise the qualities that make them powerful leaders.”
Deepa’s research draws on interviews with more than 5,000 women leaders.
Her most recent work explores how emerging workplace shifts, including AI, evolving leadership expectations, and rising performance pressures, may amplify many of the invisible dynamics women already navigate at work.
Through keynotes and presentations grounded in storytelling, research, and case studies, she helps women rethink leadership, ambition, and advancement in workplaces that continue to evolve around them.
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Deepa Purushothaman is the Founder & CEO of the re.write, an unconventional think tank examining the stories, systems, and assumptions shaping women, power, and work. She is also an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School.
Purushothaman spent more than 20 years at Deloitte helping leading technology, telecommunications, and media companies navigate transformation, growth, and change. She became the first Indian American woman and one of the youngest people to make partner in the firm’s history, later serving as the US Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte’s renowned Women’s Initiative.
In 2022, Purushothaman’s debut book, The First, the Few, the Only (Harper Business), was published to international acclaim. It was named a Financial Times best business book pick and won multiple awards.
In 2026, Harvard Business School published a case study on Purushothaman’s decision to leave her corporate career, launch the re.write, and challenge traditional assumptions about ambition, power, and success. The case, Deepa Purushothaman: Rewriting the Rules of Ambition, Power, and Success, was developed for a class titled Change Agents.
Her ideas and research have appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review, TIME, PBS, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. She is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and co-hosts Egon Zehnder’s CEO Compass podcast, featuring conversations with CEOs on leading in uncertain times.
As a sought-after keynote speaker and advisor, Purushothaman has spoken to audiences around the world, including TED, the United Nations, Amazon, Salesforce, Pfizer, SXSW, Harvard Business School, and Yale. Her TED Talks have garnered more than 3.5 million views.
She serves as a founding board member of Avasara, India’s first leadership academy for girls, and on the board of the Rutgers University Center for Women in Business. She also advises the Aspen Institute on leadership and emerging trends at work.
Purushothaman has degrees from Wellesley College, Harvard Kennedy School, and the London School of Economics.
Deepa Purushothaman is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Leadership Under Pressure: What the Patterns Reveal
Leadership today is increasingly tested in high-stakes moments when scrutiny, speed, and competing expectations collide. AI, rapid technological change, economic uncertainty, and heightened expectations for leaders are reshaping how decisions get made and how trust is built.
Drawing on research with more than 350 global leaders and her experience advising senior executives, Deepa examines how these forces create intense pressure points for leaders.
Her work explores what happens when clarity is limited, teams are searching for stability, and leaders must make decisions without perfect information. In these moments, leaders make choices that reveal both their judgment and their leadership style.
Audiences leave with practical ways to make sound decisions, communicate with confidence, and guide teams through volatility while building trust and credibility under pressure.
Sustainable High Performance: Ambition Without Burnout
Organizations need high performance, but sustaining ambition without burnout has become one of the central leadership challenges of modern work.
Research suggests people remain deeply ambitious, but definitions of ambition are changing as the demands of leadership expand. Today’s leaders and managers are expected not only to deliver results, but also to manage conflict, navigate uncertainty, and guide teams through volatility shaped by layoffs, AI, and evolving work cultures.
Drawing on research with more than 500 senior leaders conducted in collaboration with researchers at Harvard Business School, Deepa examines the expectations shaping modern leadership: constant availability, emotional labor, responsiveness, and the pressure to sustain performance with fewer resources and more complexity.
Audiences leave with practical ways to reset expectations, protect focus, strengthen leadership capacity, and build healthier cultures where ambition and performance can last.
Psychological Safety and Speaking Up at Work
Organizations perform better when people feel able to speak up, challenge assumptions, and raise concerns before small problems become costly failures.
Many organizations say they value open dialogue, yet speaking up can feel difficult in a workplace climate shaped by pressure, scrutiny, and fear of getting it wrong. Drawing on case studies where communication broke down, from missed warnings to failed launches and reporting failures, Deepa examines why people often comply or stay silent even when they see problems emerging.
She explores how psychological safety shapes whose voices are heard, whose ideas are recognized, and who ultimately advances. She also examines what leaders can do to build teams where people feel able to question assumptions, share dissenting perspectives, and surface risks early.
Audiences leave with practical ways to encourage speaking up, surface hidden risks, and create teams where better ideas, stronger decisions, and fewer preventable failures emerge.
Women, Power, and the Hidden Rules of Advancement
Women have made progress at work. But the hidden rules shaping who rises, who stalls, and who is recognized still hold too much power.
Despite decades of attention to advancing women at work, the path to leadership remains narrow. Research shows that women often feel pressure to adapt to fit in. They are expected to be confident but not threatening, ambitious but not self-promoting, collaborative but not overlooked.
Too many leadership models still ask women to shape-shift to get ahead. These hidden rules shape who is seen as ready, whose leadership is trusted, whose ideas are recognized, and who ultimately advances.
Drawing on insights from The First, The Few, The Only, research published in Harvard Business Review, and interviews with more than 5,000 women leaders, Deepa explores the invisible dynamics shaping women’s advancement in modern workplaces.
Her most recent work examines how emerging workplace shifts, including AI, may amplify the hidden dynamics women already navigate at work.
Audiences leave with a clearer understanding of the hidden rules shaping women’s advancement and practical ways to rethink leadership, ambition, and power in workplaces that continue to evolve around them.
Defining Leadership Moments
Leadership trajectories are rarely shaped by grand strategy alone, but by defining moments when ambition, values, and uncertainty collide.
Across two decades advising global leaders and rising to partner at Deloitte, Deepa observed a pattern: careers are often shaped by a small number of defining leadership moments. Drawing on her research on trailblazing leaders and a 2026 Harvard Business School case study, Deepa Purushothaman: Rewriting the Rules of Ambition, Power, and Success, she explores the choices leaders face when competing priorities and personal values intersect.
This session helps leaders examine how they navigate moments of tension, transition, and consequence, especially when success, alignment, ambition, and identity begin to pull in different directions.
Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of how defining moments shape influence, credibility, and long-term impact, along with a clearer framework for making complicated choices.
The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America
(Harper Business, March 2022)
“Combined data, examples, and insight to make a compelling case for how organizations can rethink the future of work. The conversation resonated widely across our audience.”
“The conversation opened up meaningful dialogue for our leadership team, and demand for the recording started almost immediately after the session.”
“Delivered exactly what our leaders needed to hear. The session sparked meaningful reflection across the group.”
“Encouraged our teams to engage in the conversations that are often difficult but necessary, leaving people ready to act.”
“Adds real value to the conference experience. Creates continuity across sessions and keeps audiences engaging with the ideas beyond the talk.”
“One of the programming highlights of the year.”
Praise for "The First, the Few, the Only"
“'The First, The Few, The Only' is a deeply personal call to action, encouraging readers to learn and feel seen from its stories and messages.”
“The rare book that can simultaneously make professionals of color feel seen and give white male colleagues a comprehensive education.”
"Deepa’s firsthand experience as a senior executive, combined with the stories of the influential women she spoke with, has yielded a powerful collective narrative that business leaders would be wise to study closely in their quest not only to recruit and retain the top talent, but also to lead with empathy and understanding."
“A category-defining book for white colleagues, managers, and leaders at all levels of the corporate world. Deepa examines the limiting ideas that businesses often still carry about what power and leadership look like, and how that definition leaves many behind. In a world where success is often presented as a singular path, we need books like this to show us all that leadership takes many forms and has many voices.”
