About.
Economist by training.
Partner by accident.
Researcher by design.
Today Deepa studies the patterns shaping ambition, power, and leadership under pressure.
In Spring 2026, Harvard Business School published a case study on Deepa’s leadership journey, exploring her views on ambition, power, and success and the path that led her to create the re.write and challenge traditional stories about work.
Meet Deepa.
Growing up in a family of economists, Deepa was drawn to understanding why institutions behave the way they do.
She spent more than two decades at Deloitte, rising to Partner and advising C-suite leaders across the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications sectors. She was the first Indian-American woman and one of the youngest people to make Partner in the firm’s history. She later became Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte’s renowned program to recruit, retain, and advance women.
In 2020, a health crisis and burnout forced Deepa to ask new questions. The experience revealed patterns she had been noticing: increasing pressure on leaders, the expectations shaping ambition, and the quiet trade-offs people make to succeed.
Deepa made the defining decision to walk away from the partnership and write a book examining these dynamics. She wrote The First, The Few, The Only.
Her work expanded into research with thousands of professionals on ambition, leadership, and the future of work. Today she serves as an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and is the founder of the re.write, an unconventional think tank advancing a new story of work.
Deepa is a TED and SXSW speaker whose talks have reached more than 3.5 million viewers. Her work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times. A graduate of Wellesley College, Harvard Kennedy School, and the London School of Economics, Deepa serves on boards. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, their spoiled cat, and three equally spoiled dogs.
Deepa’s work examines how ambition, power, and leadership operate inside modern institutions, and how these dynamics shape who advances, cultures evolve, and what leadership looks like under pressure.
