We’re so excited to kick off our summer book club with this amazing book: The First, The Few, The Only. When we interviewed Deepa for this episode, we remember being so excited to talk to her about this book because, while we’ve talked about a lot of books written for White people to learn more about race and racism, it’s not often that we come across business books that are written specifically for women of color. In fact, women of color still seem largely invisible in many ways in the workforce - but we’re absolutely not.

 

So get ready to lean in (but maybe not in the way that you’re used to hearing that phrase) and reimagine what a truly inclusive workplace could and should look like, from a perspective that you may not be hearing in your own. And, if what you hear is something you’d like to dive deeper into (we hope so!), please pick up the book and read it for yourself. We’d love to hear your thoughts once you do.

 

What to listen for:

• How this book is different from one written for white women

• Defining the term “woman of color”

• Five archetypes that many women of color take on in their places of work – do you recognize any of your colleagues?

• The view of solutions and the new rules of power – can we change the current structures of society, or do we need to break the system to start again?

About Deepa Purushothaman [per-shot-a-man], AUTHOR | LEADER | SPEAKER

Deepa is a former senior executive and a corporate inclusion visionary. She challenges and redefines the status quo of leadership, success, and power by centering the experiences of Women of Color.

As a senior partner at Deloitte, Deepa spent more than 20 years helping clients grow. She was also the US Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte's renowned Women's Initiative, and was the first Indian-American woman and one of the youngest people to make partner in the firm's history.

In 2020, Deepa left Deloitte  to co-found nFormation, a membership-based community for professional Women of Color. She is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School, and a board member of Avasara, India's first leadership academy for girls.

The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, Deepa’s debut book, was published by HarperCollins in 2022 to international acclaim. 

Deepa is a TED and SXSW speaker and has been featured in  TIME, PBS, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review. Her TED talks have almost 3M views. 

She has degrees from Wellesley College, Harvard Kennedy School, and the London School of Economics, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their four fur kids.

 

CONNECT WITH DEEPA

Website: www.deepapuru.com

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