HBA Women of Color Wellness Summit

Deepa Purushothaman [per-shot-a-man] is a fierce advocate for women looking to rise on their own terms and a vital advisor to executives and leaders grappling with questions of advancement and retention. Her seasoned and visionary approach to leadership grants individuals and companies the courage and permission to challenge the status quo of ambition, success, and power. 

Deepa spent more than 20 years at Deloitte helping clients transform and grow. She was the first Indian-American woman and one of the youngest people to make partner in the firm’s history. As a Senior Partner, Deepa was the US Managing Partner of WIN, Deloitte’s renowned Women’s Initiative, where she focused on internal advancement programs and marketplace research. 

In 2022, Deepa’s debut book, “The First, The Few, The Only,” was published by HarperCollins to international acclaim and hailed by David Pink as “a category-defining book for the corporate world.” It was one of Financial Times’ best business books, a Next Big Idea Club pick, and an Axiom award winner. 

Deepa’s voice resonates not only with activists and underdogs but also with leaders and corporations. She counts Indra Nooyi, who blurbed her first book; Simon Sinek, who sought her help with programming around inclusion; and Bille Jean King, with whom she partnered on groundbreaking research, as advocates of her work in the world. 

She recently founded “the re.write,” an unconventional think tank advancing a new story of work. Deepa is also an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. She has worked closely with the Aspen Institute, both as a fellow and now as an advisor, to roll out nuance and necessary conversations around the future of talent. She is about to launch a new podcast series with Aspen and EgonZehnder called “The Leadership Rewrite.” Her passion to advance women extend to her board work. Deepa serves as a board member of Avasara, India’s first leadership academy for girls, and the Rutgers University Center for Women in Business. 

As a keynote speaker, Deepa has addressed tens of thousands of people around the world at prestigious organizations such as the United Nations, Disney, Amazon, and Yale. Deepa is a TED and SXSW speaker and has been featured in TIME, PBS, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Harvard Business Review. Her TED talks have over 3 million views. She is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review. 

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. 

Merline Saintil – a software engineer turned Silicon Valley COO and investor who has taken six companies through their IPOs – is an active investor in dozens of companies that are shaping enterprise technology, healthcare tech, and the future of work. 

She is a Fortune 100 board director and is the Lead Independent Director of Rocket Lab (RKLB), a space exploration company. Her role as lead director of this public company is a distinction that only a small number of Black women hold in the world. In addition to her business interests, she is the co-founder of Black Women on Boards, a global organization of 200 executives at market-leading companies who help prepare, place and propel top Black female talent into boardrooms of the most innovative companies. She is also the co-executive producer and producer of OnBoard - a chronicle of the rise of Black women on America's boards and the evolution of board diversity from Patricia Roberts Harris in 1971 to the present day, as seen through the eyes of a group of fearless women. 

Her Carnegie Mellon master’s degree serves her well as an advisor and public board director of several leading technology companies such as GitLab (GTLB), Symbotic (SYM), Evolv Technology (EVLV), and TD Synnex (SNX). 

Prior to her board roles, she was an executive with a proven track record in award-winning products in Fortune 500 and privately held companies, including Intuit, Yahoo, PayPal, Adobe, Joyent, and Sun Microsystems. Merline has enjoyed advising CEOs, led and scaled product development teams in global digital transformations for B2B and B2C companies, and executed M&A integrations and divestitures.  
 

Recognitions, certifications, and contributions include: 

• 2022 Worth Magazine’s Worthy 100 
• 2022 LinkedIn Top Voices in Leadership: The 10 creators to follow in the U.S. 
• 2022 NACD Directorship 100™ 
• 2021 Most Influential Black Corporate Director by Savoy Magazine, 
• 2019 Most Influential Corporate Board Directors by Women’s Inc., 
• Women of Influence 2017 by Silicon Valley Business Journal, 
• Business Insider: #6 of the 22 Most Powerful Women Engineers in the World, 
• Lifetime Achievement Award by Girls in Tech,  
• Contributing writer for the Governance in the Digital Age book published by Diligent Corporation, 
• Board Cybersecurity Oversight by NACD and the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute. 

Outside of her business interests, Merline is passionate about supporting the next generation! She is also a fan of the Stanford Women's Soccer team, which conveniently plays near her home and includes her daughter, an equally ardent computer science student.