“I Could Work 16 Hours a Day and Not Have It Affect Me… I Thought”

We don’t always immediately see the ways that anxiety, trauma, or institutional inequities show up for us - and our bodies - at work. Deepa Purushothaman began her career as a classic overachiever, until she couldn’t physically do it anymore. She was done “ingesting” toxic work culture and “acting in” her emotions, as she puts it. She came to realize a lot of the ways that corporate America can be toxic for women of color in particular, and she set out to change that.

Purushothaman is the cofounder of nFormation, and she wrote the book The First, The Few, The Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America.