This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Deepa Purushothaman, a 51-year-old founder and author in Los Angeles who previously worked at Deloitte. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I joined Deloitte after graduate school in 1999 as a senior consultant. I’d been recruited out of the Harvard Kennedy School and thought I’d spend a year or two in the private sector before entering politics or policy in DC.
Twenty-one years later, I was still there and had become a partner. I was at the height of my career — then my health caused me to come crashing down.
I worked long hours at Deloitte
Looking back, my superpower wasn’t that I was smarter than anyone else; it was that I could outwork almost anyone.
I advanced quickly within the firm, becoming a partner at the age of 34. Becoming a partner at Deloitte was deeply meaningful, both professionally and personally. I grew up in a home where arranged marriage was often discussed, and early on, I believed a big career would save me and set me free.
Yet, I never saw myself there forever. I was one of the only non-MBAs in my cohort, and I often felt like an odd duck who would eventually go on to something else.
In 2014, I married my husband, who was also a Deloitte partner at the time, and I relocated from Washington, DC, to San Francisco. I transitioned from telecom to tech within the firm. The hours ramped up: 100-hour weeks, leaving at 4 or 5 a.m. for the client site and getting home near 1 a.m., a routine that went on for months.
My health took a hit
The symptoms started small: headaches, rashes, constant infections, stomach issues, and adrenal fatigue. At the height of my symptoms, I got shingles multiple times. I saw 15 doctors. The 15th one, a rheumatologist, finally diagnosed me with late-stage Lyme disease, likely latent since my New Jersey childhood and triggered by extreme stress.
In 2019, I took a leave of absence and spent eight months in bed. I developed full neuropathy, losing feeling from my elbows down to my knees. It was an extremely severe situation.
I’d always had a question about purpose, given my background in policy and politics, and my health crisis became a kind of reckoning.
Eventually, I realized I couldn’t go back, and I officially left the company in May 2020.
Leaving at the partner level after 21 years was odd; I had worked so hard for it. But I had to ask a different question: If success doesn’t include health, is it really success?
I sold a book and started new ventures, but my health suffered again
Before I got really sick, I’d started organizing gatherings of women, in some ways looking to answer my “purpose” question. In one of those gatherings, a CFO of a public company said, “I sit in a seat of power and I don’t feel powerful.” I felt that way too, and I wanted to study that.
Six weeks after I left Deloitte, I sold a book, The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America, to HarperCollins. Over the next two years, I interviewed 500 senior-level women of color for the book and spoke on hundreds of corporate stages about the importance of inclusion.
In 2020, I launched nFormation, a vetted membership community for women of color, and in November 2023, I became an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.
The book was released in March 2022, and from then until 2024, my days were packed; I was running my company, hosting space for senior women leaders, writing articles, doing interviews, speaking on corporate stages, and meeting individually with women who reached out for support. I sometimes had as many as six speaking engagements in a single day during the book tour.
At times, it felt as intense as Deloitte. I believed the success of the book was tightly tied to the hours I worked and the number of things I said yes to. I approached it as if I were launching a major client project.
With all the intensity of my book tour, I fell ill again; I got mono three separate times that year, and my Lyme symptoms crept back in.
That forced another reset; there was so much coming at me that I had to really figure out what I wanted to do and not just say yes to all the opportunities.
I had to rethink my approach to work and care for my health
First, I paused my 1:1 coaching work. I needed to learn how to support women without absorbing their energy or taking on more than I could handle.
Then I focused on deep spiritual work, worked with coaches and therapists to set both real and energetic boundaries, and rediscovered joy.
In 2024, my cofounder and I shut down n2formation, and I started re.write, a think tank focused on rethinking how we work.
Knock on wood, I haven’t been sick since early 2024. My Lyme disease feels under control, and I’ve learned how to recognize my limits. It’s chronic and will always be something I manage, but I’m much better at seeing the signs and knowing when to slow down.
I worried at first if I made a mistake leaving
At first, leaving Deloitte was hard. Work had been my identity and my measure of worth for decades. For the first few years, I kept looking back, wondering if I made a mistake.
Now I know, I didn’t lose anything.
I gained and grew. My reach and impact are greater than they ever were within one organization. My network is stronger, my voice carries further, and I know I’m on the right path.
And when I forget, my community reminds me through a note or a request, reminding me how my work has shaped how they see success and the choices they make.
In my book research, I had found that many women hit a reckoning at the very peak of their careers: a health crisis, a divorce, a missed promotion that was “promised.” They did everything right — worked hard, ate well, exercised — and they still ran into major health issues.
Two out of three women I interviewed reported chronic symptoms: migraines, hair loss, fertility issues, and much more. So many female senior leaders are burnt out and seriously ill. We don’t talk about it enough, and there’s a bigger question of success versus listening to our bodies. We must work differently if we’re going to survive and thrive.
Do you have a story to share about quitting the Big Four? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at janezhang@businessinsider.com.
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