Archive · 13 Nov 2025
Indian-Origin Ex-Deloitte Partner Links 100-Hour Weeks to Late-Stage Lyme Disease
Imagine a very dedicated worker named Deepa who worked at a big company called Deloitte for many years.
She worked so much, sometimes 100 hours a week, which is like working all day, every day!
Because she worked so hard, her body got very sick.
She saw many doctors and found out she had a disease called Lyme disease that made her feel really bad, so bad she had to stay in bed for 8 months.
This made her think about what 'being successful' really means.
She decided to leave her old job to talk about how we can work in healthier ways, especially for women of color.
Now she is helping others think about the future of work and is also studying at Harvard.
Indian-origin ex-Deloitte partner Deepa Purushothaman attributes her late-stage Lyme disease to working 100-hour weeks.
Purushothaman, who became a partner at Deloitte at age 34, experienced severe health issues including neuropathy after her demanding work schedule.
After being diagnosed with Lyme disease following visits to 15 doctors, she spent eight months bedridden in 2019.
She left Deloitte in May 2020, subsequently publishing a book and co-founding a community for women of color, but found herself falling back into overworking.
Purushothaman has since launched a thinktank focused on the future of work and is an executive fellow at Harvard Business School.
- Who
- Deepa Purushothaman, an Indian-origin former Deloitte partner
- What
- Experienced a severe health crisis, including late-stage Lyme disease, which she attributes to working 100-hour weeks, leading her to leave corporate life and advocate for a reimagined future of work.
- When
- Her workweeks extended to 100 hours after moving to San Francisco in 2014. By 2019, she was bedridden for eight months. She left Deloitte in May 2020.
- Where
- Deloitte, San Francisco
- Why
- Purushothaman believes her extreme work hours and the resulting stress triggered dormant late-stage Lyme disease, prompting a re-evaluation of success and work-life balance.
- Name
- Deepa Purushothaman
- Former Employer
- Deloitte
- Career Duration at Deloitte
- 21 years
- Diagnosis
- Late-stage Lyme disease
- Book Title
- The First, the Few, the Only: How Women of Color Can Redefine Power in Corporate America
- Recent Venture
- re.write (thinktank)
- Current Affiliation
- Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School