Deepa Gupta

Education: MPA from Harvard University; MBA from Northwestern University; AB in Public Policy and Biology from University of Chicago

Recent projects include: Springboard to Opportunity; Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Personal interests include: Travel through home exchanges, documentary films and biographies, hiking and nature, growing and preparing food, games and time with family

Deepa Gupta is a strategic consultant, professional coach and facilitator based in Chicago. She brings 20 years of experience that includes management consulting to corporate, nonprofit, and public health organizations; strategy development, program design, operational execution, and management for private and corporate philanthropies; and human capital development through executive team coaching, leadership development, organizational change strategy and design, and culture change.

Deepa has worked alongside residents, food growers, and community organizers for food equity and justice in the Chicago region; multi-lateral, business and nonprofit leaders in US and global public health; teachers, principals and STEAM program innovators in US public education from early learning to post-secondary attainment and workforce development; artists, arts organizers and administrators in Chicago and National arts and culture organizations; and business and manufacturing leaders and teams in aerospace and defense.

For the past two years, she has directed and led the strategic and organizational design and stand up of a project called the Community Food Navigator. The project’s mission is to expand food sovereignty in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities by building a community across these residents in the Chicago-area who grow, produce, distribute and teach about food and its roots; strengthening connections and collaboration; telling more truthful stories about the Chicago food system; and redistributing power.

Other examples of client work include the design and facilitation of a shared governance model for the Educare Learning Network, a community of schools that provide high quality early childhood education and family engagement in high poverty communities nationally; the design, facilitation, and execution of convenings in support of ArtPlace America’s amplification of the role of arts and culture in workforce development; executive coaching for Chicago-based nonprofit, corporate and philanthropic organizations, including members of the inaugural class of Loyola University’s DEI Institute focused on supporting working executives to lead and integrate inclusion and equity into operational practice for themselves and their teams.

From 2017-2019, she stood up and led a team at Boeing focused on org strategy, change, performance management and culture transformation. From 2012-2016, she directed The Boeing Company’s community investment strategies in education and workforce development from pre-K-post secondary education. Prior to that she served in strategic and programmatic roles at the MacArthur Foundation from 2008-2012, as a program officer for the Chicago arts and culture sector, international nonprofit partnerships, and capacity building grants for paradigm-shifting nonprofits globally through the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

She started her career in health care at the Advisory Board Company, USAID’s Office of Reproductive Health and Family Practice, and McKinsey & Company, where she contributed to strategies and program decisions for hospitals and health systems, and public-private partnerships in support of domestic and global public health.

Deepa earned a BA in public policy and biology at the University of Chicago with a focus on health access and quality of care; an MBA at Northwestern University; and an MPA at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with a focus on public health, human rights, and economic development.