Deepa Soman

An Economics major from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, with a degree in Business Management from S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Deepa has been an
entrepreneur for two decades. She was selected on campus as management trainee, Hindustan Lever Limited. She worked in sales and marketing research. Deepa took a career break when her son was born and moved to Kingston, Jamaica with her family. She discovered that she was not cut to be a stay-at-home mum and started work with a marketing research firm J. A Young Research. She was a visiting faculty for Marketing Research at the University of West Indies. Deepa started Lumiere Consultancy Services in Jamaica. Deepa’s life and the Lumière journey is profiled in Rashmi Bansal’s 2013 book, ‘Follow Every Rainbow’, on 25 women entrepreneurs. Deepa founded Lumière Business Solutions in 1996 as a social enterprise. The purpose is to enable women professionals to get back to work (www.lumieresolutions.com). Deepa’s husband Milind joined Lumière in 2007 and started the consulting pillar. He brought his background in technology consulting to make Lumière technology forward. Lumière is taught as a case study (available on hbr.org) in many educational institutes as an early adopter of the Cloud. Deepa and Milind are executive coaches. Deepa’s daughter Rhea, an industrial designer, joined Lumière in 2017 and started the design vertical. Lumière is a training and learning lab in HR best practices. We have customized programs targeted to two cohorts segregated by age and experience. The Observership program for women professionals and the Internship program for students and early jobbers. These programs of are custom-built, where all incumbents receive coaching and mentoring for life and work, skilling in research via opportunity to participate in live projects. Alumni from these programs continue to stay connected and engage with Lumière community with access to a vibrant, global network. Lumière continues to be an inspiration as a pioneer in providing the work from home opportunity for women professionals. It is also a pioneer in starting a workable model to deliver to the promise of “women, work and well-being”. Scholarly papers have been published with Dr. Jamila Bookwala, Lafayette College, Pennsylvania University and Deepa. Lumière events is an important vertical to foster change. The Lumière Learning Monday, Torchbearer Thursday and CMA Samvaad Series are available on the Lumière
YouTube channel. These events celebrate an individual or efforts around cause to create a ripple effect and bring about a multiplier by inspiring and connecting individuals, entities and organizations with the cause. Lumière is involved with St. Jude Childcare Centers (SJCC) for over a decade and continue to work with strategic and tactical projects for the cause of children with
cancer. We are involved with mentoring and enabling non-profits and help with capacity building and consulting, with paid and pro bono work.