In fact between the ages of 5 and 82, Deepi Singh has done quite a few remarkable things in life. Her will power, coupled with her educational background, helped her surge ahead in her working life. She rose to become the Director of Foods and Nutrition at Kaiser Permanente, an integrated managed care consortium based out of Oakland in California. A measure of the size of the company she worked for where she became a name to reckon with can be gauged from this figure—in 2014, the non-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals reported a combined net income of USD 3.1 billion. And then she gave it all up to return to her favorite profession—teaching!

EARLY YEARS, SUPPORT FROM PARENTS

When she could not run and walk like other kids in her school at Lyallpur in undivided Punjab (today Faisalabad, Pakistan), she felt rejected. But quickly, she resolved to turn that rejection into her strength. At age 7 she attended the Sacred Heart Convent High School in Lyallpur, an institution where the Nuns were extremely supporting, even putting in place a special commode for the child. She recalls having danced at a concert in spite of her obvious handicap.

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Indeed Deepi Singh’s future was shaped by her own beautiful ones. Even though her parents may have wanted her to become a doctor, Deepi Singh decided she would be more comfortable studying Home Science. She graduated from Delhi’s Lady Irwin College with Bachelor of Science and then added a Bachelor of Education degree to her resume.