Keynote: I Can't Accept Not Trying Stony Brook University: Seawolves Leadership Lab

What if failure wasn't something to survive but something to build with?

At Stony Brook University's inaugural Seawolves Leadership Lab, Deepti Sharma delivered this keynote to a room of emerging student leaders navigating one of the hardest questions of early adulthood: what do I do when things don't go the way I planned?

Drawing on her own journey — building FoodtoEat from scratch, watching her revenue go to zero in a single day when the pandemic hit, and choosing to pivot instead of quit — Deepti offered students a framework for understanding failure not as a dead end, but as data. As direction. As the thing that actually builds leaders worth following.

This wasn't a motivational talk. It was an honest one.

Delivered at: Stony Brook University | Seawolves Leadership Lab — Inaugural Event Audience: Student leaders and emerging change-makers

Format: Keynote with Q&A

Topics: Failure & resilience, entrepreneurial leadership, finding purpose, building through uncertainty