Who we are
Deblina Pakhira, PhD
Founder and Principal Advisor, EvaNexus
Deblina Pakhira is an education and research leader working at the intersection of research, practice, and economic development. With a PhD in Chemistry and Chemistry Education and experience spanning teaching, education innovation, program strategy, evaluation, and cross-sector partnerships, she brings a systems perspective to understanding how evidence translates into meaningful outcomes.
Deblina began as a researcher focused on equity-centered design, became a classroom chemistry teacher, and has since built cross-sector partnerships and programs that center access for historically underserved communities, including at Digital Promise, California Forward, and the Computer History Museum. She has seen firsthand how easily those communities’ voices get left out of the room. That experience shaped a central question in her work:
What happens between a promising idea and the people it is meant to benefit?
She founded EvaNexus to explore this question by bringing together people across education and workforce systems to examine where and why promising ideas stall before they reach practice. Through cross-sector dialogue, research-grounded synthesis, and collaborative co-design, EvaNexus seeks to identify the handoffs, relationships, and conditions needed to help promising ideas reach more people and expand opportunity.
Deblina envisions a future where the value of research and innovation is measured not only by what is developed, but also by what reaches people and enables them to thrive.