Shubhecchha Dhaurali

Founder & Director

Research within REACH Origins

To address the persistent lack of data on people of color, specifically local Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities, our Founder and Director, Shubhecchha Dhaurali, designed and launched Research within REACH, an initiative designed to train and empower community members in data collection and ensure communities are included in the data that informs critical policy decisions and shapes public narrative, through her 2026 Civic Incubator Fellowship with the National Asian American and Women’s political Initiative (AAWPI).

Shubhechha was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and immigrated to the United States with her parents in 2003. Her name has guided her throughout her life: Shubhecchha means “best wishes” and Dhaurali is a mountain pass, the place where you cross from one valley to another. Her life has been a series of mountains: navigating unfamiliar terrain, crossing systems not built for people like her, and wishing herself the courage to keep climbing.

As the first woman in her family with the opportunity to pursue and finish higher education, she quickly learned that knowledge, power, and opportunity are closely intertwined. She also learned something harder: research, the very tool meant to tell our stories, often belongs to institutions, not to the communities it studies.

In classrooms and conference rooms, and more recently while leading research and community engagement initiatives, including Massachusetts’ first-ever AAPI population survey, Shubhecchha saw how data could both illuminate and exclude. Communities were reflected in the numbers, but rarely invited into the process. Research was treated as something technical. Specialized. Reserved.

But what if it wasn’t? Research within REACH was born from that question. This project transforms research from something done to communities into something that communities can do themselves, equipping people with the tools to understand, interpret, and apply data in ways that shape their own futures.

Because research is not just methodology. It is narrative. It is power. And like any mountain pass, it should be something we cross together.