Deena joined the Chain Reaction Innovations (CRI) team as the Strategic Operations Lead in October 2018 after eight years at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) as the Argonne User Agreement Specialist. In 2021, she was promoted to Fellowship & Program Manager for CRI. Deena draws on her knowledge of Argonne to assure the startups in the program are engaged and supported both within Argonne and in the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Deena is passionate about the research that Argonne conducts and supports. She sincerely believes in the CRI mission to enable innovators to launch new technologies into the market by accessing the unique and powerful resources of a national laboratory.

Deena leads CRI’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as well, providing vision and leadership – and is also a member of the Science & Technology Partnerships and Outreach DEIA Council. She proposed the successful addition of MLK Day as a paid holiday at the lab, is a member of Argonne’s Benefits Advisory Committee, and led a cross-lab strategy team to focus on diverse and inclusive outreach and recruiting for CRI. The efforts were effective and CRI cohorts have collectively been 30 percent female and 50 percent from underrepresented groups. Deena is also the Students for Energy & Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) internship program lead. The internship was created for undergraduate students of Chicago-area Minority Serving Institutions to introduce them to entrepreneurship in science.

In 2021, alongside the CRI team, Deena received an Argonne Board of Governor’s Award for Distinguished Performance, and in 2022 she received an Impact Argonne award for her efforts in creating and launching the SEED program. Deena holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and an MBA from Lewis University. She is also a 2021 Chicago Clean Energy Leadership Institute Fellow.