If you need to contact me:
+1 917 993 1178
+44 7766 544881
Danielle Knaster
In Brief
|In Detail
|In Progress
Hello and welcome! A bit about me: I grew up in London but spent the past decade in America - between NYC, Philly, and Boston. I'm also fluent in Russian.
I earned my bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Philosophy, minoring in English Literature, with coursework in Computer Science. I began my career in data analytics at Kantar, working on major accounts including Amazon and Reddit, and later joined Beauty Co-Lab (bespoke agency within Omnicom) as an early data hire supporting L'Oréal's global media spend.
I earned my MBA at Harvard Business School, recently graduating in May 2026. Between my first and second years, I worked at Prosek Partners in NYC on executive and financial crisis management. Alongside my degree, I wanted to gain some startup experience, so I interned at a Series A consumer behaviour AI company and co-founded my own startup in immigration/legal-tech.
I've since relocated to London, where I'm navigating my next step.
If you know me personally, you probably call me Ellie. I grew up in London but moved to New York City for the final years of high school. I've lived in the United States ever since, between Philly, NYC, and Boston.
I earned my bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania, where I majored in Philosophy, minored in English Literature, and completed coursework in Computer Science. Following graduation, I began my career in data analytics at Kantar, where I worked on the Amazon and Reddit accounts and became primarily responsible for the financial services vertical, leading a team of four analysts and playing a key role in securing an additional $5M investment from Amazon.
I then joined Beauty Co-Lab, a bespoke agency within Omnicom created to service L'Oréal's $4B media spend, where I was among the early data hires. I helped build measurement frameworks and insights used by senior stakeholders to guide significant marketing investment decisions across the Professional Products Division. Though framed as an analytics role, it was closer to data-driven consulting.
Over time, my interests shifted from pure analytics toward more strategic work, which led me to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School (Section H, Class of 2026).
During the summer between my RC and EC years, I worked at Prosek Partners, a global communications firm in NYC, on the Special Situations team. I supported executive and financial crisis management related to fraud, reputation, M&A, shareholder activism, proxy contests, and other high-stakes corporate situations.
Alongside business school, I interned at Minerva, a Series A consumer behaviour AI startup, where I sat within the growth function and worked closely with the Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer. I focused on product and growth strategy - essentially figuring out what customers want, what competitors are building, and how we bring new offerings to market. In parallel, I co-founded my own startup, Alavisa (more on that in the next tab), which automates and streamlines the F-1 student visa application process.
BEZÉ Advisory
Impromptu hospitality consultancy
After business school, I planned to take the summer off before starting a full-time role in the fall. That plan didn't hold.
I've always been drawn to restaurants and hospitality, and over the past few months I've been recruited to consult on several ventures. My primary project this summer: a restaurateur friend is launching a rotisserie chicken QSR chain in London, and brought me on to help with GTM, launch, and capital raising. Another friend is opening a members' club (because London is desperately short on those) and asked me to lead on business and member recruitment strategy. The third is a theatre in Notting Hill under new ownership - the ground floor has a dining space with no kitchen, and they've asked me to figure out what to make of it in an area already dense with coffee shops, bakeries, wine bars, and restaurants.
In light of all this, I've started a hospitality consultancy - BEZÉ Advisory, borrowing the Russian word for meringue. If you know anyone in London or NYC who could use some guidance or inspiration on a hospitality venture, give me a ring.
Alavisa
Immigration-tech startup automating the F-1 visa application
I'm the co-founder of Alavisa, a startup simplifying the F-1 student visa application process through automation - essentially a TurboTax for student visas. Product is my primary focus, but I run everything outside of direct sales: go-to-market, legal (both internal and immigration compliance), marketing, and operations.
The current application system is fragmented, outdated, and difficult to navigate, with workflows that haven't meaningfully changed in decades and are often built on unintuitive government websites - at a time when US immigration has never been more fraught or closely scrutinised. We've built this platform to replace the experience and give both students and universities more clarity and confidence throughout the high-stakes process.
I've been building Alavisa since Spring '25 with my classmate and best friend, Nikki. We work on a B2B2C model and are already partnered with over 20 schools in the US. Beyond the platform itself, we collaborate directly with university international admissions teams on student advocacy and support, from visa interview prep to broader guidance. We plan to expand into CPT, OPT, H-1B, and study-abroad visa workflows in the coming years.
Since graduating, I've stayed closely involved in scaling Alavisa and setting it up as a full-time venture for Nikki (who is very motivated not to return to consulting). I've loved building this company and will remain a part of it, though to a lesser degree as I'm pursuing a full-time role alongside.
If someone in your world is headed to the US for school, point them to Alavisa - we're live at www.alavisa.global.
Partnerships Center for Alavisa
Professional-grade, Claude-coded enterprise CRM
I built a lightweight personal CRM to manage and scale Alavisa's university partnership pipeline.
The platform is designed around how early-stage university partnerships evolve. It organises institutions into a clear, stage-based pipeline - from first outreach through demo, pilot, and signed partnership. Each university has a complete record: contacts and their roles, conversation history, documents shared, pilot terms, and the current state of the relationship.
Beyond tracking, the system is built to drive momentum by continuously surfacing the most important next actions and proactively reminding our team when to follow up, share progress updates, and request feedback - ensuring that partnerships keep moving forward even as conversations span weeks or months. It flags stalling relationships before they go cold, prioritises outreach by pipeline stage and deal size, and maintains a running log of commitments made on both sides.
It also provides a live view of the pipeline as a whole: how many universities sit at each stage, where partnerships are gaining or losing momentum, expected conversion, and which accounts warrant attention. By linking relationship history with execution, it enables more consistent engagement, clearer prioritisation, and sharper insight into what moves each partnership forward.
The live CRM is staying behind the curtain for confidentiality reasons, but happy to walk through how it works in more detail.
If you need to contact me:
+1 917 993 1178
+44 7766 544881