Ep. 122: International Student Journey - Part 1

The Immigrant Experience in America

Crystelle Desnoyer is the former Chief of Staff to the CEO at Techstars. One of the top global

pre-seed investment companies with 3,700+ companies in its portfolio operating in 18 countries.

As an Operator focused on scaling processes, teams and access to capital as well as one that

connects dots and people, Crystelle has focused her career on growing tech. organizations. She

helped 26 global companies in many fields serving as their Marketing, HR and Revenue Operations

executive & Business Development executive. With 2.5 years in e-commerce, 5 years in management

consulting and 2 years in Venture Capital she brings a multi-layered perspective to teams that need

to execute fast.

She recently joined the Board of La French Tech New York, an organization supporting the nurturing

and integration of French start-ups of all stages (Pre-seed all the way to Unicorn) in the local

ecosystem.

She is also an active member of The Fourth Effect, CHIEF and CEOx, three exclusive networks of

Women executives where she supports or hosts the International Women in Business, Chiefs in

Transition, the VCs/Angels, the COO and the Chief of Staff groups.

Having built a few companies from scratch herself, she is passionate about giving back and

supporting the younger generations that follow which translates into her advising 5 early stage

founders in Fintech, Fashion Tech, Proptech, Cleantech and more general Tech. They are all

fundraising right now so if you have any interest in learning more about them, please find her after.

For fun, she curates panels and Tech events for global Conferences like Scale Global Summit in

Vegas or Tech.eu in London or the local ecosystem leveraging her broad network in the tech space.

In her spare time she volunteers with the Sea Shepherds focused on marine wildlife conservation as

an avid shark lover and certified rescue scuba diver. She is also an ambassador for Surgeons of

Hope and worked this year on scaling operationally post-covid this NGO sending medical teams to

train local teams and do heart surgery on kids in Latin America.

You might also find her in the many Milongas in NYC Tangoing. She was an amateur competitive

dancer pre-covid and has been dancing this specific dance for over 10 years. The phrase “It takes 2

to Tango” and its true meaning of trust, feedback and surrender has transferred into how she has

intentionally built teams in her professional life.

Culturally Crystelle is - you guessed it - French but she also is a true 3rd culture kid by also being

English and Turkish. She speaks 5 languages (learning her 6th: Spanish) and has lived in 10

countries before landing in the US 13 years ago and going through the immigration process as well

as building her career as a first generation immigrant. She is now American as of January 11th,

1:11pm this year. Fun fact: she has been to all 7 continents including Antarctica. Connect with Crystelle on LinkedIn.

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