Katya B. Daniel ’08

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Katya B. Daniel ’08 is the recipient of the Young Alumnus of the Year award, recognizing her outstanding engagement and service to UCLA. An engaged and active Bruin since graduation, Daniel continues to make a positive impact with a global reach. She is a leader in global talent acquisition, executive recruitment and leadership development. Daniel serves as a Global Associate Director for PRO Unlimited where she leads an international team supporting Intuit’s contingent workforce program.

Daniel began her career conducting international executive searches at Progressive Recruitment in London, where she started the firm’s first team recruiting energy and engineering professionals in Russia and the former Soviet Union. She then founded the first U.S. office of Spencer Ogden in Houston, and led the University of Texas Health Science Center’s strategic executive recruitment program. In 2018, Daniel led searches for senior administrative posts as the director of Systemwide Executive Recruitment at the University of California Office of the President, before returning to the private sector. Her service to UCLA began as an undergraduate, when she served as co-chairman of Bruins United and vice chairman of the ASUCLA Communications Board.

Wherever she is in the world, Daniel continues to generously share her skills and knowledge with fellow Bruins. With a wealth of specialized knowledge about professional success, she is uniquely equipped to advise Bruins on how to succeed after UCLA. Daniel has participated in UCLA alumni activities around the globe, creating an online presentation coaching students on job search strategy and planning, leading recruiting events and interviewing and hiring fellow Bruins.

At UCLA, she was a global studies major, with a Russian studies minor, and studied both Russian and Romanian. An immigrant from Moldova, a country with widespread poverty, unemployment and a high incidence of human trafficking, Daniel wrote her thesis on this topic. She received her master’s degree from the University College London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she was awarded a prestigious Erasmus Mundus scholarship, continuing her research on human sex trafficking and corruption.

A mentor, coach and sought-after speaker, Daniel credits UCLA with giving her a broad understanding of the modern globalized world and subtle nuances of working with different cultures.