Kelly Dayan

Kelly Dayan is a Partner at Advantary and Chief of Staff to Managing Partner Stephen Kuhn.

She brings more than 15 years of experience partnering with founders, CEOs, and executive

leadership teams to drive execution, accountability, and organizational effectiveness in complex, fast-moving environments.

Kelly’s role sits at the intersection of principal support, firm execution, business development, and opportunity management. Her work spans active company calls, investor and capital-related conversations, internal team and partner management, advisory and business development, recruiting, and continual follow-through across live matters — often within the same day.

Kelly began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers, then spent a decade at Hewlett-Packard in progressively senior roles spanning merger integration, Chief of Staff to the CIO, and Director of Business Operations for a $5 billion federal organization. She went on to found her own hospitality company before returning to operating roles at a Fortune 500 consumer goods company, a Series C-funded AI fintech and a pre-seed Digital Marketing firm. She is a 4x Chief of Staff who brings the pattern recognition that comes from having seen the same operational problems present differently at every stage — and knowing exactly what to do about it.

Kelly brings a values-aligned, service-oriented leadership style paired with the operational

instincts that only come from having done the work at every level. Kelly holds a B.S. in Accounting, an MBA, and a B.S. in Culinary Management — her Managing Partner notes she is qualified to cook the books in more ways than one.

Expertise:

Principal support, firm execution, business development, operating leverage

Sectors:

Agnostic

Roles:

Chief of Staff, Partner, Strategic Operations

Traits:

Judgment-driven, relational, disciplined, adaptive

Location:

Napa, California