Kaneisha Grayson is the founder of The Art of Applying®, the largest Black-owned and largest and oldest woman of color-owned graduate admissions consulting company in the world.

Since officially launching in 2010, Kaneisha’s business has served over 1000+ clients with a combined $20+ million in fellowships awarded from top policy schools, business schools, and law schools in the U.S. and internationally. Her clients are represented at many top law schools in the U.S. and at every top policy and business school in the U.S. and many of the elite institutions of Europe and Asia.

During the summer of 2008, Kaneisha served as a Summer Associate for Eli Lilly & Co. in the Public Affairs department and she spent summer of 2009 at Nestle USA as a Summer Associate in the brand management and marketing department. Kaneisha spent two summers teaching full-time for the international education nonprofit Breakthrough Collaborative. Kaneisha also spent 2006-2007 living in Accra, Ghana as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, where she traveled the country giving ambassadorial speeches to a variety of audiences to advance international understanding and goodwill between the U.S. and Ghana.

While at Harvard, Kaneisha served as the Editor of Commentaries for the Harvard Journal of African American Policy and served as the relationships columnist for The Harbus, the Harvard Business School student newspaper. Kaneisha served as the relationships columnist for Austin Woman Magazine, and has been featured in ESSENCE Magazine, Ebony, Black Enterprise, and other major national publications. She wrote, self-published, and raised $11,771 via crowdfunding to self-publish a motivational book aimed at Millennial and Gen Z women titled Be Your Own Boyfriend in 2013, and the book was featured in the March 2014 issue of ESSENCE Magazine.

Kaneisha Grayson lives in her native city of Austin, Texas. She attended the Liberal Arts Academy at Johnston High School (now the Liberal Arts and Science Academy), Kealing Junior High, Mendez Middle School, and J. Houston Elementary. Kaneisha’s passion for business, leadership, and writing was ignited from an early age. She sold friendship bracelets to her fellow sixth graders and won the $5000 Outstanding Female Camper award at Rotary Camp Enterprise while in high school. While in college, Kaneisha studied creative writing under acclaimed American novelist David Foster Wallace, and won an award for a short story she wrote in his class. During Summer 2013, Kaneisha taught a six-week entrepreneurship and career discovery camp for at-risk high school students for the nonprofit PeopleFund.

Kaneisha earned her MBA from Harvard Business School with Second-Year Honors (top 20% of graduating students) and her MPA from Harvard Kennedy School where she was a Center for Public Leadership George Leadership Fellow in 2010. She earned her BA in Black Studies from Pomona College in 2006, where she received the Ada May Fitts Prize for being the most influential graduating senior woman as well as the Outstanding Senior Thesis in Black Studies for her thesis titled “Sisterhood Agenda: Black Women, Feminism, and Social Entrepreneurship.” In May 2010, Kaneisha submitted a business plan and was awarded a $10,000 entrepreneurship grant by the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School. She launched her business immediately after graduation, and continues to serve as a thought leader and trailblazer in the field of graduate school admissions, “off the beaten path” lifestyle entrepreneurship, and personal development for her favorite people to hang out with and mentor: high achievers with heart. She lives in her hometown of Austin, Texas with her rescue pup Lady Zadie.