Danielle was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, where she learned how to make authentic gumbo, and peel a crawfish in less than five seconds. She graduated cum laude from Harvard in 2013, with a concentration in government and secondary field in African studies, as well as language citations in French and German. While at Harvard, she studied abroad in Berlin and Bamako. Post graduation, she returned to Bamako to work for the Mali Health Organizing Project, a public health nonprofit, serving first as projects fellow, then as monitoring and evaluation coordinator. After her term in Mali ended, she returned home to work in the office of a local parish - otherwise known as county - councilwoman. In the summer before joining the Woodrow Wilson School, Danielle was able to catch cheap flights to Oslo, Bergen, Paris and Denver.