Astha Avinash is a brand and community builder based in New York City, currently working as a Brand and Marketing Manager at vYve, a Gary Vaynerchuk-affiliated leadership and business accelerator, where she leads community programming alongside brand and marketing efforts, including AI-driven systems for client reporting and member engagement.

Her background spans brand and agency work at COLLINS, &Walsh, and VaynerMedia, where she developed brand strategies for global CPG, tech, and consumer clients. Astha has also founded Whatnots, a streetwear brand born in India, and later carried that same entrepreneurial instinct into a personal essay and travel-writing practice under the same name.

She holds a Bachelor in Design from India’s National Institute of Design, and an MPS in Branding from the School of Visual Arts in New York. A lifelong love of sketching, art, and textiles still runs through her work today, showing up in her urban sketching and visual storytelling as much as in her strategic thinking.

Raised across India, Saudi Arabia, and Japan before settling in New York, she brings a genuinely global, cross-cultural lens to every brand and community she builds.

Industry: Brand Strategy and Community Building

Why I’m excited to be part of WIN Awards: A bridge doesn’t get called weak for bending instead of breaking, it’s built that way on purpose. That’s how women lead. WIN is proof the world is finally ready to call that strength, instead of asking us to build any other way.