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Aaron Bekken, MBA
SVP of Operations @ JLL | MBA, Operations Management
Professional Background
Aaron Bekken, MBA, is a visionary leader and strategist specializing in operational excellence and team building within the dynamic sectors of industrial supply chain management and digital media production. With a Fervent passion for fostering collaborative environments, Aaron has cultivated a remarkable career marked by leadership roles in renowned organizations such as JLL, Microsoft, and Run Studios. His extensive experience encompasses a wide array of functional areas, from operations management to production and team leadership.
Having served as the Senior Vice President of Operations for the National Industrial and Supply Chain at JLL, Aaron was integral in streamlining operational processes and enhancing service delivery for clients across various industries. His strategic foresight and operational acumen allowed him to drive efficiencies and innovate supply chain solutions, positioning JLL as a trusted partner within the marketplace. Prior to his role as SVP, Aaron was the Vice President of Operations for the Pacific Northwest Region at JLL, where he played a pivotal role in overseeing regional operations and ensuring alignment with corporate objectives.
Before his impactful tenure at JLL, Aaron honed his skills in the media production landscape, serving in multiple roles at Run Studios. As the Operations Manager, he was responsible for optimizing workflow and improving production processes, leading to high-quality deliverables and enhanced client satisfaction. His progression from Senior Producer/Team Lead to Operations Manager exemplifies his commitment to excellence and his capability to navigate complex operational challenges within fast-paced environments.
Aaron’s career also includes key positions at SmarTek21 and Microsoft, where he managed operations and media production initiatives that contributed to innovative project outcomes. His role at Microsoft involved collaborating across departments to ensure the successful execution of media projects, underscoring his ability to unify teams towards common goals.
Education and Achievements
Aaron Bekken possesses a robust educational foundation that complements his professional experiences. He earned a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on Executive Leadership, Business, and Economics from Seattle University. This advanced degree equipped Aaron with strategic management insights and leadership skills essential for navigating today's ever-evolving business landscape.
Further enhancing his leadership capabilities, Aaron completed the Executive Leadership Program (ELP Certificate) at Seattle University. This program deepened his understanding of and ability to execute effective leadership strategies while fostering a culture of accountability and high performance within teams.
Aaron also holds an Associate of Arts (AA) degree in Digital Media and Design from The Art Institutes. This education in digital media not only sharpens his creative thinking skills but also provides him with a unique perspective that integrates artistic elements with strategic business initiatives.
Achievements
Throughout his career, Aaron Bekken has been recognized for his exceptional ability to drive operational success and foster teamwork. A few notable achievements include:
- Operational Excellence: As the SVP of Operations at JLL, Aaron led initiatives that resulted in improved operational efficiencies and a significant reduction in project turnaround times. His strategic implementations directly contributed to bottom-line growth and enhanced service delivery capabilities.
- Team Leadership: Aaron's commitment to building strong, cohesive teams is evident from his tenure at Run Studios, where his leadership approach resulted in increased morale and productivity. His ability to mentor and inspire teams has been a cornerstone of his success.
- Innovative Media Projects: At Microsoft and SmarTek21, Aaron played a key role in the execution of numerous media projects that leveraged cutting-edge technologies and creative strategies, showcasing his versatility in merging operational management with creative solutions.
- Industry Recognition: Aaron's innovative contributions to the industrial and supply chain sectors have garnered respect from peers and industry leaders, leading to invitations to speak at various conferences and forums focused on operational strategy and leadership development.
Aaron Bekken's background reflects a dedicated professional who thrives in challenging environments, consistently delivering outstanding results and uplifting those around him. His blend of strategic insight, operational proficiency, and passion for mentorship makes him an invaluable asset in any organization. Aspiring to drive positive change and achieve excellence in every endeavor, Aaron continues to seek opportunities to leverage his expertise in new and exciting ways.
Highlights
Being passionate about Diversity and Inclusion, I am extremely proud to work for a company that not only values and promotes D&I, but truly lives and breathes it. JLL provides every employee the opportunity, time, and resources to implement their passions around D&I into their daily routine, both professionally and personally. Well-deserved JLL, for being ranked #1 by Forbes for America’s Best Employer for Diversity!
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Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.