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Amy Yee
Reporter, Equality at Bloomberg News
Amy Yee is an accomplished journalist known for her extensive reporting and writing on social issues, particularly in South Asia and Africa. She served as a staff reporter and foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, where she was based in New Delhi, India, from 2006 to 2013, and also worked in New York. During her time with the Financial Times, she reported on various topics including environment, business, and cultural issues.
Education and Career Background:: Yee is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds master’s degrees from Columbia University and Harvard Kennedy School. She has also completed an MFA in Creative Writing from Hunter College. Her career has included roles at Bloomberg/CityLab and the Chicago Sun-Times, where she continues to focus on solutions to social problems such as climate change and public health.
Awards and Recognition:: Throughout her career, Amy Yee has received numerous accolades for her journalism. She is a three-time winner of the United Nations Correspondents’ Association award and has been recognized multiple times by the South Asian Journalists Association. Her work has been featured in prominent publications like The New York Times, The Economist, and National Geographic.
Publications:: Yee is also an author; her book "Far From the Rooftop of the World," which discusses Tibetan refugees in India, includes a foreword by the Dalai Lama. Her journalism often emphasizes solutions-oriented reporting, particularly focusing on human development and environmental issues.
Current Work:: As of now, Amy Yee writes for various outlets while continuing to engage in solutions journalism. Her contributions have made significant impacts in highlighting critical global issues through a narrative lens that seeks to inspire change.
For more detailed insights into her work and achievements, you can visit her personal website or professional profiles online.
Highlights
My article about an innovative initiative to spotlight lower-income AAPIs, "one of the least studied and least understood groups in the U.S."
"Chinese American Service League, a Chicago-based organization, is leading the charge on a multistate study that spotlights the often invisible struggles and needs of low-income Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders by taking a novel approach toward collecting data.
Change InSight, a coalition led by the Chinatown-based nonprofit Chinese American Service League (CASL), has been surveying communities in more Asian languages, allowing for better data. The coalition is the first national web platform to collect community-level data from low-income AANHPI communities on public health and socioeconomic indicators.
Large, mainstream demographic and health surveys are almost always conducted in English and Spanish — excluding underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) with limited English proficiency, who tend to be lower-income and need the most support. Because those communities are often not included in influential national surveys, they remain invisible to policymakers and funders and don’t get the help they need...
Paul Luu, CEO of the Chinese American Service League, said anti-Asian hate exposed a lack of support for at-risk AAPIs, yet they remain one of the least studied and least understood groups in the U.S. Many who suffer from hate attacks do not speak up because of language barriers, cultural stigma, or lack of awareness of resources, he said.
Change InSight surveyed nearly 6,000 underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in five states and found that 62% live in poverty. It found 73% of respondents speak limited English and 34% have less than a high school education. The largest ethnic groups represented in the survey were Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Pakistani and Korean.
In a regional snapshot of Chicago and Champaign, 54% of the 2,753 surveyed live in poverty. The poverty rates were highest among Chinese and Asian Indians at 61% and 31%, respectively. Among Koreans and Pakistanis, poverty rates stood at 23% and 31%, respectively.
The report found 81% spoke limited English and among the Chinese respondents, 97% had limited English proficiency — the highest rate among AAPI ethnic groups. Change InSight's regional survey also said 38% have less than a high school education and 14% lack adequate transportation, which further limits their economic opportunities...
Demographic surveys focusing on low-income AAPIs are relatively rare. Last week, Pew Research Center issued its first report on Asian Americans living in poverty across the country..
From Census data, it said about 70,000 Asians in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro area live in poverty — the fourth-largest population out of 10 U.S metro areas.
My story for Bloomberg CityLab summarizes new research about AAPIs. If you thought that AAPIs didn't experience racism, poverty, & hardship because reports/surveys/research, didn't mention them, chances are that 'experts' didn't ask AAPIs in ways that could include them. (Please click on the story.)
"New surveys of Asian Americans are revealing the anti-Asian racism that surged during the Covid pandemic is not going away...The research from groups including The Asian American Foundation, Columbia University’s School of Social Work/ Committee of 100, @Association of Asian American Investment Managers and Pew Research Center signals a shift for Asian Americans, the fastest-growing racial group in the US.
Historically, there has been a lack of data on AAPIs related to everything from poverty and crime to health and workplaces, leaving the population out of critical policy and funding decisions... inequities and signs of discrimination also pervade white-collar settings, including the financial industry. A study from the Association of Asian American Investment Managers shows that AAPIs in private equity, hedge funds, real estate and public equity face challenges reaching senior levels... One female respondent noted: “The most impactful career advancement age feels like it was around my 30s and 40s, and that’s when the discriminatory actions seemed more evident. First to get cut, last to get promoted, assigned more responsibilities for less pay.”
Some findings: Columbia/Committee of 100 survey
- 74% of Chinese Americans experienced racial discrimination in the past 12 months.
- 55% worried about their safety relating to hate crimes or harassment.
The Asian American Foundation survey:
- 50% Asian Americans felt unsafe in the US.
- 52% of Asian American respondents felt uncomfortable or unsafe due to their race/ethnicity.
- 29% of Asian Americans felt the least safe on public transportation
- ~1/3 of Americans saw Asian Americans as more loyal to their perceived country of origin.
Pew Research
- 20% say they have hidden a part of their heritage (food, cultural practices, clothing, or religious practices) from others who are not Asian, in some cases out of fear of embarrassment or discrimination.
In NYC, AAPIs made up nearly 18% of the city’s population in 2020 and are its fastest-growing racial/ethnic group. “Even lesser known is that ~23% of Asian New Yorkers live in poverty. For the first time in 2022, The Robin Hood Foundation featured Asians in its 4th annual report on poverty in NYC. Surveys, some conducted in Mandarin, found that the poverty rates for Asian New Yorkers were comparable to rates among Black and Latino New Yorkers.
Coalition for Asian American Children and Families is leading rallies in NYC this month backed by a coalition of 90 AAPI orgs called the 18% and Growing campaign.
#aapi #aapiheritagemonth #racism #asianamerican #discrimination
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
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
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- 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.
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