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MSc Ankit Agrawal
Senior Director, Commercial Strategy & Operations - Kellogg Executive MBA Candidate
Professional Background
Ankit Agrawal is a proactive and performance-driven healthcare strategist with a wealth of experience in Corporate and Business Strategy specifically tailored for Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical and Life Science companies. With a rich background that combines both clinical and business expertise, Ankit has made significant contributions in strategies that enhance commercial performance and deepen organizational impact. Over the course of his illustrious career, Ankit has been a cornerstone in leading high-performing teams, facilitating global transformations, and shaping cross-functional commercial strategies that have tangibly improved top and bottom-line performance across various projects.
His extensive international experience, spanning multiple regions including Canada, the EU5, EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and Japan, equips him with a deep understanding of diverse marketplaces and operational environments. This broad perspective is invaluable in the increasingly globalized pharmaceutical and life sciences industries, where bespoke strategies tailored to local needs are essential for success.
Education and Achievements
Ankit's educational pathway reflects a commitment to both leadership and strategic thought. He began his academic journey at Millard North High School and continued his education by earning a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Ankit then pursued and obtained a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where he honed his technical acumen and analytical skills, preparing him for the dynamic demands of the healthcare landscape.
Further solidifying his leadership skills, Ankit completed the Executive MBA program at Northwestern University’s esteemed Kellogg School of Management. This experience not only expanded his business intelligence but also enriched his capacity to lead teams and initiate strategic initiatives with a strong leadership engagement focus. His pursuit of excellence continued as he became a LEAD Fellow at The Executives' Club of Chicago, where he further delved into leadership engagement, assessment, and development best practices.
Ankit’s scholarly contributions are noteworthy, having authored over 15 peer-reviewed journal publications that span both clinical studies and business markets. This contribution to academic literature underscores his dual expertise in both healthcare delivery and commercial strategy, making him a valued thought leader in his field.
Professional Experience and Organizations
Ankit has held a variety of leadership roles throughout his career, a testament to his diverse skill set and strategic insight. Currently, he serves as the Senior Director of Global Commercial Strategy & Sales Operations at Curia (formerly AMRI). In this role, Ankit is responsible for driving commercial strategy aligned with the company’s goals, enabling innovations that resonate across the global market while enhancing operational efficiencies.
Previously, Ankit was involved with Agrawal Investments LLC, a venture capital firm where he successfully operated as a Venture Capitalist. Here he leveraged his strategic insights to identify high-potential investments within the healthcare sector. Additionally, he showcased his multifaceted talent as a Co-Producer for the Tony Award Winning Broadway production of “TOOTSIE: The Comedy Musical,” evidencing his ability to diversify and succeed across various industries.
His background at Curia includes several senior directorial positions, such as Senior Director of Global Strategic Pricing and Director of Contracts & Pricing in the U.S. Business Unit at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. In these capacities, he was pivotal in establishing pricing frameworks and contracts that optimized market access for drug therapies while ensuring that they met the financial goals of the organization.
Ankit's prior experience also includes leading global initiatives at Takeda as the Global Lead for the PMO & Value Realization Office under the Global OPEX Initiative. His strategic foresight in commercial planning and strategy led him to become the Commercial Planning & Strategy Lead for the U.S. Business Unit, where he developed holistic strategies ensuring sustainable growth.
Further marking his versatility, Ankit has held roles at PwC within the Strategy& division, focusing on Corporate & Business Strategy and consulting for Health & Life Sciences. These roles attested to his strong analytical skills and ability to develop strategic insights, aiding organizations in navigating complex market landscapes. Ankit's early career experiences include impactful positions at GE Healthcare as a Global Product Marketing and Strategy specialist in Digital Pathology and at GALLUP Consulting as a Client Development Consultant during his MBA internship.
Achievements
Throughout his career, Ankit Agrawal has achieved numerous milestones that reflect his exceptional ability to drive performance and embrace change. His strategic leadership and vision have resulted in tangible improvements in organizational effectiveness and profitability. His publications not only enrich the field of clinical and business strategy but also position him as a recognized thought leader in the healthcare sector.
Ankit's unique blend of clinical research experience, stemming from his early work as a Clinical Research Associate and Principal Investigator at the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, lends him profound insights into the bridging of clinical practice with commercial strategy, enabling a unified approach towards healthcare solutions.
In addition to his professional achievements, Ankit's commitment to leadership engagement and development through initiatives such as the LEAD Fellowship reflects his dedication to continuous improvement and mentoring the next generation of leaders in healthcare and business strategy.
With extensive cross-functional expertise in both the business and clinical domains, Ankit Agrawal represents a force of innovation and guidance within the healthcare strategy landscape. His career trajectory underscores a profound impact made through strategic foresight, leadership engagement, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.
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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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