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Ashley Kera
Global People Operations | HR & Talent Strategy | Program Management | Organizational Coaching & Consulting
Ashley Kera is an empathetic and results-driven people leader with a background in clinical psychology, coaching, and scaling global programs. With extensive global experience in program management, people ops, and strategic innovation, she takes a human-centric approach to address people-related challenges, optimize operations, and create tailored initiatives for maximum impact on both individuals and businesses.
Known for her exceptional execution and project management skills, Ashley excels at simplifying complex projects, ensuring tasks are completed efficiently, and building high-impact teams. She thrives in fast-paced environments, crafting systems and strategies that benefit both people and businesses while staying adaptable and forward-thinking.
Ashley's grit and tenacity shine through in her ability to scale global programs, operate with dedication, fortitude, and business acumen across multiple offices. A coach at heart, she is dedicated to helping individuals reach their full potential by removing barriers and fostering a culture of high performance, diversity, inclusivity, and belonging.
An intrapreneur at heart, Ashley is always seeking ways to innovate, make improvements, and maximize human potential and organizational success. Her core values of authenticity, kindness, and humility drive her to create a supportive and engaging environment where voices are valued and heard.
Educationally, Ashley holds certifications in executive and organizational coaching from Columbia University, a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a B.A. in Political Science and Creative Writing from Muhlenberg College.
Having held various key positions at organizations like Kobre & Kim, Columbia University, Kellen Company, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP & Affiliates, Ashley has honed her skills in leadership, coaching, program management, and strategic planning.
Passionate about driving positive change and fostering growth, Ashley Kera is a dedicated professional known for her expertise in talent strategy, coaching, program management, and leadership with a strong focus on people-first and innovative approaches.
Highlights
Insights from Over a Decade in Talent [Part 1 of 2]
➡ After more than a decade in the talent space and 7+ years leading recruiting and people globally, I'm sharing some tips and insights that may help others in the job search process:
🔷 Do Thorough Research. Study the company's website, LinkedIn, news articles, and employee profiles. Know how to pronounce the company name and be clear on the role you're considering. 🔶 Update Your LinkedIn Profile. Ensure it reflects your latest achievements and skills. Many recruiters will check it before or after your interview. 🔷 Find Connections. Look for people in your network who might have insights about the company or role. They could provide valuable information or even a referral, which can help get your application seen more quickly and possibly secure an automatic first-round interview. 🔶Conduct Informational Interviews. Before applying, learn more about the company and role through informal chats with current or former employees. Be mindful to not message a lot of people—be selective and tailor your messages. 🔷 Mind Your Social Media. Some employers will look at your online presence even beyond LinkedIn, so consider what you want them to see (or not see). 🔶Know Your "Why". Be clear on why you want the role and how it aligns with your career goals. It should be compelling and specific to you—not generic or untrue. 🔷Attention to Detail. Ensure your application is error-free. There should not be typos. 🔶Personalize Your Cover Letter. Address it to the hiring manager or a specific person whenever possible instead of "To Whom It May Concern." This shows effort and attention to detail. 🔷Prepare Thoughtful Questions for the Interview. Develop a few questions about the role, team, and company to demonstrate genuine interest and critical thinking. Hold most of your questions until the end when the interviewer asks if you have any, but avoid overwhelming them with too many. 🔶Highlight Relevant Achievements. During the interview, don't just recite your resume. Focus on key accomplishments and how they relate to the role. Use examples to show rather than tell. 🔷Practice Self-Kindness and Be Your Own Advocate. The job search process is challenging, especially today. Treat yourself with compassion, and remember to celebrate small victories along the way. Be your own coach and advocate, reminding yourself of your strengths and capabilities.
➡ Stay tuned for Part 2, where I'll share more tips on navigating the interview process and handling job offers effectively.
🎤 What's Your Take? 🔸 Which of these tips do you find most valuable, and why? 🔹 What resources do you rely on when preparing for a job search? 🔸What's the best piece of advice you've received during your job search? 🔹How do you suggest staying motivated during a lengthy job search?
Over the holiday weekend, I took a break from slack, email, and social media. I didn’t even touch my laptop. It has truly been glorious.
My focus was solely on family, friends & fun. Being present, slowing down, doing things spontaneously.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t miss being tied to electronics. I even left my phone at home an entire day. I didn’t miss it - I was with good company in person. Being away from technology this weekend, I realized, it doesn’t really matter all that much in terms of what I value most in life. Most things we do on social media, email, slack, etc probably won’t matter even a month from now nor will we likely remember this stuff a year from now.
I appreciate technology and social media but I was reminded this weekend how much it preoccupies our time and mental energy. Sometimes too much, draining us and distracting us from things that offer more real value and enjoyment.
Breaks and boundaries are essential when it comes to technology [for me, and I would argue most people]. A good reminder for me and perhaps you too?
If you’ve established a good practice of boundaries or taking breaks from social media/technology, share your tips!
*Pictured: Kids playing outside getting distracted by Ellie, not their phones. It was fantastic to see so many kids & families out and about chatting in the neighborhood.
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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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