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Catherine Blaikie
Development Director | Strategic/Corporate Partnerships | B2B & B2C Sales | | Account Management | GTM Strategy across the #education, #techforgood and third sector #socialimpact
Professional Background
Catherine Blaikie is a highly accomplished Business Development Executive and Partnership leader, recognized for her significant contributions to commercial sales and marketing across diverse sectors, notably in multinational corporations, consulting firms, and innovative start-ups. She has an impressive track record of driving profitable revenue growth and market share expansion by focusing on strategic sales and new business development initiatives. Catherine's experience includes building successful multi-million-pound partnerships within B2B, B2C retail, grocery, and e-commerce channels. Moreover, her leadership has facilitated high-profile product launches and extensive partner campaigns while being a pivotal part of senior management teams.
Catherine began her career in the fast-paced world of Commercial Sales & Marketing, where she honed her skills with several blue-chip Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) organizations. Over the years, her focus shifted to Technology for Good and educational start-ups, where her impact on social enterprise rapidly unfolded. She has not only excelled in the business landscape but has also placed a strong emphasis on social impact and educational initiatives, successfully bridging the gap between technology and community development.
Education and Achievements
Catherine holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fiber, Textile and Weaving Arts from the University of Southampton and has further enriched her education with a Foundation Degree from the University of the Arts London. This unique blend of creative education and robust commercial acumen enables her to approach business challenges with innovative thinking and artistic insight.
Her career includes remarkable achievements that underline her expertise and dedication:
- Scaling Social Impact Ventures: Catherine played a vital role in propelling a social impact venture to scale successfully with major international brands, achieving brand adoption in 35 cities across over 29 countries.
- Driving Revenue through Strategic Partnerships: Collaborating closely with Boots’ commercial teams, she project-managed the development of exclusive product ranges that generated net sales of £3.3 Million within two years.
- Building C-Suite Alliances: Through her networking capabilities, she cultivated significant alliances within the C-Suite community, establishing a robust portfolio of hi-tech clients across the EMEA region, and building an expansive network of over 7,000 executives and technology professionals within just one year.
- Successful Product Launches: She initiated and executed a sales strategy that led to a new product launch across 756 Boots stores, generating incremental net sales exceeding £1 Million.
- Strategic European Expansion: Catherine delivered a comprehensive strategic plan and workforce roadmap, successfully scaling an engineering team by 600% in just 45 days and facilitating operations that spanned the United States, Europe, and India.
- Securing Funding for Educational Initiatives: She successfully secured over $1 million in funding through corporate social responsibility initiatives, sponsorships, and donations to further develop and expand youth and educational programs on an international scale.
Notable Recognition and Contributions
Catherine’s contributions to the technology sector and women's leadership are widely acknowledged. She had the honor of attending the Hewlett Packard Enterprise Women’s Innovation Council in California, where a select group of only 70 senior technology leaders worldwide gathered to share and leverage best practices in technological innovation. Additionally, her insights were sought at the Cisco Connected Women Executive Roundtable, where she mingled with industry luminaries, including CEO Chuck Robbins and other influential leaders.
Further emphasizing her commitment to social issues, Catherine was appointed as an official press spokesperson for the Human Forum for Equalities & Human Rights during London's inaugural International UN Youth Day, securing live television interviews and noteworthy media coverage, highlighting the importance of equal rights and opportunities for youth.
Professional Affiliations and Roles
Catherine has held various prominent roles throughout her career, significantly impacting enterprise development and partnerships. Her former roles include:
- Director at Mission Beyond: Spearheading initiatives aimed at maximizing organizational impact and outreach.
- Business Development Consultant and Account Director at Teens in AI: Leading corporate partnerships and sponsorship deals to advance the organization's mission.
- Advisor and Member of the Executive Advisory Council at IGNITE Worldwide: Contributing guidance and insights on strategies for empowering young women in technology.
- Development Director at Girls Leadership Academy Meetup (GLAM): Pioneering campaigns for corporate partnerships and events aimed at cultivating young female leaders.
- EMEA Executive Team Member at iTalent Digital: Focusing on business development, recruitment, and lead generation.
- Senior Project Manager at Tree Shepherd Ltd.: Overseeing business development and project management initiatives.
- International Adventure Race Challenger at Prince's Trust International: Engaging in endeavors that empower young people through various adventure initiatives.
- Enterprise Business Manager at The Prince's Trust: Managing operations with a focus on business and strategic planning for start-ups.
- UK National Account Manager at Newell Rubbermaid: Driving business development and brand marketing plans.
Conclusion
Catherine Blaikie's multifaceted experiences and unwavering drive for social impact make her an exemplary figure in the realms of business development and partnership leadership. Her ability to bridge the gap between technology and community, combined with her robust commercial insights, positions her as a vital contributor to any organization seeking to innovate and grow responsibly. As Catherine continues to advance her career, her commitment to fostering partnerships that benefit both business and society remains a cornerstone of her professional philosophy.
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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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