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Daniel McKernan
Founder at Barn Sanctuary
Professional Background
Dan McKernan is an innovative and passionate advocate for the welfare of farmed animals, best known as the co-founder of Barn Sanctuary and a prominent figure on Animal Planet's engaging series, Saved by the Barn. His transformative journey began in 2015 when he stepped away from a successful career in technology based in Austin, Texas, to dedicate himself to creating a compassionate refuge for farm animals at his family’s historic 140-year-old farm. Under his leadership, Barn Sanctuary has blossomed into a thriving haven that not only rescues animals but also educates the public about the importance of animal welfare and the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.
In addition to his roles at Barn Sanctuary, Dan has a diverse professional background that spans various fields such as product management, user experience, digital marketing, and education. He held leadership positions where he influenced community outreach and engagement while nurturing a strong passion for empowering others.
Education and Achievements
Dan's academic journey reflects his dedication to lifelong learning and personal growth. He attained a Bachelor's degree from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Quincy University, where he embraced a broad and enriching liberal arts education. He also studied for an Associate's degree at Los Angeles Pierce College, providing him with a foundational knowledge and skills applicable in various professional environments. Further enhancing his expertise, Dan undertook additional studies in Product Management at General Assembly, equipping him with critical skills to lead and innovate within organizations.
His professional trajectory includes notable positions such as the Animal Cruelty Investigator, where he utilized his investigative skills to advocate for the well-being of animals. He also served as an Animal Control Officer with the Dearborn Police Department, ensuring the safety and protection of animals in the community. Dan's technical prowess is reflected during his tenure as the User Experience Director at InspireHUB Inc., where he played a crucial role in enhancing user interactions and enhancing product development. Additionally, as the Instructor of Product Management at General Assembly, he shared his knowledge with aspiring professionals, fostering their growth in the tech landscape.
Achievements
Dan's work at Barn Sanctuary underscores his commitment to changing perceptions surrounding farmed animals. His heartfelt mission is to reshuffle societal views on these creatures and advocate for compassionate living through education and outreach programs. As a notable author, Dan is set to release a children's book titled This Farm Is a Family, aimed at instilling the core values of kindness and empathy in younger generations regarding farm animals. The book epitomizes his vision of nurturing a generation that values compassion over consumption.
Dan's impactful contributions extend beyond the sanctuary. His previous role on the Board of Directors of the Balcones Council at Camp Fire USA showcases his commitment to community service and youth mentorship. Furthermore, his expertise in digital marketing was demonstrated through his role as Director of Digital Marketing and Growth at Hooked, Inc., where he spearheaded innovative strategies to engage diverse audiences. His creative background as a Social Media Coordinator and Web Developer at Udaya Entertainment, along with founding his very own design company, McKernan Design, illustrates his versatility and relentless entrepreneurial spirit.
Through his multifaceted career, Dan McKernan has earned a reputation not merely as an advocate for animal rights but as a transformative leader dedicated to promoting a more compassionate world. His vision, creativity, and commitment to education are paving the way for lasting change, positioning him as a trailblazer in the realm of animal welfare and advocacy.
tags':['Animal rights advocate','Barn Sanctuary founder','Animal Planet series star','Compassionate lifestyle','Plant-based diet advocate','Children’s book author','Product management educator','User experience expert','Digital marketing leader','Community service advocate'],
Highlights
Hi Barn Fam, Dan here. It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved Whitney. Last week, we lost a special one, far too soon. Every loss is hard, some are especially hard to articulate. In her final moments, Whitney was surrounded by the staff, who are much more than that, they are her family. She came over to me and nuzzled my face with a depth of love and understanding that is hard to express but it is one I wish all people had the experience to understand. The world would be a far kinder and gentler place.
Over the past few weeks, Whitney exhibited some worrying symptoms, lacking a clear diagnosis despite our efforts and numerous tests. A more detailed examination by our veterinarian revealed a large mass in her abdomen, indicating her body was extensively affected by cancer. In consultation with Michigan State University (MSU), we came to the difficult realization that the kindest action would be to alleviate her suffering.
We chose to make her final hours as peaceful as possible, providing her with pain relief and steroids to ensure comfort until we could bid her farewell, allowing her and her companions one last night together. The moment of her passing was deeply moving, particularly for Joey and DJ, who visibly mourned the loss of their friend and the absence of her vibrant spirit.
Whitney was nearly five years old, a life cut tragically short. Her story began when she, along with three other calves, was rescued from a grim fate by the Michigan Humane Society. Destined for another sanctuary, Whitney was too sick to travel and underwent extensive treatment at MSU. There was a time when her survival seemed unlikely, but she soon showed remarkable resilience, her spirited nature unmistakable as she energetically moved through the halls of MSU.
The void left by her loss is immense, a sentiment that feels like an understatement. However, we find solace in remembering that her rescue granted her years filled with joy, love, compassion, dignity and care—a life far removed from the fate awaiting many of her kind.
We love you Whitney. We are so lucky to have known you. With love, all of us at Barn Sanctuary.
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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
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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.
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