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Diana Chavez-Varela
2025 MPA Candidate at Princeton University | Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellow, U.S. Department of State | Ex-Deloitte | B.A. Political Economy, University of California, Berkeley
Diana Chavez-Varela is a highly educated individual with a Master's degree in Public Affairs – International Affairs from Princeton University, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy - International Development and Globalization from the University of California, Berkeley, and additional studies in international/global studies.
Throughout her career, Diana has gained experience with prestigious organizations such as the U.S. Department of State, where she served as a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow in the Office of Foreign Assistance - Policy (F/P), and Deloitte as a Risk and Financial Advisory Analyst.
Diana Chavez-Varela has also contributed her skills at various roles, including Research Assistant at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, Strategy and Operations Student Coordinator at Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley School of Law, and Manager for Amnesty International's Digital Verification Corps at Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law.
Her professional journey includes internships at organizations like the International Rescue Committee and roles such as Financial Aid Caseworker for UC Berkeley Associated Student Union, demonstrating a diverse skill set and commitment to humanitarian causes.
Beyond academia and work, Diana has also engaged in community-related activities as shown by her experience as a Resident Assistant at Tropicana Student Living, showcasing her dedication to both her academic pursuits and community involvement.
Highlights
While I was a low-income student at Santa Barbara City College (SBCC), I applied for several part-time roles and scholarships to afford a living. One of them was SBCC’s President Scholarship, which is awarded to one student per year based on demonstrated service to others, academic performance, leadership, and resilience in the face of hardship. In my final interview, I recall sharing my passion for foreign affairs and my dream of becoming a diplomat. Fast forward to 2023, six years later of tremendous interpersonal growth, I will finally get to be one.
Following a rigorous selection process, I was awarded the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellowship Program, which will launch me into a career in the U.S. Foreign Service at the U.S. Department of State. The scholarship provides the financial means to pursue higher education, two summer internships at the Department of State in D.C. and U.S. Embassy overseas, and professional development activities before starting a #diplomatic career. Among the program’s benefits, I will attend graduate school funded by my graduate program and the Dept. of State, after which I will serve abroad as a U.S. Diplomat.
As I write this, I am still in disbelief.
This post is for younger Diana, who repeatedly felt discouraged throughout college from pursuing these opportunities, but this post is also for those who truly believed in me – my friends who welcomed me into their homes when I moved to the U.S., mission-driven organizations that accepted me as a member, employers who gave me the chance to do work-study, and mentors who vouched for me along the way.
Special thank you to my professors and mentors, Alexa Koenig, Dr. Kellie A. McElhaney, Dan Mulhern, Stephanie Ballenger, Vanessa Olguin, Camila Acosta, Ruth Morales, Koby Heramil, Alex Wilson, Kye Kolar, Kelsey Sobczak, Korri Bowers, and many more. Your endless support, time, and energy helped me excel and grow into who I am today. I truly wouldn’t be here without you.
Thank you to University of California, Berkeley and SBCC for the mentors you gave me, the #transformativeeducation, and the breadth and depth of resources that expanded my horizons.
Thank you to the Pickering Fellowship for the opportunity of a lifetime and for making these programs possible. Fellowships like this one encourage the representation of excellence and diversity of the United States both within the Foreign Service and overseas, and ensure equal access to opportunities for #underrepresented #students with structural barriers. Diversity is a strength in our #diplomatic efforts and beyond.
And a big thank you to my loved ones for being there through this all. An eight-year dream has finally come true.
#education #student #alumni #scholarships #scholarshipopportunities #graduate #classof2025 #gobears #foreignaffairs #studentsuccess #diplomacy #hispanic #career #hispaniccommunity #diplomats #departmentofstate #internationalrelations #university #growth
In the year 2000, I visited NY for the first time and one of my core memories was seeing the Rockefeller Center. 20 years later, I had been offered a full-time role at a firm, Deloitte, headquartered in the same building where I once stood.
As the first in my family to work in the corporate world, I found it quite challenging to navigate the world of advisory, but also found it to be incredibly gratifying and enriching. I could have never anticipated the lifelong mentors and friends I would make over the past 2+ years and the outstanding personal and professional growth I received.
Last Friday was my last day at the firm and I departed with immense gratitude. To the mentors, friends, and colleagues who have supported me, shaped me into the professional I am today, opened doors to opportunities, and promoted to Consultant, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart. I always felt enriched, inspired, and energized by you. You all made Deloitte an amazing place to work.
Special thanks to Paul Meynen, Damian Walch, Kye Kolar, Kelsey Sobczak, Cristina Smith, Jason Kwak, Isabel de Lange, Francisco Perez, Korri Bowers, Niloo Bedrood, Nicola McILwrick, CPA, Aditi Ghosh, Jennifer Beecroft-Mick, Mayra Diera-Diaz, Munir Moon, Stefanie Chang, and many more for believing in my potential.
#deloitte #advisory #businesscontinuity #disasterrecovery #growth #thankyou #opportunities
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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
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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.
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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.