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Diane Ragsdale
Director of Cultural Leadership at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Founder of Global Arts Think Thank
Professional Background
Diane Ragsdale is a highly respected speaker, writer, and advisor in the field of arts and culture. Currently, she holds the position of Director and co-lead faculty at the Cultural Leadership Program at the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. Her career has been marked by a commitment to fostering innovative arts management and entrepreneurship, particularly for performance-based artists. Notably, she played an instrumental role in establishing a unique Master's program in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship at The New School in Manhattan, which she directed for three years before transitioning in June 2020.
Ragsdale's extensive experience in the arts sector includes pivotal roles such as a program officer for theater and dance at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and managing director at the contemporary performing arts center On the Boards in Seattle. Her diverse portfolio showcases her capacity for revitalizing artistic initiatives, exemplified through her work at a music festival in Idaho and engagements with prestigious events like the Sundance Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, WOMAD USA, and Bumbershoot Arts Festival. Her career started as a theater practitioner, fortified with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting and Directing, which lays the foundation for her understanding of both the artistic and management sides of the performing arts.
In addition to her roles in management, Ragsdale is currently a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. Her academic endeavors have seen her contribute to the cultural economics program, where she presented lectures from 2011 to 2015. Her dissertation takes a critical look at the interplay between the nonprofit and commercial theater landscape in the United States, tracing developments over a 70-year period. This unique blend of practical experience, academic rigor, and passion for the arts has established Ragsdale as a prominent voice in her field.
Education and Achievements
Ragsdale possesses a strong educational background with a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Fine Arts in Psychology and Theater from Tulane University, followed by a Master of Fine Arts in Acting and Directing from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. These degrees reflect her dual expertise in understanding both the psychological aspects of performance art and the practical requirements of directing and producing.
Throughout her career, she has garnered recognition for her contributions to the arts, serving on influential boards and editorial committees. Ragsdale is a member of the board for Anne Bogart's SITI Company and Marty Pottnerger's Art At Work, and she holds a position on the editorial board for Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts. Additionally, she serves on the Advisory Council of HowlRound, an important online theater platform and journal that explores contemporary theater practice.
Ragsdale has published numerous essays and articles that reflect her insights into the arts, including her essay "To What End Permanence?" for the 2019 book A Moment on the Clock of the World, a field report titled In the Intersection: Partnerships in the New Play Sector published in 2012, and the 2009 article titled "Recreating Fine Arts Institutions" in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Through her writing, Ragsdale actively engages her audience in discussions surrounding the evolving landscape of the arts and the significant role they play in societal development.
Her dual citizenship in the US and the Netherlands allows her to maintain a global perspective on the arts, as she works to bridge cultural discussions across various contexts.
Notable Engagements
Diane Ragsdale's career is further highlighted by her role as adjunct faculty at Yale University, where she teaches workshops that delve into aesthetic values in the contemporary cultural context for the Theater Management MA program. This opportunity allows her to influence emerging leaders in the arts and provides a platform for exploring significant themes in theater management and production.
Ragsdale's previous positions as a Visiting Guest Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison underscore her commitment to education and mentorship, allowing her to share her expertise with students and budding professionals in the field. Moreover, her experience as an Associate Program Officer at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation strengthens her well-rounded understanding of grant-making and support structures for the performing arts.
She has also made a mark in the festival domain, formerly serving as the Executive Director at The Festival at Sandpoint, where she undertook efforts to enhance community engagement through the arts. This experience enriches her profile as a leader who is invested in cultivating vibrant cultural ecosystems.
Ragsdale's broad range of experience across different institutions and her extensive network within the arts community position her as a knowledgeable figure in arts management and cultural entrepreneurship. Her blog, Jumper, hosted on ArtsJournal.com, provides further insights into her thoughts and reflections on contemporary arts issues, allowing her to engage with a wider audience of art enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars.
In summary, Diane Ragsdale's multifaceted career reflects her unwavering dedication to the arts and culture sector. With a unique blend of practical know-how, academic insight, and a genuine passion for the mission of creating vibrant artistic landscapes, she continues to inspire and lead both emerging and established artists toward achieving their goals in making the arts more accessible and transformative in society.
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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.
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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.
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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.