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Ella Crivello
ED, Community Mindfulness Project - Mom
Ella Saunders Crivello is a mission-driven leader with over 15 years of experience in social impact strategy, fundraising, and global partnerships.
She is the Executive Director of Community Mindfulness Project, a mental health nonprofit that offers inclusive and accessible tools for free.
Ella has a background in International/Global Studies from Ashesi University in Accra, Ghana, and a BA in "The Politics of the NGO" from New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, along with studying Photography at the School of Visual Arts.
Throughout her career, Ella has held various roles focusing on scaling social impact programs, non-profit and corporate partnerships, social impact innovation, storytelling, diversity and inclusion efforts, and thought leadership.
She has been involved with organizations like ellasc.com, Matter Unlimited, Summer, Company Ventures, StartingBloc, and TED Conferences in different capacities.
Ella has successfully led initiatives such as building a B Corp sales team, implementing social impact frameworks, scaling corporate engagement programs, and developing brand marketing partnerships for global nonprofits.
Her expertise lies in strategic partnership development, program scaling, and creating cultures of belonging for marginalized communities.
To learn more about Ella Saunders Crivello and her work, visit her website at www.ellasaunderscrivello.com.
Highlights
This feels personal.
"🔊 33% of parents reporting high levels of stress in the past month compared to 20% of other adults.
🔊 When stress is severe or prolonged, it can have a harmful effect on the mental health of parents and caregivers, which in turn also affects the well- being of the children they raise.
🔊 Children of parents with mental health conditions may face heightened risks for symptoms of depression and anxiety and for earlier onset, recurrence, and prolonged functional impairment from mental health conditions." - The U.S. Surgeon General Issues Advisory on the Mental Health and Well-Being of Parents
👶 This is personal because I have a 3 year old and 5 month old.
The ability to regulate my own nervous system through mindful tools and practices has made every tantrum and sleep deprived night more bearable and has empowered me with confidence to keep going through the hardest parts of this season of life.
👉 Parents - no matter their income, race or religious background - deserve access to resources and tools that reduce the dangerous and debilitating symptoms associated with stress and burnout.
The science shows that access to mindful tools produce many mental and physical health benefits for children and adults including but not limited to: ↘ REDUCED symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety, burnout, chronic pain, blood pressure (and more)...
↗ IMPROVED emotional regulation and resilience, focus and attention, sleep, immune function, impulse control, eating-related behaviors.
Community Mindfulness Project is on a mission to empower all people to lead healthier lives by expanding access to mindfulness tools.
For over 10 years, we have expanded access to mindfulness tools through sessions, training and courses, reaching over 40,000 participants in public schools, community colleges, and libraries, and with nonprofit partners that serve our community members with the highest unmet healthcare needs.
We envision a world where mindfulness is a broadly-distributed, community-based skillset.
We set aside 2 hours this week to learn about the power of play.
In a professional setting, particularly one like ours that centers on mindfulness, there is an assumption that productivity = serious work.
That couldn't be farther from the truth.
Sure; Serious, focused, noise-canceling headphones do have a place in my weekly puzzle to get good work done. But it is limiting to believe that is the only way to make an impact at work.
My colleagues Lisa Natoli Sheehan, Erika Long, and Julia Hepfer reminded me and other Community Mindfulness Project facilitators in our training program theme this week:
🎯 Play and laughter is critical to support our productivity, our sense of belonging, and our mental health.
Even more, in a new season of work that is facing the tension of too much aloneness with the benefits of flexibility and remote work, it was refreshing to be guided through an in-person experience that didn't revolve around butts in seats and a slide deck.
We did silly activities that brought us back to middle school like balancing an egg on a spoon (Brandon Clark and I below 😅 ). We freeze-danced. We were present together laughing. We learned how important it is ages 5 to 105 for us to tap into our innate needs to connect in joyful ways.
-- Community Mindfulness Project leads sessions and workshops in community-led spaces with public schools K-community colleges, and with nonprofits that serve community members with the highest unmet healthcare needs.
#mindfulness #mindfulnessisntserious #mindfulplay #teachertraining #trainthetrainer #joyatwork #productivity
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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
- 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.