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Fiona Cohen
VP People Experience @Mews
Professional Background
Fiona Cohen is an accomplished Human Resources professional with over 15 years of extensive experience in the dynamic landscape of HR, particularly in fast-paced companies expanding their operations across the European and U.S. markets. Throughout her career, Fiona has established herself as a specialist in shaping corporate culture to align with organizational vision, thereby enhancing employee engagement and driving business success. Her innovative approach and strong interest in technology-driven companies have led her to design and implement effective HR programs and processes that empower organizations and their people.
Fiona's illustrious career includes prominent positions at several well-known organizations. She began her journey in the HR space as an HR Specialist at Twenga, where she honed her foundational skills. As she progressed in her career, she took on the role of HR Development Manager at Twenga, expanding her responsibilities to develop and implement strategic HR initiatives. This laid the groundwork for her significant contributions to later positions, leading her to become the Employee Success Director at Tinyclues, a firm recognized for its innovative approach to marketing and analytics. Fiona’s contributions played a crucial role in the acquisition of Tinyclues by Splio, further establishing her reputation in the industry.
In her subsequent role as VP of People at Tinyclues, Fiona focused on optimizing the employee experience, ensuring that the company attracted and retained top talent. Her strategic insights and leadership in people management propelled the organization towards meeting its ambitious goals. Following her impactful tenure at Tinyclues, she transitioned to Mews, where she served as Director of People Business Partner and subsequently as VP of People Experience. In these roles, Fiona continued to champion a culture of innovation and excellence, driving initiatives that aligned closely with business objectives and enriched the overall employee experience.
Education and Achievements
Fiona's educational background has played a significant role in her HR philosophy and practices. She studied Executive Coaching at HEC Paris, one of the most prestigious business schools in the world. This program equipped her with advanced coaching skills, enabling her to actively support and groom leaders within organizations effectively.
Fiona also earned her Master’s degree in Management, focusing on Human Resources, Finance, and Marketing at EFAP - École des nouveaux métiers de la communication. Her comprehensive understanding of management principles, combined with her specialty in HR, has given her a unique perspective on how various facets of a business intersect, which is particularly crucial in today’s ever-evolving corporate environment.
Achievements
Fiona's career is marked by an impressive array of achievements that showcase her strategic prowess and commitment to HR innovation.
- At Mews, as VP of People Experience, she introduced several key programs that significantly enhanced the cultural integration of new employees, which contributed to overall employee satisfaction and retention rates.
- Her leadership in refining the employee onboarding process at Tinyclues has been widely recognized, with improvements leading to a smoother transition for new team members and a distinct boost in the organization’s overall productivity.
- Fiona has also been an integral part of driving talent acquisition strategies that have attracted industry-leading talent, positioning her organizations as employers of choice within their sectors.
Fiona continues to influence the HR landscape with her forward-thinking approach and dedication to fostering an environment of innovation. Her contributions to HR have not only improved the companies she has worked with but have also set a benchmark for excellence in the industry.
Highlights
Mews is expanding with a new acquisition in Germany!
Willkommen bei Mews HS/3 Hotelsoftware GmbH & Co. KG! We are thrilled to welcome the new team to Mews as we expand our market presence in the DACH region.
Let's continue to reimagine the art of hospitality together 🌟
How I increased my productivity by 30% while freeing up mental space?
7 years ago, I started a new job in a fast-growing company to build the people function— while also adjusting to life as a new mom with a 4-month-old baby. The overwhelming workload quickly began to drain my energy and mental space. That's when I discovered a podcast by Jean de La Rochebrochard, Managing Partner at Kima Ventures, discussing how to be “organized like a machine to live like a human.” (link to the French video in the comments) We're all busy, but in a fast-paced company, it's vital to find out your operating model. Don't imagine that it's a "phase" and in a couple of weeks/months, you will have less to do. Spoiler: it will not happen. By defining your operating model, you can avoid unnecessary exhaustion and maintain the joy of thriving in such an environment
I've developed my own operating model based on these 5 key principles:
1️⃣ Set clear boundaries: I've never aimed to please everyone, focusing instead on efficiency, impact, and support. This means protecting my time, prioritizing effectively, and saying no to tasks/projects/meetings that lack clarity, ownership, or don't align with my or my team's goals/priorities.
2️⃣ Optimize Meetings: I've transitioned to 25 and 50-minute meetings, allowing time to prepare for the next one, especially during back-to-back meetings days. I also use AI for note-taking to save time.
3️⃣ Aim for Inbox Zero: Twice a day, I clear out my Slack, emails, and Asana tasks to keep communication streamlined.
4️⃣ Plan (and respect) Focus Time - Every week, I have planned sessions on 3 topics:
- Team development on Monday morning to prepare 1:1s, development conversations, feedback & recognition, etc.
- Strategy and Projects/Programs/Processes to build or review deliverables.
- Scaling Operations focused on building guidelines, processes, and organisational design to scale internal people operations.
5️⃣ Weekly Planning - I treat my workload like a backlog:
- Everything that I have to do is a task, even the smaller things like reminders.
- I categorize tasks by Focus Time topic, scheduling small tasks for outside focus times or adding them to the next week’s backlog if they can’t be addressed during the week.
- Every Monday, I refine my agenda and plan tasks for the week ahead.
By Monday at 10:00 am, my mind is clear, and I'm ready for the week. I love things about productivity and optimization. What are your top tips? I’d love to hear them!
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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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