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Gladis Araujo
Global Quality VP, Mattel - Global Supply Chain - Global Procurement- Global Quality Digital Transformation- Nearshoring Expert - Supplier Development
Professional Background
Gladis Araujo is a highly accomplished professional with extensive experience in executive leadership roles in global supply chain, product and process quality, strategic planning, and business development. With a remarkable background steeped in international business operations, she has made significant contributions to organizations by implementing effective global digital transformations and delivering continuous improvements across various sectors. Gladis is particularly passionate about fostering supplier development in emerging markets, operational excellence, and promoting diversity and inclusion practices within the workplaces she has influenced.
In her current role as Vice President of Global Quality Safety and Regulatory for Asia & India at Mattel, Inc., Gladis brings her wealth of knowledge to enjoy the dynamic challenges of a global environment. With more than two decades of experience within Mattel, her career trajectory showcases a deep understanding of supply chain management and quality protocols. Notable achievements include driving profitability while fulfilling customer quality and utility needs and streamlining procurement processes and quality best practices. Her leadership has been instrumental in maximizing net income, driving out excess costs, and improving operational efficiencies.
Gladis is adept at building new teams within startup environments and has developed strong supplier selection, evaluation, and development practices. She has mastered over 40 different manufacturing processes, allowing her to balance the intricate dynamics between supply chain operations and quality assurance effectively. Known for her exceptional negotiation skills, she has successfully negotiated procurement and vendor deals worldwide, nurturing critical business relationships that are essential for seamless supply chain management.
Additionally, her innovative approach to problem-solving involves collaborating with key stakeholders across varying cultures, harnessing their perspectives to devise solutions that drive performance excellence and achieve organizational goals.
Education and Achievements
Gladis Araujo’s educational credentials highlight her commitment to continuous learning and excellence across multiple dimensions of business management. She holds a rich academic background, earning a PhD in Business Administration and Management from the University of Phoenix. This advanced degree complements her master's studies, which include an International Management Master from Thunderbird School of Global Management, an Organizational Development Master from Universidad de Monterrey, and a Quality and Manufacturing Master from Tecnológico de Monterrey. Furthermore, her foundational knowledge was established with a Bachelor’s in Chemical and System Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey.
Throughout her career at Mattel, Gladis has held various management positions before rising to her current vice president role. Her journey at the company includes positions such as Americas Global Quality Safety and Regulatory Senior Director and Global Quality Safety and Regulatory Senior Director. Each role has equipped her with focused expertise in quality safety standards and regulations, enabling her to implement protocols that uphold the company's values and commitment to excellence.
Apart from her work at Mattel, Gladis founded Lean in Regio, a nonprofit organization aimed at empowering women and promoting gender equality within the workplace. This initiative showcases her dedication to creating meaningful change and ensuring equitable opportunities in professional landscapes. Through Lean in Regio, Gladis has inspired a generation of women leaders, addressing essential issues that affect working women in the modern corporate environment.
Key Projects and Initiatives
Among the impressive projects and initiatives Gladis has been involved in, her focus on resource allocation and outcome-driven priorities stands out. These methodologies are pivotal in delivering outstanding performance excellence within organizations. Gladis's approach to building strong relationship skills and interfacing at all levels of an enterprise fosters a culture of collaboration, ensuring that team members share a clear sense of purpose and direction.
Her ability to herald change while harnessing entrepreneurial drive is evident in the projects she oversees. By establishing strong leadership and motivational skills, she motivates and develops personnel to consistently deliver successful outcomes. Through collaboration with key stakeholders, Gladis maintains focus on shared objectives that benefit the organization as a whole.
In conclusion, Gladis Araujo is a dynamic executive with a proven track record of driving results in the global supply chain, quality, and regulatory domains. Her impressive educational qualifications, rich professional background, and staunch advocacy for women and minority empowerment contribute to her formidable presence in her field.
Achievements
- Expert in global digital transformation.
- Extensive experience in supplier development across continents.
- Instrumental in driving profitability and streamlining supply chains for Mattel.
- Founder of Lean in Regio, advocating for women's empowerment and gender equality.
Projects
- Utilizing resource-focused and outcome-driven priorities.
- Building strong relationship skills across all enterprise levels.
- Leading change by harnessing entrepreneurial spirit and drive.
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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
- 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.