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Jesse Ilhardt
Executive Director, VOCEL
Jesse Ilhardt is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of VOCEL, an organization dedicated to early childhood education. She has been in this role since April 2021, following her co-founding of the organization in 2013. Ilhardt's background includes extensive experience in early childhood education, having worked as a preschool teacher, teacher coach, and program leader for over 15 years.136
Professional Background
- Education: Ilhardt holds a degree from Dominican University and has participated in professional development programs such as the Bonfire Talent Accelerator.24
- Leadership Role: As Executive Director, she leads VOCEL's vision and strategy, focusing on innovative programs that support young children and their educators. Under her leadership, VOCEL has expanded its reach to over 300 children and families across Chicago.156
- Public Speaking: Jesse has also been active in public speaking, including a TEDx Talk titled "The Power of Playing With Your Child," which emphasizes the importance of play in child development.5
Vision and Impact
Ilhardt is passionate about creating nurturing environments where children can learn through play and relationships. Her work at VOCEL aims to enhance educational experiences for both children and educators, advocating for the potential of all children to thrive.36
In her personal life, Jesse enjoys exploring new culinary experiences and spending quality time with her family.3
Highlights
I'm beyond proud to share VOCEL’s latest impact report – and this one’s a particularly special one. After celebrating VOCEL’s 10th anniversary last year, we got to work on charting the path ahead: What will VOCEL’s reach and impact look like in 5 years? Which strengths will we leverage, and where will we continue to innovate?
This report reflects on our successes from the 2023-2024 school year – and introduces our new 5-year strategic plan. It also outlines our ambitious goal to reach 20,000 children across Chicago by 2029, anchored in our enduring beliefs in the power of rigorous, brain-building play and centering equity in all facets of our work. I’m brimming with confidence in our team and program participants, gratitude for our partners who will make it possible, and hope for this next era of VOCEL.
Join me as we take the next step toward early childhood excellence for all children: https://lnkd.in/g9qUsHt2
Report design & development by Blair Hannah and Jeff Meador from Concentric Design, guided by my talented colleagues Anais Gonzalez Nyberg and Greg Lowe. Beautiful work, once again!
This week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s team (including the incomparable Katie Dealy) put out Parents Under Pressure, an advisory on the mental health of parents highlighting the overwhelming stress that parents and caregivers feel most days and the impact of parental isolation and loneliness — noting that 65% of parents, and 77% of single parents in particular, experienced loneliness.
In an interview with NPR yesterday, Dr. Murthy said, “You can't tell from the outside how people are doing. And sometimes, I think, as parents, we assume that we're the only ones struggling. If we can talk openly with one another about this, I believe that we can help find and build the kind of community that all of us need to do parenting well.”
Parent well-being is something we think about often at VOCEL. How to combat the isolation of raising young children, how to reduce stress by providing support rooted in peer community and connection, how to normalize the worries we share, especially now.
The start of the school year can come with a whole heap of worries. Some might seem small — what if I got the wrong school supplies, or what if my child doesn’t know where to go? But often those small worries still feel big, and are paired with loads of bigger worries too. What if my child doesn’t follow the rules? What if my child is behind? What if the school can’t accommodate my child’s need? What if kids are mean to my child? Or worse, what if my child is mean to other kids? And beyond our kids, there are more worries. What if I can’t get to school on time? What if I can’t communicate well with the teacher? What if they think I’m a bad parent? What if I can’t find affordable before or after care to be able to keep my job?
It goes such a long way to know simply to know we’re not alone in these worries. That we’re part of an interconnected fabric of parents devoted to our kiddos thriving in this wild world.
Earlier this week, my son started at a new school, and I was struck by the comfort I felt from a simple response by his new teacher when I explained his challenges with transitions. “He’ll be ok. And if he’s not ok, that’s ok.” Ten words meant the world to me during that moment of worry.
So, thanks to all the educators, fellow parents, and co-workers out there who are making it safe to share worries and dishing out acknowledgment and comfort in return. New beginnings can be hard. But, together, we got this.
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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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