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Joanna Vargas
Design Program Manager
Professional Background
Joanna Vargas is a dynamic and motivational figure in the world of creative services and project management. With a diverse portfolio that includes both athletic and digital creativity, she has made a significant impact across various roles and industries. Joanna currently serves as the Design Program Manager at 3Q Digital, where she leads teams with enthusiasm and an infectious passion for innovative solutions. Her previous experience at the same company as a Senior Creative Services Project Manager highlights her ability to navigate complex challenges while maintaining a vision for creative projects that resonate on a global scale.
Before joining 3Q Digital, Joanna held numerous positions that allowed her to hone her skills and expand her professional network. As a Creative Services Operations Manager at Common Thread Collective, she was instrumental in streamlining workflows and enhancing collaborative efforts among creative teams. This experience built upon her time as a Senior Project Manager at The Craftsman Agency, where she expertly managed multiple projects that demanded a blend of creativity and strategic planning.
Joanna has also worked at companies like Ubisoft, where she contributed as a Creative Services Project Manager, and CBS Interactive, where she began as a Marketing Intern and advanced to Editor/Web Designer. Her journey showcases a unique blend of creativity and marketing, perfectly positioning her for leadership roles in the digital landscape. Additionally, her past experiences as a Certified Level 2 CrossFit Coach and as a member of the Greek Olympic Softball Team reflects her multifaceted talents and commitment to excellence.
Education and Achievements
Joanna's academic background is just as impressive as her professional experience. She holds a Master of Education with a focus on Intercollegiate Athletic Leadership from the University of Washington, equipping her with the knowledge and skills to foster leadership in sports and beyond. Prior to that, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism with a Business Administration minor from the University of Oregon. This educational foundation not only enhances her critical thinking and communication skills but also gives her a robust understanding of the intersections between media, business, and athletics.
Throughout her career, Joanna has been an advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion within the creative industry. She firmly believes that the industry's growth is contingent on the incorporation of diverse voices and perspectives. To this end, she has established herself as a resource for emerging talent through recommendations of platforms like BlacksWho.Design, CreativeWomenofColor.com, and others aiming to elevate underrepresented creatives in the landscape of design and digital marketing.
Notable Contributions and Community Engagement
Beyond her impressive resume, Joanna Vargas is deeply committed to community and collaboration. She understands the importance of creating environments where creativity flourishes and accountability is maintained. This philosophy of working alongside "big thinkers who aren't afraid to laugh at themselves" is evident in her approach to leadership and teamwork.
Joanna's work is closely aligned with organizations and initiatives that celebrate diversity and support the needs of marginalized communities in the creative sector. As a promoter of platforms that provide opportunities for underrepresented creatives, she exemplifies the spirit of giving back and nurturing the next generation of talent. Her involvement with resources such as Rememory.Directory, PeopleofCraft.com, and Browngirlsmafia.com underscores her commitment to building a more inclusive environment in the fields she operates.
In her capacity as a self-starter and organized professional, Joanna thrives on finding solutions that lead to impactful outcomes. Her career trajectory not only reflects her personal ambitions but also showcases her dedication to fostering an industry that welcomes diverse thought and innovation. This makes her a respected leader and a sought-after collaborator in the creative services realm.
Joanna Vargas's journey—from a student-athlete at the University of Oregon to a pivotal figure at global digital agencies—illustrates her unwavering commitment to excellence and innovation. Her ability to drive creativity while maintaining a focus on collaboration and accountability establishes her as a true asset in any team she joins. With a focus on global impact and a passion for encouraging diverse perspectives, Joanna continues to inspire her colleagues as she works towards bettering not just her own career, but the industry at large.
Highlights
🤠 Earlier this year, I had a blast emceeing the first ever Dropbox Design Summit with the entire Design + Research Org in Austin, Texas.
🎨 Our Summit theme, Craft Class, marked a collective return to foundational basics. We aimed to embrace Dropbox’s heritage strengths: simplicity, quality, and delight.
🌎 Over the course of two days, we gathered 135 in-person attendees (and 35 virtually!) from 43 unique global regions to celebrate a beginner’s mindset and set a new bar for quality in 2023.
🎤 We had an incredible range of internal speakers and excellent panels from thought leaders on Design Principles and demonstrating Craft in your career.
🤩 We also hosted some excellent external speakers - from iconic metalsmiths (Nina Berenato), to experts in cognitive bias (David Dylan Thomas), to critique workshops (Rachel Gogel) and intimate conversations with Design Legends (Tim Allen).
#️⃣ By the numbers: -- 77% of our speakers were women, people of color and/or queer. -- 84% left with a better understanding of how Dropbox Design defines craft excellence. -- 86% learned something they can apply to day to day work. -- 90% feel a deeper connection to their wider Design Community. -- 92% were satisfied with their overall Summit experience.
🫶 From a community standpoint, we wanted to maximize the rare opportunity for meaningful interaction. Here are just a few ways we cultivated community connection: -- An open "fun fact" game that incentivized sharing fun facts for prizes -- Sharing community tips like: gathering in horseshoes instead of closed circles and awareness of the liking gap (most humans underestimate how much other people like them and enjoy their company) -- Craft cards with theme-based conversation starters -- Allowing for some breathing room and organic mingle time in between scheduled sessions -- Thoughtful seating arrangements during special moments to maximize common interests
🍾 I hope we get to do it all again next year!
✨ All made possible by this stellar organizing crew: Alastair Simpson Sally Croom Jaclyn Ziccardi Daniella Mogannam Nikki Kopelson Elise Zimbardo-Ensor
- our partners @ OTHR Agency
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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.