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Kelly Gleason
Regional Development Director, Major Gifts & Special Initiatives at Office of University Development, Duke University
Professional Background
Kelly Gleason is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in higher education and university advancement. Currently, she serves as the Regional Development Director for Major Gifts & Special Initiatives at the Office of University Development at Duke University, where she plays a vital role in cultivating relationships with donors and managing special initiatives to enhance the university’s outreach and funding efforts. Her commitment to the mission of higher education and her passion for fostering supportive environments for students and families have been the foundation of her impressive career.
Previously, Kelly has held several pivotal roles within the Office of University Development at Duke University. As an Advancement Officer, she focused on securing philanthropic support to advance the university's strategic goals. Her early career at Duke also included work as an Admissions Counselor for the prestigious Global Executive MBA Program at the Fuqua School of Business, where she contributed to the recruitment and selection of candidates who would thrive in this rigorous and highly regarded program. Kelly's capacity to connect with prospective students and families has been a consistent theme throughout her professional journey.
Before her time at Duke, Kelly gained significant experience at DePaul University, where she served in multiple roles, including Assistant Director of First Year and Parent & Family Programs. In this position, she developed and implemented strategies to enhance the first-year experience for students and appreciated the crucial role that families play in the transition to college life. Her earlier tenure at DePaul also included working as a Coordinator in the same domain, underscoring her commitment to student success from multiple angles.
Additionally, Kelly's career also includes experience at The Ohio State University, where she worked as a Graduate Associate in Orientation, Undergraduate Admissions, and the First-Year Experience. Here she provided support and guidance to incoming students, aiding them in their academic journey. Kelly's experience is further complemented by her time as an Admissions Counselor at Swarthmore College, allowing her to diversify her skills in the admissions process and student engagement strategies.
Education and Achievements
Kelly’s educational background is robust and diverse, equipping her with a unique blend of skills and knowledge to excel in her roles. She earned her Doctor of Law (JD) from DePaul University College of Law, where she deepened her understanding of legal principles and strengthened her advocacy skills. This legal background provides her with a strong foundation in contract negotiation, compliance, and regulatory issues, which are essential skills in the field of higher education fundraising and administration.
Before attaining her JD, Kelly earned a Master’s degree in Higher Education/Higher Education Administration from The Ohio State University. This degree not only complements her professional experiences but also demonstrates her commitment to understanding the complexities of higher education institutions from a managerial perspective. The knowledge gained during her Master’s program enables her to navigate the challenges and opportunities that arise in a university setting effectively.
Prior to her graduate studies, Kelly completed her Bachelor's degree in Leadership Studies and Psychology at the University of Richmond. This early stage of her education laid the groundwork for her understanding of human behavior and effective leadership strategies, both crucial for her roles in admissions and university development.
Notable Achievements
Throughout her career, Kelly Gleason has successfully spearheaded various initiatives that have left a lasting impact on the institutions she has worked for. Her strategic approach to developing major gifts programs at Duke University has resulted in significant increases in donor engagement and funding allocations to various academic initiatives and student support services. Her ability to build meaningful connections with key stakeholders has been instrumental in fostering a culture of philanthropy at Duke.
Kelly is recognized for her innovative approaches to enhancing the first-year experience for students and engaging parents and families more effectively in their child's academic journey. By creating programs that address the unique needs of first-year students and their families, she has contributed to higher retention rates and a more significant sense of community within the university.
In addition to her role as a leader within student affairs and university advancement, Kelly has also participated in several professional development programs and conferences, contributing to her robust understanding of current trends in education, philanthropy, and student engagement.
Conclusion
Kelly Gleason's diverse professional background, extensive education, and noteworthy achievements make her a valuable asset in the realm of higher education. Her dedication to student success, donor engagement, and program development reflects her passion for fostering educational environments that support and nurture students throughout their academic journeys. With an unwavering commitment to enhancing the university experience for all stakeholders, Kelly continues to make significant contributions to Duke University and beyond.
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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
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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.
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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.