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Laurén Schmidt
Global Operations at Gorillas 🦍
Professional Background
Laurén Schmidt has built an impressive career in the hospitality and food delivery industries, showcasing exemplary leadership and strategic acumen. Currently, Laurén serves as the Senior International Expansion Manager at Gorillas, where she is dedicated to enhancing the company's global footprint and operational efficiency. With a robust background in strategic operations and partnerships, her journey is marked by influential roles that have not only shaped her expertise but also contributed significantly to the success of the organizations she has worked with.
Prior to her role at Gorillas, Laurén was the Senior Strategic Operations & Partnerships Lead at MYMY catering, where she was responsible for cultivating partnerships and streamlining operations to optimize service delivery. Her experiences at MYMY catering allowed her to hone important skills in strategic planning and operational management, laying a solid foundation for her subsequent roles.
A noteworthy phase of Laurén's career was spent at Delivery Hero, where she held several pivotal positions including Global Operations Manager for Ghost Kitchens and as a seconded Global Operations Manager at foodpanda's headquarters in Singapore. Her journey at Delivery Hero began as an intern in the Kitchens & Restaurant Concepts team, where she quickly demonstrated her potential and was promoted to a specialist role. Laurén's capacity to maneuver through various operational levels in such a fast-paced environment highlights her versatility and adaptability in the hospitality industry.
Furthermore, her earlier experience as a Barista & Shift Manager at Dallmayr Café & Bar equipped her with essential customer service skills and operational insight, which play a critical role in her current managerial positions.
Education and Achievements
Laurén Schmidt pursued her academic credentials with great determination. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in International Hospitality Management from IUBH University of Applied Sciences, followed by a Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Management from the International College of Management Sydney (ICMS). These educational experiences provided her with a solid theoretical foundation and practical insights into the hospitality landscape, essential for navigating the complexities of international business.
Her commitment to excellence in the hospitality sphere is reflected not only in her career accomplishments but also in her proactive engagement with continuous learning and development. Laurén is a firm believer in harnessing education and experience to drive improvements in operational strategies, particularly in the face of evolving market dynamics. Her dual degree combination reinforces her expertise in both international and management aspects of hospitality, which are invaluable assets in her professional endeavors.
Achievements
Laurén Schmidt’s career is marked by numerous achievements that highlight her impact in the hospitality and operation management sectors:
- Successfully led international expansion initiatives at Gorillas, contributing to significant growth and market penetration.
- Played a key role in establishing strategic partnerships that enhanced service capabilities at MYMY catering.
- Managed global operations during her tenure at Delivery Hero, where she streamlined processes across multiple regions, contributing to increased efficiency and customer satisfaction.
- Developed innovative solutions for Kitchen and Restaurant Concepts that improved operational ergonomics and customer experience in various culinary settings.
These accomplishments underline Laurén's exceptional leadership qualities and her ongoing commitment to excellence in the hospitality industry.
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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
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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.
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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 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.
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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.