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Leanna Fenneberg
Vice President for Student Affairs at Rider University
Professional Background
Dr. Leanna Fenneberg is a distinguished leader in the field of higher education and student affairs, with over 20 years of progressive experience that showcases her commitment to excellence and innovation. Currently serving as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Rider University, Dr. Fenneberg has consistently taken on roles of increasing responsibility throughout her career. Her deep understanding of the complexities of student life and her dedicated approach to student affairs have made her a valuable asset in developing effective programs that support student success and retention.
Previously, Dr. Fenneberg worked at Saint Louis University, where she advanced through several key positions including Assistant Vice President of the Division of Student Development and Director of Undergraduate Initiatives. Her previous roles also include Director of First-Year Programs and Area Coordinator for Housing and Residence Life. Throughout her tenure at Saint Louis University, she championed initiatives aimed at enhancing first-year experiences and reinforcing the vital collaboration between student affairs and academic affairs.
Dr. Fenneberg’s extensive background offers a breadth of knowledge in student learning design, student transition programs, and the overall development of supportive environments that facilitate student engagement and accomplishment. Her leadership philosophy centers around data-driven decision-making, diversity, equity, inclusion, and professional development. These guiding principles have shaped her vision for nurturing an inclusive academic environment and fostering a culture of respect and belonging within student communities.
Education and Achievements
Dr. Fenneberg's solid educational background lays the foundation for her professional achievements. She earned her Ph.D. in Education and Philosophy from Saint Louis University, a prestigious institution known for its commitment to social justice and the advancement of knowledge. Prior to that, she completed her Master of Education at the University of South Carolina, focusing on cultivating effective practices in student affairs and educational leadership. Additionally, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Psychology from Marquette University, where she also began her career in student leadership as a resident assistant and assistant hall director.
Driven by her passion for education and student advocacy, Dr. Fenneberg has consistently pursued opportunities to intervene in student life positively. Her innovative approaches to first-year programs have been recognized as pivotal in supporting student transitions from high school to higher education, ensuring they have the tools they need to thrive academically and socially.
Areas of Expertise
Dr. Fenneberg’s areas of expertise represent her comprehensive view of student affairs leadership. Her focus areas include:
- Student Affairs Leadership: With a visionary approach to leadership in student affairs, Dr. Fenneberg has championed programs improving retention and student success rates.
- Retention and Student Success: She has implemented strategies that prioritize engagement and support structures tailored toward enhancing the overall student experience, significantly impacting retention rates and academic progression.
- First-Year Experience: Recognized for her effective first-year experience initiatives, Dr. Fenneberg has created programs that ease student transitions through comprehensive support systems, orientation, and peer mentoring programs.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Committed to fostering environments that celebrate diversity, Dr. Fenneberg emphasizes the importance of equity and inclusion in all her work, ensuring that every student feels valued and supported.
- Work-Life Integration for Student Affairs Professionals: Understanding the unique challenges faced by student affairs professionals, Dr. Fenneberg advocates for work-life integration strategies fostering employee well-being and fulfillment.
Notable Achievements
Throughout her career, Dr. Fenneberg has continually excelled in her roles, leading her teams toward outstanding performance and achieving crucial institutional goals. Her commitment to communication and collaboration has enabled her to build meaningful relationships with colleagues, students, and other stakeholders, ultimately fostering a positive environment conducive to student learning and growth.
In her current role as Vice President for Student Affairs at Rider University, Dr. Fenneberg has spearheaded initiatives that have notably enhanced student engagement and satisfaction. Her contributions have been integral to improving academic support services, promoting mental health resources, and increasing student involvement in co-curricular activities. Given her track record, she is consistently invited to speak at conferences, sharing her insights on transformative practices in student affairs leadership and the importance of inclusivity in higher education.
Dr. Fenneberg’s unwavering integrity, strong work ethic, and vibrant outlook contribute to a driven atmosphere within her teams, allowing them to thrive and work cohesively toward common goals.
As a dedicated advocate for students and student affairs professionals alike, she continually seeks ways to improve practices within the higher education landscape, ensuring that she remains at the forefront of trends and developments in the field.
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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.
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.
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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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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.