Suggestions
Liz Brown
Entrepreneur / Urban Planner / Experience Designer
Professional Background
Liz Brown is a multifaceted professional with a wealth of experience spanning entrepreneurship, urban planning, and communication. As the CEO and co-founder of Fawns Leap, Liz continues to innovate in her field by bridging technology and design with a focus on community growth and development. Her diverse experiences include being the former founder of Design Jawn, where she played a vital role in creating design solutions that resonate with urban communities.
In the realm of education, Liz has shared her expertise as an adjunct professor at esteemed institutions such as Drexel University's Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and Thomas Jefferson University. Her dedication to education extends beyond the classroom, having served as a course instructor at the University at Buffalo Center for Urban Studies, where she has influenced the next generation of urban planners and designers. Liz's unique combination of skills in urban planning and information design positions her as a thought leader in her field, with an emphasis on practical application and community relevance.
From her beginnings as a campaign organizer to her influential role as the managing director of Backstage Philadelphia at Backstage Capital, Liz has continuously worked to empower underrepresented communities, especially women in tech. Her passion for advocacy is evident in her commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the technology and urban planning industries. As an articulate advocate for these causes, she utilizes her platform to amplify voices within the community, striving to create an environment that fosters innovation and creativity.
Additionally, Liz has left her mark in the private sector through her previous role as co-CEO and Head of Design at Webjunto, where her leadership and vision helped transform the company into a trusted partner for brands seeking to enhance their digital presence. As a former communications manager at NHRC, she honed her skills in strategic communication and community engagement, which are essential to her current entrepreneurial endeavors.
Throughout her career, Liz's ability to connect with individuals and bring about meaningful change has been central to her accomplishments. Her dedication to advancing the fields of UX and urban planning is complemented by her work as a podcast host, where she has explored relevant topics that intersect technology, social issues, and urban development.
Education and Achievements
Liz Brown's academic journey is rich and diverse, having studied at several prestigious institutions. She holds a B.A. in Communication from the University at Buffalo, where she developed a strong foundation in effective messaging and engagement strategies. Continuing her academic pursuit, she obtained a Master of Science in Information Design and Technology from SUNY Polytechnic Institute Graduate Studies, further enhancing her ability to create impactful designs that communicate complex information.
Liz also pursued a Master's degree in Urban Planning at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo, where her passion for shaping urban environments and improving community livability took root. Her academic experience was broadened during her studies at Nanyang Technological University, where she immersed herself in Communication and Mandarin Chinese, enhancing her global perspective and communication skills.
Through her education, Liz has gained a wealth of knowledge that informs her work in urban planning and entrepreneurship. Her ability to bridge the gap between various disciplines sets her apart as a leader who not only understands the theoretical frameworks but also the practical implications of her work. This unique blend of education empowers her to take on complex challenges in today's ever-evolving urban landscape.
Achievements
- Founder of Design Jawn: Liz initiated this venture to bring design thinking to urban communities, focusing on projects that enhance local infrastructure and promote user-centered solutions.
- Adjunct Professor: By teaching at institutions like Drexel University and Thomas Jefferson University, Liz directly influences the education of aspiring urban planners and designers, sharing her practical insights and real-world experiences.
- Podcast Host: Through her involvement as the former host of the Parallax Podcast, Liz has created a platform for discussions on diversity in tech, urban development, and the integration of design in everyday life, fostering a community of inquisitive listeners.
- Managing Director at Backstage Philadelphia: In her role, Liz championed the funding and support of startups led by traditionally underrepresented entrepreneurs, making significant strides in enhancing the startup ecosystem in Philadelphia.
- Airfield Manager at US Air Force: This role speaks volumes to her versatility and leadership capabilities, managing operations and logistics in a high-stakes environment during her tenure with the Air Force.
- Community Engagement: Her work in the Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development and City of Kingston Department of Recreation demonstrates her unwavering dedication to enhancing urban living conditions and community engagement.
In every role she has undertaken, Liz has contributed to building inclusive environments, supporting innovation, and fostering sustainable growth in urban settings. Her rich professional tapestry coupled with her academic background underscores her profound expertise in urban planning, design, and technology. Liz Brown is not only an entrepreneur and urban planner but also a powerful advocate for communities, making a lasting impact in her field and beyond.
People also viewed
Related People
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.
People also viewed
Related People