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Marlana Schnell
Actively seeking opportunities to use leadership, grant-writing, education and social service experiences!
Professional Background
Marlana D Schnell is a dedicated and forward-thinking professional who has made significant contributions to the fields of education and workforce development. With a strong belief in creating lasting and efficient systems change, she is passionate about increasing opportunities for individuals who may not have the ability to advocate for themselves. This commitment is reflected in her early adoption of the Collective Impact model, an approach that leverages data, collaborative relationships, and servant leadership within organizations to foster meaningful progress on complex education and workforce issues.
Throughout her career, Marlana has served in various significant positions that highlight her expertise and leadership abilities. As an Adjunct Instructor at Des Moines Area Community College, she utilizes her extensive knowledge to mentor and guide students, equipping them with the necessary skills and insights to thrive in their future careers. Her previous role as Director of the Gateway to College at the same institution exemplifies her ability to lead programs that facilitate educational access and success for students facing significant barriers.
Marlana has also held notable positions within various organizations, including the Central Iowa Reengagement Center, where she served as Director of the Reenagement Center, focusing on reengaging students into educational systems. Her work as an Education Pathways Coordinator at Des Moines Area Community College further illustrates her commitment to finding effective solutions to complex educational pathways. Furthermore, as an Independent Consultant for Community and Workforce Partnerships, Marlana has provided her insights and expertise to organizations seeking to enhance their collaborative efforts in addressing workforce challenges.
Her efforts have extended into several initiatives aimed at youth development, including her past role as Lead Coordinator of the Middle School Drug and Violence Prevention Initiative at Des Moines Public Schools. Additionally, her experience as the School to Work, Work-Based Learning Intermediary at Des Moines Public Schools showcases her focus on creating viable pathways for students between education and meaningful employment.
Marlana's comprehensive career trajectory reveals her versatility and dedication to empowering individuals and organizations alike through strategic partnerships and innovative educational practices.
Education and Achievements
Marlana is well-educated, having attained a Masters in Public Administration from Drake University, a program recognized for fostering leadership and management skills relevant to public service and community development. This advanced degree has undoubtedly equipped her with the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to navigate and enact comprehensive systems change effectively.
Before earning her master's, she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Human Behavior at Grand View University, which provided her with a strong foundation in understanding the dynamics of human interactions and societal structures. This educational background is essential for her work in collective impact initiatives, as it allows her to better comprehend the needs of various stakeholders and engage them meaningfully.
Marlana’s educational journey and her professional endeavors reflect a commitment to not only her personal growth but also to uplifting others within the community. Her capacity for developing strategic plans and conducting thorough research allows her to effectively address the challenges faced by the populations she serves.
Specialties
With a diverse skill set that includes collective impact methodologies, systems change, leadership, and mentoring, Marlana has established herself as an expert in facilitating complex collaborations across education and workforce development sectors. Her specialties include:
- Collective Impact: Marlana is a staunch advocate for the Collective Impact model, which emphasizes the importance of stakeholders from multiple sectors coming together to achieve significant community-wide goals.
- Systems Change: Through her various roles, she has demonstrated a keen ability to analyze existing systems and implement changes that enhance efficiency, accessibility, and impact.
- Leadership: As evidenced by her numerous leadership roles, Marlana inspires teamwork and cooperation among individuals and organizations to solve pressing challenges.
- Mentoring: Through her teaching roles and experience, she dedicates herself to empowering the next generation by sharing her knowledge and experiences, providing guidance, and nurturing potential.
- Proposal Writing and Reports: Marlana's capability in developing persuasive proposals and comprehensive reports has likely been a key asset in securing funding and support for various initiatives.
- Research and Strategic Planning: Her analytical skills and attention to detail guide her research efforts, allowing her to develop informed strategic plans aimed at advancing her initiatives and meeting specific goals.
Marlana D Schnell's career stands out as a testament to her unwavering dedication to enhancing educational access and workforce involvement for individuals and communities. Through her unique blend of skills and experiences, she exemplifies leadership in addressing systemic challenges and advocating for those without a voice.
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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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- 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.