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Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland
Emmy Award-Winning & Peabody Nominated Director | Speaker & Consultant | Leading equity & social change in emerging technology
Professional Background
Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland is an accomplished and visionary leader in the multimedia storytelling landscape, with over eight years of rich experience in creating and consulting on immersive and interactive experiences. Her expertise lies at the dynamic intersection of storytelling and emerging technology, where she has made significant strides as an Emmy award-winning director. Her innovative approach to storytelling has won her numerous accolades, making her a notable figure in the realm of virtual reality (VR) and immersive media.
As a Peabody-nominated director, Michaela has broken new ground in the industry. Notably, she became one of the first directors to both create and premiere a short film utilizing Open AI’s SORA platform, which gained recognition at the prestigious Tribeca Festival. This pioneering accomplishment is a testament to her creativity and forward-thinking mindset, establishing her as a key influence in the immersive storytelling space.
Michaela's compelling body of work in virtual reality animation has not only engaged audiences but has also garnered critical acclaim. Some of her notable recognitions include the Best Directing in XR award from The Collision Awards, a finalist mention for VR Film of the Year at the International VR Awards, and the Grand Prize at The Philippine Animation Festival. Additionally, she is a nominee for the Producers Guild of America’s Innovation Award, highlighting her as a groundbreaking talent in the XR field.
Beyond her impressive directorial accomplishments, Michaela serves as a consultant, speaker, and thought leader, showcasing her expertise in various formats. Her contributions to the industry have led to her recognition as one of the 100 Original Voices of XR and a member of Blooloop’s 50 Immersive Influencers, showcasing her influence and reach within the community.
Michaela’s work has not gone unnoticed, as her projects have been celebrated at top-tier institutions and festivals, including the New York Public Library, Museum of the Moving Image, Venice International Film Festival, SXSW, and the Tribeca Festival. Her work has also been featured in prestigious media outlets such as TIME, Forbes, The Guardian, Variety, and Hollywood Reporter, reflecting her impact and the relevance of her narratives in today’s digital landscape. Her articulate speaking abilities also make her a sought-after speaker at numerous international conferences, public institutions, and podcasts, where she shares her insights on immersive storytelling and technology.
In a groundbreaking move, she was integral in the publication of one of the first LGBTQIA+ virtual reality experiences to be released on the Meta Quest store. She also co-authored a significant white paper that explores virtual reality as a powerful tool for learning, impact, and engagement, demonstrating her commitment to using technology as a force for positive change.
Michaela's impact-driven approach has inspired partnerships with various organizations, including The Alaska Native Heritage Center, Games for Change, The Human Rights Campaign, The Nobel Peace Center, and The United Nations. This work underscores her dedication to using her skills and experience to make a compelling difference in the world.
Education and Achievements
Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland pursued her Bachelor's degree in Literary Journalism at the University of California, Irvine. Her educational journey equipped her with essential skills and knowledge that have become instrumental in her career within the storytelling and media landscape. Additionally, she earned her high school diploma from Nipomo High School, where her passion for media and dance began to take shape.
Her illustrious career features a series of roles highlighting her adaptability and commitment to creative endeavors. Michaela has served in numerous leadership and creative positions, including being a former Entertainment Advisory Group Member at The Academy of International Extended Reality and a Senior Creative Strategist & Impact Producer at Games for Change. Her broad experience encompasses everything from serving as a Grand Jury Member at WSA to roles as a Creative Consultant at Crux, reflecting her versatility across various platforms and mediums.
Furthermore, Michaela has helmed important initiatives, such as her role as the Chair of the Board of Directors for Artizen's Social Impact Grant at Kaleidoscope. In addition, her creative operations experience is exemplified through her work as a VP of Creative Operations at Silver Dream Projects, Inc.
In earlier stages of her career, Michaela worked with notable organizations, including the Museum of Ice Cream and Time Inc., where she honed her skills in producing impactful content. Her diverse experiences, ranging from being a Dance Company Member at Gotham Dance Theater to performing at theme parks, have nurtured her artistic sensibilities.
Achievements
Michaela's career is punctuated with accolades that reflect her dedication to excellence and innovation in her craft. As a recognized figure in the immersive cultural space, she has received the prestigious Best Directing in XR award at The Collision Awards, showcasing her exceptional talent in directing virtual reality content. Additionally, her project was honored as a finalist for VR Film of the Year by the International VR Awards and awarded the Grand Prize at the Philippine Animation Festival, solidifying her footprint as a pioneer in immersive storytelling.
With her impact-focused initiatives, Michaela has played a critical role in promoting inclusivity and diversity within the virtual reality sector. She was pivotal in launching one of the first LGBTQIA+ experiences on the Meta Quest store, showcasing her commitment to bringing underrepresented narratives to mainstream audiences. Furthermore, her co-authored white paper celebrating virtual reality as a transformative learning tool underscores her thought leadership in the field.
Michaela has established her presence in the industry through her active involvement with influential organizations and thought leadership groups, further reinforcing her commitment to the evolving landscape of immersive technology. With a genuine passion for storytelling interwoven with technology, Michaela A. Ternasky-Holland continues to inspire and lead the way in creating immersive experiences that resonate deeply within the hearts and minds of audiences around the globe.
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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
- 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.
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