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Mieke Vercaeren
Head Sustainable Products (Colruyt Group)
Professional Background
Mieke Vercaeren is a highly accomplished leader in sustainability and public policy with extensive experience in various sectors. Currently, she holds the pivotal role of Head of the Sustainable Products Unit at Colruyt Group, where she drives initiatives focused on developing eco-friendly products that align with the company’s commitment to sustainability. With a strong educational background and a rich history in public affairs and corporate sustainability, Mieke’s career reflects her dedication to creating a more sustainable future through innovative business practices.
In her previous role with the Collibri Foundation at Colruyt Group, Mieke was instrumental in managing educational and exchange programs that aimed to empower individuals in developing countries. This experience highlighted her passion for social responsibility and global cooperation, further enhancing her leadership skills in the non-profit sector.
Mieke has also made significant contributions to various organizations through her board memberships and advisory roles. She served as a member of the board at EIT Food, an initiative dedicated to transforming the food system in Europe, where she shared her insights on sustainability and innovation. Additionally, her time as the Interim Director of Communication at EIT Food showcased her effective communication strategies in promoting food security and community engagement.
Her versatility in the sustainability sector is underscored by her tenure as a member of the board at Fost Plus, an organization focused on waste management and recycling in Belgium. Mieke’s work in these roles solidified her reputation as a leader committed to environmental stewardship and corporate citizenship.
Education and Achievements
Mieke Vercaeren's impressive educational background has played a significant role in shaping her career. She studied Cooperation with Developing Countries and Public Policy at Universiteit Gent, where she acquired a deep understanding of international relations and the complexities of implementing policies that benefit developing nations.
Furthering her expertise, Mieke holds a Master’s degree in Commercial Engineering with a focus on International Trade from KU Leuven, a prestigious institution renowned for preparing its students for the global marketplace. Her strong academic foundation enables her to navigate the intricate dynamics of international business and trade effectively.
Additionally, she earned a Master's degree in Internal Auditing from UAMS at Universiteit Antwerpen, where she honed her skills in governance, risk management, and compliance. This comprehensive education equips Mieke with the analytical skills necessary to oversee sustainable practices within an organization, ensuring transparency and accountability in all initiatives.
Other Notable Roles
Mieke's expertise extends beyond her current roles, as she has previously worked as an Advisor in Public Affairs at Colruyt Group, where she influenced public policy to create a conducive environment for sustainable practices within the retail industry. Her position in the kabinet Social Economy & Mobility at Vlaamse Overheid further reflects her commitment to integrating social policy with economic strategies, emphasizing her holistic approach to sustainable development.
Prior to these accomplishments, Mieke held a position as a Business Consultant focusing on Environmental Affairs and Corporate Citizenship at Ecolas, now part of Arcadis. Here, she provided strategic insights to numerous organizations, facilitating their transition towards more sustainable business models. In her early career, Mieke coordinated efforts at De Cirkel vzw, where she actively engaged in community-based initiatives, laying the foundation for her future endeavors in sustainable development and corporate responsibility.
Achievements
Mieke Vercaeren's career is marked by numerous milestones and achievements. She is particularly known for her ability to implement sustainable product strategies that resonate with consumer expectations while promoting social and environmental welfare. Her proactive approach has advanced the Colruyt Group's sustainable initiatives, allowing them to maintain a competitive advantage in the retail landscape.
As a thought leader in the sustainability sector, Mieke has participated in various conferences and panels, sharing her insights on sustainability, corporate responsibility, and public policy. Her contributions to discussions on the circular economy and sustainable consumption continue to inspire other professionals in the field. Mieke’s dedication to sustainability has earned her a respected voice among peers and collaborators alike, showcasing her commitment to effecting positive change through informed leadership.
Additionally, her involvement with organizations like EIT Food and Fost Plus has positioned her as a forward-thinking advocate for sustainable agriculture and waste management. Mieke's work has contributed significantly to advancing the dialogue around sustainable practices, ensuring that businesses not only meet regulatory standards but also align with global sustainability goals.
Conclusion
Mieke Vercaeren exemplifies the qualities of a dedicated leader in sustainability and public policy. With her robust educational qualifications, diverse professional experiences, and unwavering commitment to social and environmental responsibility, she continues to influence and shape the practices of sustainable development within the corporate sector. Mieke's vision for a sustainable future is evident in her work, making her a valuable asset to any organization aiming to enhance its social impact while fostering economic growth.
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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.