Suggestions
Mike Yakima
Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company
Professional Background
Mike Yakima is a highly accomplished business leader with extensive experience in enhancing organizational effectiveness across diverse sectors, including private, public, and nonprofit organizations. With a strong passion for socio-economic development, Mike is dedicated to leveraging innovative ideas and advanced technology to create increased economic opportunities for all. Throughout his career, he has consistently demonstrated his ability to lead dynamic teams and drive change within organizations.
Mike currently serves as an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company, where he utilizes his strategic insights, analytical skills, and leadership capabilities to deliver impactful solutions for clients. His background as an Intelligence Officer in the United States Air Force, combined with his time at the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), has equipped him with a unique perspective on strategic decision-making and operational effectiveness in high-pressure environments.
His commitment to excellence is further reflected in his record of service with the Air Force, encompassing both active duty and reservist experiences. With over six years of active duty and four years in reserve service, Mike has honed his leadership abilities while managing diverse teams and projects.
Education and Achievements
Mike Yakima boasts an impressive academic background, having earned several esteemed degrees from top institutions. He completed his Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) with a Certificate in Public Management & Social Innovation at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he developed a keen understanding of how business strategies can be applied to societal challenges.
Following his MBA, Mike obtained his Juris Doctor (J.D.) at Stanford Law School, graduating with Pro Bono Distinction. This accomplishment showcases his dedication to serving communities and advocating for social justice, a theme that has run throughout his career.
In addition, he holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration with a focus on International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. This education has provided him with insights into policy-making, governance, and international socio-economic development.
Moreover, Mike's undergraduate education at the United States Air Force Academy, where he earned his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, laid a strong foundation for his analytical and problem-solving skills, which he continues to apply in all his endeavors.
Notable Skills and Specialties
Mike Yakima possesses a diverse skill set that enhances his effectiveness as a leader and strategist. His specialties include:
- Leadership: Proven capability in guiding teams and driving organizational change.
- Strategy: Ability to formulate strategies that capitalize on resources and minimize risks.
- Analysis: Skilled in analyzing complex issues to provide data-driven solutions.
- Innovation: Passionate about fostering innovation and encouraging creative thinking.
- Human-Centered Design: Focused on understanding user needs to drive product and service development.
- Law: Possesses a strong legal background, further enhanced by his membership in the Pennsylvania Bar.
- Computer Programming: Experienced in programming languages such as Java, C++, R, and SQL, enabling him to leverage technology effectively.
Achievements
Mike's career is adorned with significant achievements that demonstrate his commitment to leadership, innovation, and community development.
- Security Clearance: He holds a TS/SCI security clearance, allowing him access to sensitive information and responsibilities in national security missions.
- Engineer's Intern License: This credential attests to his expertise in engineering principles and practices, showcasing his technical capabilities.
- Team Leadership: Mike has successfully led multiple diverse teams in high-stakes environments, fostering collaboration and driving results.
- Public Service: He has contributed significantly to democracy and governance initiatives through his role as a Program Assistant on the Democracy and Governance Team at USAID, where he helped develop programs that boost civic participation and improve governance across various regions.
Through his diverse experiences, Mike Yakima embodies the qualities of a visionary leader dedicated to harnessing his background in law, business, and public service to drive positive change in society and support initiatives that result in significant socio-economic development.
Highlights
I spent most of last week uncomfortable, dirty, tired, and constantly sweaty, and it was absolutely incredible.
I want to thank North Carolina Outward Bound School and Outward Bound USA as well as its generous benefactors for sponsoring veterans like me to attend a highly intentional week-long trek in the wilderness. It was a great time to gain perspective, meet and get close with fellow veterans as well as our guides, and grow as a person. If you're a veteran, I highly encourage you to check it out and apply: https://lnkd.in/emEMxKtT.
Advice I recall hearing when I was young was that to achieve the pinnacle of corporate success, I would need to "pick" one career field (an industry and/or a role) and go all-in and work my way up. But I always felt a bit out of place because I never really had a good idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. For years, I jokingly referred to myself as a "perpetual generalist" who sought out paths that broadened rather than narrowed (military, management consultant, and a wide array of degree types to cover all my bases). I followed my curiosity and along the way learned a lot about a lot of things, but I can't say at this point in my career that I'm a true expert at anything.
But what I realize now is that this windy, jack-of-all-trades approach has made me a perfect fit for my current role at Servant Keeper, though I never could have predicted nor designed it this way. As I think about developing people within the company, I'm leaning into this idea and am trying to provide the flexibility for folks to try different functional roles across the org where they may thrive based on their skillset and interests.
I'm doing the same for my kids too! This is a picture of my son trying out DJ'ing at a recent Junior Achievement USA Biztown event - who knows where he ultimately ends up, but this was another arrow in his quiver for life experience!
People also viewed
S
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.