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Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
Department of Sociology, American University (also teach for the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies)
Professional Background
Salvador Vidal-Ortiz is a highly regarded senior faculty member specializing in Latinx studies at American University. With a strong academic foundation and a diverse research portfolio, he focuses extensively on the sociology of race, racialized sexualities, migration studies, trans studies, and queer studies across the hemisphere. His interdisciplinary approach encompasses sociology and the broader social sciences, with a growing interest in media studies, geography, cultural studies, American studies, and Latin American queer literature.
Throughout his illustrious career, Dr. Vidal-Ortiz has made significant contributions to the fields of sociology and sexuality studies through his written works and collaborative projects. He co-authored the influential book "Race and Sexuality" in 2018, which examines the intersections of race and sexual identity. Additionally, he has co-edited two notable books: "The Sexuality of Migration" in 2009, and "Queer Brown Voices" in 2015, both of which highlight vital discussions surrounding identity and culture.
Currently, he is revising a book that explores race, gender, and sexuality within the context of Santería, an Afro-Cuban religious-cultural practice. This work aims to illuminate the complex intersections of identity in religious practices. Alongside this, he is also editing a Handbook on Gender, Sexuality, and Migration that will serve as a critical resource for scholars and practitioners alike.
In 2018, Dr. Vidal-Ortiz co-edited "Travar el Saber" (loosely translated as "trans-ing knowledges"), a significant publication addressing educational and inclusion efforts for and with trans individuals in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This work reflects his commitment to social justice and advocacy for marginalized communities.
Each of these works underscores his dedication to deconstructing and analyzing the socio-cultural dynamics that inform the lived experiences of racial and sexual minorities.
Education and Achievements
Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz earned his PhD in Sociology from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York, a prestigious institution known for its rigorous academic standards and vibrant interdisciplinary environment. His educational background laid the groundwork for his distinguished career in academia and research.
In addition to his faculty role at American University, he has taught at numerous institutions, including the University of Colorado-Boulder, and has had the unique opportunity to share his expertise internationally at universities in Colombia and Brazil. His experience as a Fulbright Scholar at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana has further enriched his institutional knowledge and contributed to his expansive network within Latin American academic circles.
Dr. Vidal-Ortiz also held a Distinguished-Scholar-in-Residence position in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies Program at the College of the Holy Cross in the Fall of 2019, which provided a platform for him to collaborate with other scholars and deepen his research focus.
Through his active engagement in various academic and research networks, including the Feminist/Queer/Cuir Américas Working Group (cuiramericas.org), Dr. Vidal-Ortiz continues to foster critical conversations around race, sexuality, and gender while working to connect issues of anti-Blackness and Indigenous invisibility with the emergence of the Latinx identity.
Achievements
Dr. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz has made impactful strides in the social sciences and humanities, particularly within the realms of Latinx studies and queer theories. His contributions to literature and the academic community are reflected in his diverse catalog of publications. With an emphasis on intersectionality, Dr. Vidal-Ortiz's work presents vital discussions that contribute to a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding race, sexual orientation, and migration.
Dr. Vidal-Ortiz's commitment to education and learning is evident in his scholarly endeavors and teaching practices. By addressing the challenges faced by marginalized communities, he actively promotes inclusive education and engages in initiatives that advocate for better representation and support for racial and sexual minorities.
Overall, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz's extensive background in Latinx studies, sociology, and his ongoing research on the intersections of identity highlight his significant contributions to scholarly discussions. His work serves as a critical resource for those interested in understanding the nuanced interactions between race, migration, and sexuality in contemporary society.
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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:
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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.