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Scott Bernard Nelson
Chief Marketing Officer and Associate Vice President at Linfield University
Scott Bernard Nelson is a multifaceted professional based in Portland, Oregon, known for his work as both an actor/model and a communications executive. He is currently the Chief Marketing Officer and Associate Vice President for Strategic Communications at Linfield University, a position he has held since 2020. Before this role, he spent several years in various editorial and leadership positions within major media organizations, including The Boston Globe and the Oregonian Media Group.13
In addition to his corporate role, Nelson is a professionally trained actor. His work in the entertainment industry includes modeling and acting roles, showcasing his versatility as an "everyman" capable of portraying a wide range of characters.23 He is represented by Big Fish Northwest Talent, indicating his active engagement in the modeling and acting scene.4
Education and Background
- Education: Nelson holds a B.A. from Linfield University and an MBA from the University of Maryland, along with two post-graduate certificates in finance and strategic marketing leadership.1
- Career Highlights: His journalism career spans over two decades, during which he covered significant events such as the Iraq War and the aftermath of 9/11. He contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage related to the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal.1
Personal Interests
Outside of his professional pursuits, Scott is also known for his interests in rock climbing and fly fishing, reflecting a passion for outdoor activities.4
Overall, Scott Bernard Nelson exemplifies a blend of creativity in the arts and strategic leadership in communications.
Highlights
My friend Heidi Williams convinced me to join Goodreads this year, and it turned out to be a true gift. I was able to see the books many of you were reading throughout the year, and added them to my “want to read” list. Much of what I read this year turned out to be from my friends’ recommendations, but I also picked up some from reviews elsewhere or something I just came across randomly at the library. So my 2023 list is a mishmash of interests and digressions. I read a couple of classics (Faulkner and Orwell), continued my slow work through the Stephen King canon and picked up two sci-fi’s from Emily St. John Mandel. But mostly my year was spent with various preoccupations that struck me at different times, as opposed to a great books approach. I read fewer things written by my own friends this year, so I apologize for that. I’ll try to do better in 2024.
My favorite book of the year? That’s always hard, because different ones had different impacts on me. But if you put a gun to my head, I’d say “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka. I wasn't necessarily looking for a ghost story when this one came in from the library. I definitely wasn't looking for a story set in the Sri Lankan civil war. What I found, regardless, was a truly great novel that I can’t stop thinking about. There would be a lot of honorable mentions, though: Books that I enjoyed to the last page. Join those of us already on Goodreads, and you can see which ones those were, too. :-)
Happy new year!
My 2023 reads:
“Dark Earth” by Rebecca Stott “Cinema Speculation” by Quentin Tarantino “Fairy Tale” by Stephen King “Down and Out in Paris and London” by George Orwell “Greenlights” by Matthew McConaughey “Scorched Grace” by Margot Douaihy “The Birdcatcher” by Gayl Jones “The Changeling” by Victor LaValle “Norse Mythology” by Neil Gaiman “The Leftovers” by Tom Perotta “Station Eleven” by Emily St. John Mandel “The Long Ships” by Frans G. Bengtsson “Absalom, Absalom!” By William Faulkner “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” by Tom Hanks “Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel “The Wager” by David Grann “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner “Small Mercies” by Dennis Lehane “Fatherland” by Burkhard Bilger “Razorblade Tears” by S.A. Cosby “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller “The Second Murder” by Denise Mina “How High We Go in the Dark” by Sequoia Nagamatsu “The God of Endings” by Jacqueline Holland “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida” by Shehan Karunatilaka “Being Henry: The Fonz and Beyond” by Henry Winkler “Silver Nitrate” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia “Ink Blood Sister Scribe” by Emma Torzs
I was fortunate this week to be able to join 36 other Chief Marketing Officers or senior marketing leaders at Stanford from a wide range of global organizations, including Cisco, the Boston Beer Company, Montblanc, Telefonica Germany, Cargill, Owens Corning, Royal Dutch Shell, the U.S. Army, Sally Beauty and the Saudi space and technology commission.
We took a one-week crash course version of a Stanford University Graduate School of Business MBA in marketing, met with the founder of an autonomous flying car company and spent time in the design school hearing about how design thinking might be able to tackle seemingly intractable problems. Only 15 of us were Americans, so the diversity of industries and geographies means we had a lot to learn from each other, also.
One of the problems with life is that there’s so much to learn and explore, and so little time to do it all. But this was a good week, and I feel grateful for the opportunity. #GSBExecEd
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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.