Suggestions
Tiffany T Fite
Student Ambassador - Masaryk University; TEFL Certified teacher; Change Consultant.
Tiffany Fite is an accomplished consultant and thought leader with extensive experience in organizational change management, leadership development, and diversity, equality, and inclusion. She graduated from Boise State University with a bachelor's degree and has continued to expand her knowledge, taking college, university, community, and online courses.
Fite's career path has been intentional as she sought out meaningful positions in four distinct industries where she could contribute, influence, and grow. She has worked at well-respected companies such as Micron Technology and Progressive Insurance. Additionally, she is a business partner in change management at St. Luke's Health System.
In her role at Micron Technology, Fite acted as a senior organizational change manager for IT, finance, and business planning and process measurement. She also spent time as the Manager of Organizational Change & Culture as well as the Diversity, Equality & Inclusion lead. She has extensive experience in remote leadership and implementation management, making her a valuable asset to her clients.
Fite's passion for influencing culture and leadership development has led her to become certified in Prosci® and become an Organizational Change Center of Excellence leader and mentor. As a Citizen Moderator with Braver Angels, she has also moderated community depolarization workshops.
In her personal life, Fite enjoys traveling with her family and volunteering when opportunities arise. She values experiences and collects and curates the stories of elders. She is an insight enthusiast and an "Activator" according to CliftonStrengths®, which describes her as energized by opportunities and possibilities.
Highlights
An update from my career pause - I've received messages, and I've been off LI while as I settle into graduate school. Thanks for checking in 🙏 .
A recap:
How it went - the summer of adventure with my spouse 💓 : 🚶♀️ Walked 914km in France, Spain & Portugal on the Camino de Santiago 🚅 Traveled 8584km w/ a Eurail Pass 🗺 Met people from 81 countries 🛏 Slept in 68 Beds 🗣 Navigated 12 languages 💶 Spent in 6 currencies. 🏥 Traversed health care in 2 countries 🎒 Carried 1 backpack and 2 outfits for 86 days On the Camino we met burned out career breakers, and others on a long holiday, gap year or retired. I enjoyed the insights into global education and work culture, and talking with business owners in several countries. How it's going - 4 weeks into graduate school at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic: 🎓 Studying Cultural Sociology (taught in English) 🌍 Peers from 19 countries and 6 continents (I'm the only American) 😕 Learning two languages - academia (😉) and Czech 🤝 Contributing to the cohort thru my life/career experience 🛂 Traveling is easy - Brno is quite central in Europe ✅ Settling into the student city after taking care of endless tasks - immigration, residency, nostrification, housing, bank accounts, health care, cell phone, and more. Check out the 1st day of school picture our kids insisted on 🤫 Having lived and worked in the United States all my life, albeit in different states and industries, it’s been fascinating to experience work culture beyond tourism. My previous work with global companies provided some insight, and vacationing and traveling through provides glimpses into the culture of work; but slow traveling and moving to another country has been most enlightening. Enlightening in checking my assumptions, biases, and comforts with how things 'could' be done. I am ruminating on several potential thesis topics 🤔 . Highlights of my career pause include people met, conversations had and the creation of additional neural pathways through the ➕ & ➖ experiences 😂 . I recognize the indulgence of a full-time academic program and am maximizing it. Good food and cheap beer have also been a highlight 😋🍻 . And challenges, too. Navigating bureaucracies and learning societal norms; communication - Google Translate App is a big help 🙌; making friends; missing friends and family; and pining for the easy - knowing exactly what to buy at the grocery store, watching 📺 (we don't have one), and borrowing 📚 from the library (in English) to name a few. And I genuinely miss my career, work, and working. I miss the challenges of solving problems for and with people 🤜🤛. I miss the gratification of a job well done 💯. I miss feeling competent and confident with my skills and contributions. I miss professional collaboration and working with dynamic smart people 🗝. I miss a paycheck - though living on savings and a strict budget is humbling and positive💸 .
Thanks for checking in - I appreciate you!
An article featured by LinkedIn yesterday - how the largest demographic of student debt is with those over 50 😬 - caught my attention. Educational debt and the value of a degree have been top of mind for my family for the past five + years.
I have two personal anecdotes on how we think about the "value" of a college degree. My personal experience and that of our family with two current university students.
It's a deeply nuanced topic and I respect the challenging choices individuals and families make.
How do we quantify the value of a college degree?
For me, one employer quantified it for me as $353.60/year or $29.47/month or $.17/hour.
This was given to me six months after:
- Recruiting me with an internal referral and for my expertise.
- Hiring me after I accepted salary which was a 25% pay cut.
- Informing me I was hired as an exception since a degree was required for role.
The degree requirement seemed arbitrary and a a bit bonkers given the number of years experience also required for the role, but I happily signed on to learn a new industry, contribute to the non-profit, and did benefit with greater balance in my life. No regrets.
It was suggested to submit for a salary review after receiving the long sought degree I was close to earning, and the $.17/hour was the result of the salary review.
So, that's the value of my college degree. Thankfully, I did not take any loans out (😕). No regrets on earning the degree; it was just for me and a bucket list item.
While I was completing my degree, my then high school aged sons were thinking about their next steps. Many options were explored.
The Common App allowed one son to apply for many colleges at once, and entertain several offers.
One such offer I present to you here from a 2021 mailing. My notes and highlights from then, show just how I felt about the financial offer (😵).
Not singling out the institution, because he received very similar "offers," which I found equally absurd, from others. Absurdity not just in the overall costs, but how it was presented as "awards."
He is a Business Administration: Strategic Marketing & Planning major. We couldn't, and didn't, justify those costs for his degree plan.
Instead he chose university abroad - a three year BA with tuition at $8000/year and housing around $6000 (private room in a shared flat).
There are many ways to do life and university, if university is the goal and desire. My journey with three community colleges and two universities over 30 years 👩🎓, or our sons' cost effective, but un-orthodox by American standards, choice to do full university in a foreign country.
It pains me to see so many young people, and parents, saddled with loads of student debt. It's way more challenging to research, understand other options, and swim upstream with the pressures of the high school college and career centers, and the ease of saying yes to these "awards."
#student #studentdebt #universityabroad
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.
Related People