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'Yemisi Joel-Osebor
Founding Exec.Director, Life Impact Foundation Int'l(LIFI) & Consultant at UK-DFID:Growth & Employment in States (GEMS3)
Professional Background
Yemisi Joel-Osebor is a highly dedicated and accomplished professional in the field of international development with a focus on pro-poor growth and socio-economic advancement. Over the past 13 years, she has successfully contributed to various socio-economic initiatives, collaborating with both local and international organizations across several regions in Nigeria, including the Northern, South-Western, and South-South areas. Her extensive experience encompasses a broad spectrum of roles, including Management and Enterprise Development Consultant, Project Manager, Trainer, Facilitator, Gender Specialist, and Youth Counsellor, showcasing her versatility and adaptability within the development sector.
Yemisi's commitment to empowering marginalised communities, especially women, children, and youth, is evident through her various projects that prioritize grassroots mobilization and participatory planning. Her work emphasizes the critical role that civil society plays in shaping development agendas and processes, advocating for their inclusion to achieve sustainable and impactful results.
Education and Achievements
Yemisi holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc.) degree in Economics from Ogun State University, where she built a solid foundation for her career in economics and development. Furthermore, she continues her academic journey with a Master's degree in Humanitarian and Refugee Studies from the University of Lagos, Akoka, focusing on critical issues in humanitarian contexts.
Currently, Yemisi is on the verge of completing her thesis for a Master's in Development and International Cooperation at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, majoring in Social and Public Policy. This advanced education empowers her to approach development challenges with a nuanced understanding of social dynamics and policy frameworks.
In addition to her formal education, Yemisi has pursued various certifications to hone her skills further. She has gained valuable knowledge in International Project Management, Business Development Services (BDS), Enterprise Consultancy, Monitoring and Evaluation, Youth and Gender Development, Poverty Reduction, and Economic Empowerment, among other areas. Her training from prestigious institutions like the Lagos Business School (now Pan African University), the German Technical Corporation (GTZ)/CEFE, and the International Training Centre of the ILO (ITCILO) in Turin, Italy, highlights her commitment to continuous learning and professional development.
Career Highlights
Throughout her career, Yemisi has held significant positions that have shaped her expertise in development. Notably, she served as a Consultant at DFID-Growth and Employment in State (GEMS3), where she played a vital role in implementing strategies for economic growth and employment opportunities.
Her tenure as the Head of Research/Micro Enterprise Unit at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) under the STEP Program underscored her ability to design and manage projects that drive economic empowerment among micro-enterprises. Additionally, as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Specialist for the World Bank/Nigeria's Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Project, she influenced policy and programming through meticulous evaluation and impact assessment processes.
Yemisi's experience extends to her role as the Economic Growth Program Officer at DFID - Security Justice and Growth (SJG) Programme implemented by the British Council, where she further demonstrated her capacity to facilitate growth within complex socio-political landscapes.
Furthermore, as the former founding Executive Director/Trustee at Life Impact Foundation International (LIFI) - an NGO focused on community development - she showcased her leadership and organizational skills by fostering growth initiatives aimed at uplifting disadvantaged youth and women.
Specialties and Expertise
Yemisi's professional endeavors highlight her expertise in the following areas:
- International Development: Strong understanding of global development practices and policies.
- Project and Program Management: Extensive experience in managing projects from conception to completion, ensuring that objectives are met in alignment with stakeholders' values.
- Pro-poor Growth Advancement: Focused on economic development initiatives that prioritize the underprivileged sectors of society.
- Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E): Skilled in assessing project impacts and outcomes to inform future strategies.
- Gender Mainstreaming: Advocates for gender equality and empowerment in development projects.
- Grassroot Mobilization and Participatory Project Planning: Expert in engaging communities in the project planning process to enhance ownership and sustainability.
- Poverty Reduction: Committed to implementing solutions that reduce poverty and improve livelihoods.
- Women and Youth Development: Passionate about creating programs that foster economic and social empowerment for women and young people.
- Business Development Services (BDS): Supports businesses in optimizing their operations for better growth outcomes.
- Training, Coaching, Mentoring: Dedicated to educating and guiding the next generation of leaders in the development sector.
In addition to her professional accomplishments, Yemisi is also known as a motivational speaker and an incurable optimist, inspiring those around her to pursue excellence and strive for positive change in their communities. She uses her platform to advocate for policies that support sustainable development and empower marginalized demographics.
In summary, Yemisi Joel-Osebor is an influential figure in the realm of socio-economic development, combining her extensive educational background, diverse skill set, and unwavering commitment to impactful community engagement. Her work is characterized by a deep-rooted belief that through focused and inclusive strategies, developing countries can pave the way for prosperous futures, creating sustainable systems that uplift all individuals, especially the less privileged.
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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
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- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- 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.
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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.