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Aasim Shabazz
President of iAskc + the Agile Transformation Solutions Provider, SPC-4, SA, CSM
Professional Background
Aasim Shabazz is a highly respected SPC4 consultant with over 20 years of extensive experience in Change Management, Strategic Planning, Organizational Design, and Human Resource Strategy. His exemplary career has focused on helping organizations navigate the complexities of agile transformation. As a senior enterprise SAFe coach, Aasim leverages his deep understanding of organizational change to empower companies to reach their goals more efficiently and successfully.
Aasim's expertise lies in applying the Implementing 1-2-3 strategy, a method that allows him to assess an organization's readiness to launch its first Agile Release Train (ART). In this critical phase, he not only trains the practitioners involved but also coaches team members to ensure a smooth and effective launch of their initial Release Train. His strategic mindset and adaptable coaching methodology enable organizations to not only establish agile frameworks but to also foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
Education and Achievements
Aasim Shabazz has an impressive educational background that complements his professional accomplishments. He earned a Master of Education (M.Ed) in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he honed his skills in adult education and strategic human resource practices. In addition, he completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Organizational Management, Communications, and Leadership at Concordia University-St. Paul. These educational experiences have equipped him with the necessary tools to facilitate effective organizational change and development.
Aasim's commitment to lifelong learning is evident in his numerous additional qualifications. Notably, he has furthered his expertise by studying at TOPs Technology of Participation, enhancing his capabilities in facilitating group dialogue and decision-making processes. His credentials include certification as a Scaled Agile Coach (SPC-4), Scrum Master (CSM), and proficiency in Innovation and Design Thinking.
Notable Experience
Aasim's professional journey has seen him take on various significant roles that have enriched his expertise in the field. He has held leadership positions such as the President of the Board of Trustees at Masjid An-Nur, where he has made notable contributions to the community. Aasim has also served as the Community Co-Director at the Center for Personalized Prevention Research, where he was instrumental in advancing community-based initiatives.
Aasim has excelled in his role as Lead Innovator and Designer at KORE Strategic Design. In this capacity, he spearheaded innovative projects that fostered collaboration and engagement within organizations. His tenure as an Enterprise Agile Coach at AskcSupply (iAskc) underscored his ability to influence agile practices at an organizational level.
In addition to his consulting roles, Aasim has actively participated in several boards and committees. He has served as an Executive Steering Committee Member at the African American Leadership Forum, where he contributed to leadership development and advocacy for the community. His experience as a President at Knowledge On the Rise & Evolving, Inc. further demonstrates his leadership abilities and commitment to education and community empowerment. Aasim's influence extends into academia as well, having served as a Student Senator at the University of Minnesota and an Executive Board Member at the Black Graduate & Professional Students Association, where he represented the interests of graduate students.
Throughout his career, Aasim has also been acknowledged for his contributions to human resource development and community research. His role as Fidelity Manager / Community Research Liaison at the University of Minnesota involved bridging the gap between research initiatives and community needs. This position allowed him to apply his strategic planning skills to address real-world challenges facing diverse communities.
Contributions to the Field
Aasim Shabazz’s impact extends beyond individual organizations; his contributions help shape industry best practices in agile transformation and organizational development. His unique blend of skills in action planning, team building, and consensus building makes him a sought-after consultant and coach for organizations looking to implement successful change initiatives. Through workshops, training sessions, and personalized coaching, Aasim equips teams to overcome challenges and embrace the agile mindset, setting a foundation for sustainable success.
His knowledge in group facilitation and executive coaching helps teams and leaders alike to clarify their vision, align their goals, and enhance their collaborative efforts. Aasim’s ability to synthesize complex information and present it in an accessible way is a testament to his communication skills, making him a powerful agent of change in various organizational contexts.
In summary, Aasim Shabazz embodies the principles of effective leadership and agile transformation. With a wealth of experience and an unwavering commitment to advancing organizational excellence, he continues to inspire and empower teams across various sectors. His journey is a testament to the impact of strategic planning, innovative thinking, and collaborative action strategies in driving meaningful change in today's dynamic business environment.
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Clay 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, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Clay 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.
Clay 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
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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
Clay 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, Clay 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 Clay 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 Clay 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.
Clay 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. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay 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.
Clay 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. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay 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. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay'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.
Clay 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. Clay'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.
Clay 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. Clay 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, Clay 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.
Clay 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.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay 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. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay 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 Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay 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, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay 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. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay 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.
Clay 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 Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay 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, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay 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.
Clay'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. Clay 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 Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay'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, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay 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 Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.
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