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Dana Atherton
Senior Director, Talent Acquisition at The Trade Desk
Professional Background
Dana Atherton is an accomplished and results-driven Global Human Resources Leader with a wealth of experience spanning across several industries, including hi-tech, marketing, retail, and healthcare. With a career grounded in a passion for connecting people and recruiting top talent, Dana has carved a niche as a strategic business partner, delivering innovative talent acquisition strategies that align with the needs of the business in highly competitive environments.
In her current role as Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at The Trade Desk, Dana utilizes her extensive expertise to lead the recruitment process for various roles, ensuring that the company attracts and retains the best talent in the industry. Her previous positions, including significant roles at Western Digital, have equipped her with the insight and skills necessary to navigate the complexities and dynamism of global recruitment. Throughout her tenure at Western Digital, she served as the Senior Director of Global Talent Acquisition, where she directed the strategic sourcing and recruitment of top-tier talent across multiple international markets, including the Americas, EMEA, and Israel.
Dana's hands-on, high-energy leadership style is particularly noted for her ability to build, develop, and inspire geographically dispersed teams. She is adept at ensuring her teams operate in an inclusive, collaborative environment that fosters innovation and performance. Her talent in strategic leadership is bolstered by her ability to integrate analytics and data-driven insights into decision-making processes, thereby optimizing business performance and enhancing efficiency in every recruitment initiative she undertakes.
Education and Achievements
Dana began her academic journey by studying for a B.S. degree at the prestigious University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine). This educational foundation has been pivotal in shaping her understanding of complex business environments and developing her strategic thinking skills, which she applies to her roles in human resources and talent acquisition.
Throughout her career, Dana has achieved numerous milestones that demonstrate her commitment to excellence in human resources. By implementing innovative sourcing strategies and utilizing advanced applicant tracking systems (ATS) such as Virtual Edge and Taleo, she has significantly improved the recruitment processes in her organizations. In addition, she possesses a deep expertise in various talent management systems, including Workday, People Soft, and Talemetry.
Dana's proficiency also extends to KPIs, metrics, and analytics, which she uses to drive improvements in employment branding, internal mobility, and overall process optimization. Her consultative approach to recruiting, combined with her rich understanding of global talent management, has positioned her as a sought-after talent advisor within her organization and the wider industry.
Notable Achievements
Dana Atherton is recognized for her strategic talent strategies, which have been instrumental in attracting and retaining talent in her previous roles. Her previous positions at Western Digital highlighted her adeptness in leading global recruitment efforts, that not only focused on filling roles but also emphasized building employment branding initiatives and fostering relationships with university recruitment programs. Through strategic partnerships with educational institutions and organizations, Dana has successfully enhanced the talent pipeline for her companies and contributed significantly to diversity and inclusion efforts within the workforce.
As a certified LinkedIn Recruiter Expert and Certified LinkedIn Recruiter Coach, Dana is at the forefront of leveraging social media and digital platforms to enhance talent attraction strategies. This modern approach is vital in today's digital age, where the landscape of recruitment is constantly evolving. Her expertise in contingent workforce staffing, corporate relocation, and process transformation further underscores her versatility and commitment to driving continuous improvement in the talent acquisition landscape.
Overall, Dana Atherton's career trajectory is a testament to her dedication and expertise in the realm of global human resources and talent acquisition. With her forward-thinking strategies and inclusive leadership style, she continues to inspire and cultivate talent across the organizations she partners with. Her journey reflects not only her professional achievements but also her unwavering commitment to connecting people with opportunities that allow them to thrive in their careers.
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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
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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
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- 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.
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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.
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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.