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David Gantshar
President & CEO-Shepherd Search Group Inc./ Merraine Group Inc.-#845.290.1900-david@shepherdsg.com
Professional Background
David Gantshar is a seasoned executive known for his substantial contributions to talent acquisition and human resource solutions within the healthcare, human services, and education sectors. With a rich background spanning over three decades, David has been instrumental in leading organizations that not only aim to connect talented individuals with their ideal roles but also foster growth and development among employees and organizations alike. He has a robust history of overseeing operations and enhancing recruitment processes for notable firms such as Merraine Group and Shepherd Search Group.
At the helm of Merraine Group, which specializes in placing middle and senior-level managers and directors within various segments of the healthcare industry, David has significantly influenced the staffing of over 1,800 health and human service organizations across the United States in just twenty-two years. His strategic leadership has enabled the firm to maintain a remarkable 97.1% retention rate, further solidifying its position as one of the top ten health and human service search firms nationwide for thirteen consecutive years. Under his stewardship, Merraine's service lines have expanded to include not only permanent and interim staffing but also RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), Organizational Development, Training, Career Coaching, and HR Outsourcing.
Prior to his impactful tenure at Merraine, David served as President & CEO of Shepherd Regulatory Search and Shepherd Search Group. These roles allowed him to leverage his industry expertise while managing a global executive search organization. Shepherd Search Group operates across numerous industries, including accounting, finance, engineering, and healthcare, providing comprehensive recruitment solutions to clients around the globe. David's experience in diverse sectors has equipped him with a solid understanding of varied recruitment needs, allowing him to deliver tailored services that align with the specific demands of each industry.
His prior roles also include serving as Executive Vice President at L.P. Thebault Company and Vice President of Sales at Quebecor World. In each of these positions, David showcased his abilities in leadership, strategic planning, and operational management, further enhancing his capabilities in driving organizational success through effective human capital management. David's methodology combines a focus on building long-lasting relationships with both candidates and organizations, ensuring a shared commitment to success and growth.
Education and Achievements
David's academic foundation is rooted in professional writing, having earned his B.A. from the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University. His education has played a pivotal role in shaping his approach to communication, a skill that is invaluable in the competitive world of executive search and talent acquisition. Skilled in articulating ideas clearly and effectively, his writing background has enhanced his ability to connect with clients and candidates alike, fostering a better understanding of their respective goals and aspirations.
Throughout his career, David has consistently demonstrated his proficiency not only in recruitment practices but also in nurturing talent retention and career development. His commitment to enhancing the employee experience is evident in his various initiatives focused on employee motivation, professional development, and bespoke HR solutions.
David’s strategic vision and dedication to excellence have not only benefited the organizations he has led but also the numerous individuals who have found success through the connections he has facilitated. His wealth of experience in hiring and maintaining high-caliber professionals across diverse industries underscores his commitment to operational excellence and organizational effectiveness.
Achievements
- Leading Talent Provider: Under David's leadership, Merraine Group established itself as one of the top ten health and human service search firms in the USA, earning recognition for its thorough and efficient recruitment services.
- High Retention Rates: Achieving a national retention rate of 97.1% is a testament to David's focus on matching the right candidates with positions that fit their skills and aspirations, thereby ensuring long-term success for both the employee and the employer.
- Broad Industry Influence: His experience spans multiple sectors including healthcare, social services, education, and various corporate environments, highlighting his adaptability and understanding of the unique challenges within these fields.
- Strategic Leadership: David's leadership style promotes organizational growth and employee engagement, contributing to sustainable and positive workplace cultures. His strategic foresight has continually benefited the organizations he has been associated with, positioning them for long-term success.
In essence, David Gantshar's extensive experience in executive search, human resources, and organizational management makes him a notable leader in the industry. His commitment to fostering professional growth through effective recruitment strategies and personalized HR solutions aligns perfectly with the evolving needs of today's job market. David’s achievements reflect a dedication that not only drives the success of his companies but also positively impacts the lives of countless professionals and organizations across the nation.
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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
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- 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.