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Jane Cohen
Partner at Bain & Company
Professional Background
Jane Cohen is a highly accomplished and strategic executive with a remarkable career spanning across consumer products, services, and the retail industry. With an exemplary focus on customer engagement and an unwavering commitment to driving change within complex environments, Jane has established herself as a leader in business transformation and strategy. Her extensive experience includes overseeing large teams of over 300 individuals and managing significant budgets of approximately $450 million. This strategic oversight extends across a wide variety of functions, including strategy, marketing, digital channels, customer insights, product management, retail buying, customer experience design, innovation, and operations management.
Throughout her career, Jane has proven to be a seasoned strategist, working closely with Boards, CEOs, and Executive Committees of some of Australia's largest and most disrupted organizations. Her contributions have been pivotal in the development and implementation of successful strategies that drive results and foster growth. As a change agent, she has a proven track record of successfully executing over ten major transformation programs across both the private and public sectors. These notable programs include the Australia Post Part of Tomorrow initiative, the Australia Post Letters Reform program, Woolworths Refresh program, AXA K5 program, and the Telstra Transformation, demonstrating her exceptional ability to navigate complex challenges and deliver impactful solutions.
Jane’s leadership style is characterized by her emphasis on building engaged, collaborative, and creative team environments. She believes that empowered teams, guided by well-communicated strategies, can achieve remarkable outcomes. As an experienced stakeholder manager, she has excelled in cultivating collaborative relationships with business leaders, government entities, customers, and community organizations in order to facilitate difficult changes and achieve results. Her broad expertise encompasses diverse sectors such as logistics, e-commerce, supermarket retail, retail banking, sports administration, insurance, wealth management, telecommunications, energy retailing, airlines, and private equity. This diversified background enables Jane to approach challenges with a multifaceted perspective that is invaluable in today’s dynamic business environment.
Education and Achievements
Jane Cohen has a solid academic foundation, having earned her MBA from the prestigious Melbourne Business School. She further enhanced her governance knowledge through her studies at the Australian Institute of Company Directors, where she completed the GAICD program. Additionally, Jane has a passion for cross-cultural communication, demonstrated by her participation in the Intensive Japanese Language Program at Sophia University in Japan.
Her strong analytical skills are grounded in her academic background, which includes a Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Hons) and a Bachelor's degree in Science, majoring in Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of Melbourne. Jane also broadened her expertise by completing an exchange year focused on Mathematics at The University of Western Australia. This combination of technical and business education equips Jane with a unique skill set that enhances her strategic capacity in tackling complex challenges.
Jane's professional journey includes significant roles at leading companies, highlighting her considerable impact in various capacities. She served as a Partner at Bain & Company, where she contributed her strategic insights to various client engagements. Furthermore, she was a key figure at KPMG Australia as a Partner within the Global Strategy Group, shaping crucial business strategies that supported clients’ growth.
During her time at Australia Post, Jane held several pivotal leadership roles, including General Manager of Consumer and General Manager of Corporate Strategy. In these roles, she significantly impacted the organization’s strategic direction and consumer-centric initiatives. Before her tenure at Australia Post, she also contributed to Pacific Brands as General Manager of Corporate Strategy, as well as leading operational strategy consulting efforts at Coles Group.
Additionally, Jane had the opportunity to serve as a seconded Associate from Bain & Company at Pacific Equity Partners, where she further honed her skills in identifying and executing strategic business opportunities.
Achievements
Jane Cohen's achievements in the field of business transformation and strategy are exemplary and noteworthy. Her experience as a results-driven change agent has left a lasting impact on every organization she has been part of. She has successfully led transformative initiatives, particularly within Australia Post, that not only redefined the company’s operational focus but also reinforced its commitment to consumer engagement.
Her influential role in the development and implementation of strategies that empowered teams and drove measurable results has made her a respected figure in the industry. Jane’s ability to navigate significant transformation programs demonstrates her aptitude in coordinating cross-functional teams and leveraging stakeholder relationships to achieve collective goals.
Jane's collaborative leadership approach has not only fostered team success but has also contributed positively to the organizational culture within numerous companies. Acknowledged for her integrity and authenticity, Jane remains a passionate and empowering leader dedicated to nurturing talent and driving strategic growth.
Through her impressive career, educational accomplishments, and transformative achievements, Jane Cohen continues to symbolize excellence and innovation in the realms of consumer products, services, and retail, making her a highly regarded figure in the business community.
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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
- 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.
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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.
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.