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Lana Choi
Staff Product Designer at Okta, Inc.
Professional Background
Lana Choi is an accomplished product designer with a rich background in interaction design, user experience, and communication. Currently, she serves as a Staff Product Designer at Okta, Inc., where she leads design initiatives that enhance user experience across various products. Her journey in the tech industry has seen her evolve from a UX Designer at SOLV to a Senior Product Designer at the same leading tech company, solidifying her reputation as an expert in creating intuitive and engaging software solutions.
Prior to her tenure at Okta, Lana accumulated valuable experience at Intercom, where she contributed as a Product Designer. Her role involved not only designing user interfaces but also understanding customer needs to create impactful solutions that resonate with users. Her foundational experiences as a UX Designer at both Cainkade and SOLV equipped her with insights into user behavior and design methodologies that prioritize user-centricity.
Education and Achievements
Lana's educational background lays a solid foundation for her successful career in design. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts, where she honed her skills in creating innovative solutions that bridge the interaction between technology and users. Lana further expanded her knowledge in interaction design at the esteemed Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design, emphasizing her commitment to staying at the forefront of design trends.
Additionally, Lana graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English. This diverse educational background allows her to blend effective communication with design, making her a well-rounded professional capable of articulating complex design concepts to varied audiences. Throughout her educational journey, Lana has cultivated a unique perspective that enhances her design processes, focusing on clarity and user engagement.
Career Path and Contributions
Lana’s career path encompasses a rich tapestry of experiences that have shaped her into the professional she is today. She started as an Experience Design Intern at Adaptive Path, where she gained essential hands-on experience in the design field. Her commitment to creating impactful experiences for users became evident during her time as the Administrative Manager at East Oakland Community Project, showcasing her versatility and managerial skills in different environments.
Before moving into product design, Lana served as a Photographer and Administrative Lead at A Voice for the Voiceless, where her creativity and leadership shone. These earlier roles have provided her with a unique perspective that she brings to her current design projects, ensuring that every product she works on is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functionally robust.
Achievements
Throughout her career, Lana has been recognized for her dedication to the principles of user-centered design. At Okta, she has played a pivotal role in various high-impact projects, demonstrating her ability to lead multidisciplinary teams and drive design innovation. Her work has contributed significantly to enhancing user adoption and satisfaction, ultimately supporting Okta's mission to provide secure and seamless user access.
With her background in English, Lana excels in articulating user stories and design rationales, which has fostered effective collaboration among stakeholders. This ability to communicate complex design ideas in an accessible way has enhanced cross-departmental relationships and streamlined the design process, benefiting the overall business goals of her organizations.
Lana’s experience across multiple organizations has equipped her with a diverse skill set that includes interaction design, product development, and user experience optimization. As a result, she is poised to make a lasting impact in the tech industry, contributing towards designing products that prioritize user needs and enhance accessibility.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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'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.