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Msol/Emcc/Icf Laura Gates
Executive Coach/Culture Change/Team Facilitator/GTCI Certified Team Coach/Speaker/Harvard IOC/Chief
Professional Background
Laura Coach is a highly respected figure in the realm of executive coaching and organizational development with over two decades of experience empowering C-suite leaders and senior executives to harness their full potential and achieve impressive results. Her commitment to fostering teamwork and collaboration has led her to work with an array of prestigious clients, including the Pentagon, NASA, Fortune 50 companies, and various startups, non-profits, universities, and government agencies. Laura’s coaching approach is centered on the principle of collective genius, enabling teams to transcend individual limitations and operate as cohesive units.
Among her many remarkable contributions, Laura co-led the coaching and leadership development team for Shell’s URSA Gulf of Mexico platform, an endeavor that was notably featured in Simon Sinek’s acclaimed book, "The Infinite Game." Under her leadership, URSA was completed four months ahead of schedule, saving an impressive $40 million on the $1.5 billion project. This achievement exemplifies her ability to build trusting, high-functioning teams that drive exceptional results.
Laura's passion for entrepreneurship is evident in her own journey as a two-time entrepreneur. Her first venture into entrepreneurship was sparked by a chance request during a Women in Communications Meeting, which led her to take the reins of a public relations company. Her second foray into the entrepreneurial world emerged following a powerful moment in a team meeting where a consultant highlighted her need to assert her voice. This realization propelled Laura to establish her own coaching practice, where she could fully express her expertise and passion for transforming organizations.
Education and Achievements
Laura boasts an impressive educational background, having earned a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership with a focus on Purposeful Leadership from the University of Redlands School of Business. Additionally, she obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science in Marketing from Syracuse University's Martin J. Whitman School of Management. These academic pursuits have equipped her with a strong foundation in leadership principles, marketing strategies, and organizational dynamics, all critical for her work as an executive coach.
Laura has also cultivated extensive coaching certifications that solidify her expertise in the field. She is a Global Team Coaching Institute Advanced Certified Coach, having studied under notable leaders David Clutterbuck and Peter Hawkins. Furthermore, Laura holds the prestigious Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Certification, which focuses on individual and team performance enhancement. She is also recognized as an ACE certified coach by Google’s David Peterson and possesses a Breakthrough Coaching Certification from Marcia Reynolds, showcasing her commitment to professional development.
In addition to her coaching credentials, Laura has dedicated her career to creating inclusive work environments that are free from bias. Her forward-thinking approach fosters a culture of respect, acceptance, and belonging in workplaces—key components for sustainable organizational success.
Key Contributions
- Collaborative Tech Operations: Laura has played an instrumental role in unlocking the potential of global tech operations teams, guiding them beyond internal conflicts to collaborate effectively. Through her unique coaching methodologies, she has empowered thousands of employees to tackle complex cross-functional challenges, ultimately driving innovation and progress.
- Investment Success for Startups: As a coach for several startup founders, Laura has successfully assisted these entrepreneurs in navigating multiple rounds of investment, turning their visions into actionable realities. Her guidance and strategic insight have proven invaluable in helping them grow their businesses and achieve lasting impact.
- Diverse Organizational Roles: Laura’s expansive career has seen her guide key projects and initiatives in various organizations. As a former Core Guide and Facilitator at Chief, she infused her coaching expertise into leadership programs. Laura has also served as a Fellow at the Institute of Coaching at McLean/Harvard Medical School, reflecting her dedication to the advancement of coaching practices.
- Public Speaking and Thought Leadership: An engaging speaker, Laura has been actively involved in delivering keynote addresses, participating in panel discussions, and appearing on podcasts to share her insights and experiences. Her thought leadership reinforces her status as a trusted authority in the field of coaching and organizational development.
- Mentorship and Coaching Development: Laura has served as a Facilitator and Mentor Coach in the Breakthrough Coaching Certification Program at the World Business & Executive Coach Summit (WBECS), sharing her knowledge and experience with the next generation of coaches and fostering growth in the coaching community.
- Marketing and Public Relations Expertise: Having founded Gates Group Marketing Public Relations, Laura brings a unique perspective to her coaching practice, blending marketing strategies with organizational development, ensuring that leaders can effectively communicate their vision and engage their teams.
- Early Career Success: Laura's career accolades began early when, as a temp on Wall Street, she excelled as the #1 salesperson, which led to her position in Citibank's leadership training program. This formative experience set the stage for her future success in leadership and coaching roles.
Personal Interests and Unconventional Experiences
While her professional accomplishments are impressive, Laura also embodies a unique personality filled with interesting experiences. She learned to meditate in the third grade while attending an alternative educational program at Martin Luther King Elementary, showcasing her early commitment to personal growth and mindfulness. Her adventurous spirit took her to compete in underwater hockey, an unusual but fascinating sport, reflecting her playful nature.
Moreover, her adventurous pursuits have included a transformative walkabout with an Aboriginal medicine man in the Australian outback, illustrating her curiosity about diverse cultures and approaches to life. These experiences contribute a rich tapestry to Laura’s character, allowing her to connect with clients on a deeper level and enhancing her coaching practice.
In conclusion, Laura Coach is a dynamic executive coach, seasoned entrepreneur, and passionate advocate for leadership development and inclusive workplace environments. With her wealth of knowledge, certifications, and a delightful mix of personal experiences, Laura continues to inspire leaders and teams across various sectors to achieve remarkable growth and success. Her commitment to unlocking collective genius and transforming organizational cultures ensures that she will remain a vital force in the world of coaching for years to come.
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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
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- 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.