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Mai Brand
Associate Director of Development at exalt
Professional Background
Mai Brand is a dedicated professional with a diverse career spanning various sectors, particularly in development and education. Currently, she serves as the Associate Director of Development at exalt, based in New York City, where she utilizes her deep-seated skills in fundraising and development to support the organization's mission of empowering youth from underserved communities. Mai's professional journey reflects her commitment to social impact, demonstrated through her various roles in nonprofits and education-focused organizations.
Before joining exalt, Mai served as a Development Consultant, where she provided strategic guidance to multiple national nonprofits, helping them enhance their fundraising efforts and community outreach. She also held the position of Development Manager at Eskolta School Research and Design, where she was instrumental in securing funding and building partnerships essential for the organization's educational research initiatives.
Mai has a unique background in editorial work as well, having worked as an Editor at the Vietnam Investment Review in Hanoi. This role not only honed her communication skills but also deepened her understanding of international business and investment, areas that complement her development work.
Additionally, Mai has experience in the real estate sector, having served as Service Director at Realty Profiler, a leading LinkedIn solutions firm dedicated to real estate professionals. She skillfully bridged the gap between technology and real estate, further enhancing her versatile experience across industries.
Her dedication to community service is evident from her time spent in Washington D.C., where she worked at Food & Friends as a Corporate and Foundation Gifts Associate, raising funds to support individuals in need, and at Equal Justice Works as a Fellowships & Development Specialist. These roles allowed Mai to engage with critical community issues and further solidified her passion for service.
Mai's early career included her role as the Center for Community Service and Justice Coordinator at Loyola University Maryland, where she encouraged students to engage in community service and fostered a spirit of social responsibility among the youth.
Education and Achievements
Mai Brand's academic credentials lay a solid foundation for her professional endeavors. She has pursued her Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree at three distinguished institutions: Loyola University Maryland, Universidad de Alcalá, and Assumption University of Thailand. This multicultural educational background not only enriched her understanding of various worldviews but also enhanced her adaptability in diverse environments.
Furthermore, she has complemented her studies with Executive Education at Columbia Business School. This prestigious program equipped Mai with advanced leadership skills and insights into the corporate world, empowering her to navigate complex business challenges while advocating for social causes.
Through her education and professional roles, Mai has developed a robust skill set that includes fundraising, development strategy, project management, and community engagement. Her achievements throughout her career are a testament to her dedication to making a positive difference in the lives of others, no matter where she is in the world.
Achievements
Mai's outstanding contributions to the fields of development and community service have earned her recognition and respect among her peers. At exalt, she successfully launched several innovative fundraising campaigns, significantly increasing donor engagement and financial support for the organization's programs. Her collaborative approach and ability to build lasting relationships with stakeholders have been crucial in advancing their mission.
During her tenure at Eskolta School Research and Design, she played a vital role in securing grants and sponsorships that allowed the organization to expand its research capacity and educational offerings. Mai's analytical skills and attention to detail were key in developing proposals that resonated with funders, highlighting her talent for crafting compelling narratives that drive support for critical initiatives.
In her role with Equal Justice Works, Mai helped design programs that offered scholarships and fellowships to aspiring lawyers dedicated to public interest work, thus nurturing the next generation of social justice advocates. Her work ensured that vital legal services were accessible to underserved populations, showcasing her profound commitment to equity and justice.
Mai's interdisciplinary expertise is a rare asset in a competitive landscape. By intertwining her experience in communication, fundraising, and community service, she consistently inspires others and leads by example. Her journey is a powerful narrative of a professional dedicated to catalyzing change and supporting communities around the globe.
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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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- 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.
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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.