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Maria Dorfner
Founder, Unbiased Health l Political Science | English National Honors | Excellence in Medical Reporting, Media Recognition Award AHA, Medical Reporting Scholarship AMA, Outstanding Leadership Award
Professional Background
Maria Dorfner is a prominent figure in the health media sector, known for her extensive career that seamlessly blends healthcare expertise with innovative media production. Her journey began in 1983 as an intern at NBC in New York City, which catalyzed a stellar career marked by significant contributions to major media organizations. Maria played a pivotal role in the launch of CNBC in 1989, where she served as a Senior Producer and Host of health programming. Her focus on health and wellness has made her a respected voice in the industry, shaping public discourse and informing countless consumers.
As a Medical Producer at WTVJ (NBC) in Miami, Maria honed her skills in health media, ultimately producing the acclaimed documentary series "21st Century Medicine" for Discovery Health North Carolina. Her keen insight and inventive approach to storytelling caught the attention of influential figures, leading her to serve as the Director of Research for Roger Ailes, a Senior Media Advisor to George Bush.
In 1993, Maria became the founder of NewsMD, which has since emerged as a trusted resource for consumer health information. Under her leadership, NewsMD has provided extensive research and unbiased reporting, helping individuals make informed healthcare decisions. Maria's commitment to the advancement of health communication has also led her to serve as a Senior Media Advisor for the Cleveland Clinic, a prominent healthcare system valued at $8 billion, where she co-founded the Cleveland Clinic News Service and served as Executive Producer for the launch of MedPageToday.
Maria's passion for storytelling and fostering innovation in the health and wellness sector has enabled thousands of medical innovators to share their unique narratives, garnering substantial media exposure. Through NewsMD, the ethos of “When We Tell Stories… People Listen” reflects her dedication to impactful communication.
Education and Achievements
Maria's educational background is as impressive as her professional achievements. She studied Advanced Writing and Journalism at Columbia University, where she was awarded a scholarship sponsored by NBC News. Maria also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Political Science from Pace University, where she graduated with a remarkable 4.0 GPA. To further enhance her skills, she pursued Portfolio Development in Illustration and Design at Pratt Institute.
Maria's expertise and contributions to health media have garnered her numerous accolades. Some of her most noteworthy recognitions include the Freddie Award for Excellence in Medical Reporting, the Medical Reporting Scholarship from the American Medical Association, and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the March of Dimes. Her dedication to advancing women in media has also earned her the Outstanding Leadership Abilities & Commitment to Advancement of Women in Media Award from Pace University and Women In Corporate America. In 2019, she was recognized with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement award, a testament to her leadership and excellence.
Notable Achievements
Throughout her distinguished career, Maria has consistently produced groundbreaking health programming that has not only generated significant revenue but has also resonated with audiences nationwide. She has created seven spin-offs during her tenure at CNBC, showcasing her ability to develop content that meets consumer needs and elevates the health conversation in media. The launch of the Cleveland Clinic News Service during her tenure marked one of the most significant media exposures for the hospital in its more than 100-year history.
In her role as creator, producer, and host of BOLDHealth from 2019 to 2021, Maria delivered original health programming that stood out during a tumultuous time, demonstrating her creativity and resilience in the face of challenges such as government shutdowns. Maria’s training initiatives for network producers and on-air talent have further solidified her status as an industry leader. She developed the producer training manual for Good Morning America, emphasizing the importance of education and preparation in media production.
Additionally, Maria has authored three books, contributing her insights and knowledge to the fields of health and media. Her experience spans various roles including Independent Producer at ABC News' Good Morning America, Founding CEO of NewsMD Communications, and various producer and director positions in prominent television networks such as CBS, Fox, and NBC.
Maria’s history of collaboration with major healthcare organizations, such as her work with the Cleveland Clinic, showcases her ability to bridge the gap between healthcare advocacy and media. Her efforts have not only transformed health communication but have also expanded opportunities for clinicians and medical innovators to share their stories with broader audiences. As she succinctly puts it, "I am extremely passionate about healthy living, helping others, and all things media. The combination of these three is a magical trifecta for me."
Maria Dorfner continues to be a beacon of excellence in health media, championing the cause of health literacy and advocating for impactful storytelling in healthcare. Her ability to connect audiences with vital health information is unmatched, making her a respected leader and innovator in the industry.
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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
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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.
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.