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Monique Smith
Administrator, Research and Evaluation at San Jose Unified School District
Professional Background
Monique Smith is a highly accomplished education professional with a wealth of experience in urban education policy, data analysis, and research. Combining her expertise and a passion for improving educational outcomes, she has made significant contributions to various educational organizations and initiatives throughout her career. Monique currently serves as the Administrator for Research and Evaluation at San Jose Unified School District, where she plays a key role in guiding research efforts and leveraging data to improve educational practices and student outcomes. Her work involves analyzing student data to inform district policies and initiatives, ensuring that the needs of the students are met effectively.
Before her current role, Monique was a Strategic Data Project Fellow at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, where she engaged in high-impact research projects aimed at enhancing educational equity and effectiveness. During her tenure, she honed her skills in data-driven decision-making and policy analysis, further solidifying her reputation as an expert in her field.
With a robust background in data management and assessment, Monique previously served as the Manager of Data and Assessments at Envision Schools. There, she was responsible for implementing data assessment strategies to improve instructional practices across the school network. Her analytical skills and insight into educational assessments allowed her to drive meaningful changes in the teaching and learning process.
In addition to her roles in school districts, Monique also has a significant background in research and writing, having worked as a Research Associate and Writer at EdSource, where she produced analysis and insightful reports on education policy issues. Her experience as a Research Consultant at Portola Valley School District, along with a pivotal research internship at Children Now, has equipped her with a well-rounded view of the education landscape, enabling her to contribute valuable perspectives on child policy issues.
Her early career was marked by impactful positions, such as her role as an Assistant Teacher at Trinity School in Menlo Park, where she nurtured young minds and fostered their academic growth. Additionally, her experience as a P-16 and communications intern at the California Department of Education gave her early insights into the policies that shape educational systems and access to resources for students across the state.
Education and Achievements
Monique holds a Master of Arts in Urban Education Policy from Brown University, where she developed a deep understanding of the complexities surrounding urban education and the pressing challenges faced by diverse student populations. Her education provided her with the analytical tools necessary to evaluate and address educational disparities, which she has applied throughout her career.
Prior to her master's degree, Monique earned her Bachelor of Arts in Social Welfare from the University of California, Berkeley. This academic foundation provided her with an understanding of social dynamics and the role education plays in social equity and justice. Her educational experiences have equipped her with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills necessary for effective policy advocacy and implementation.
Monique's achievements extend beyond her educational qualifications. Throughout her career, she has emerged as a sought-after consultant and mentor, guiding emerging education leaders and advocating for evidence-based approaches to education. Her work has been recognized for its commitment to equity and for utilizing data to inform community needs and enhance student learning environments. Both her educational background and professional experiences underscore her dedication to academic excellence and her desire to see all students thrive.
Achievements
- Leadership in Education: Monique's steadfast commitment to education equity has allowed her to lead research initiatives that strive to improve educational systems for all students. As an administrator at San Jose Unified School District, she has pioneered data-informed strategies, promoting a culture of continuous improvement within the district.
- Research Excellence: Her fellowship at Harvard University exemplified her research prowess, where she was closely involved in projects that have transformed educational practices and demonstrated the importance of data in driving policy decisions. Monique's work in research has consistently highlighted the need for evidence-based approaches to education reform.
- Collaboration and Communication: Throughout her various roles, Monique has developed strong collaborative networks, working alongside educators, policymakers, and researchers to influence decisions that enhance student learning. Her experience in communications has enabled her to effectively convey complex research findings to diverse audiences, ensuring that insights reach those who can implement effective change.
- Advocacy for Student Needs: Monique has dedicated her career to advocating for the underserved populations within the education system. Her research and evaluation work continuously focuses on understanding and addressing disparities so that every student receives the quality education they deserve.
- Mentorship and Guidance: As a mentor to younger professionals, Monique has played a critical role in preparing the next generation of educational leaders. Her willingness to share knowledge and experiences demonstrates her commitment to uplifting others in the field and fostering leadership in education policy.
Monique Smith's impactful career is marked by her commitment to education, a robust understanding of urban education policy, and a dedication to equitable educational practices. With her expansive knowledge and diverse skill set, she is a valuable asset in the field of education, continually striving to make meaningful improvements to the educational landscape.
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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.