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Thomas Walden
President at Century Studio Inc
Professional Background
Thomas Walden is a distinguished entrepreneur and financial expert who has made significant contributions to the film and media production industry over the last several decades. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for storytelling, Thomas has helmed multiple successful ventures, redefining standards within the sector. He is currently at the helm of High Park Entertainment Inc., where the company is set to produce two highly anticipated series for Netflix: 'V-Wars,' featuring the talents of Ian Somerhalder and Adrian Holmes, and 'October Faction,' starring Tamara Taylor and J.C. MacKenzie, slated for release in the year 2019.
Beyond his remarkable achievements in production, Thomas is also the force behind Century Studio Inc. This impressive facility boasts 100,000 square feet of meticulously designed studio and support space in Toronto, which has garnered acclaim from industry insiders for being one of the most beautiful studios in the region. This studio serves as a creative hub for filmmakers and offers state-of-the-art amenities to support a wide range of projects.
In addition, Thomas leads Behind The Scenes Services Inc., a company specializing in financial services, tax credits, and business affairs. His experienced team has impressive credentials, having provided support on over 500 productions, which translates to a staggering more than 5,000 television episodes. The breadth of experience in navigating the complexities of film financing is a key aspect of Thomas's expertise, ensuring that productions can thrive in a challenging financial landscape.
Another notable venture in Thomas Walden's portfolio is Lewis Birnberg Hanet, LLP, a respected law firm that specializes in media and entertainment law. This affiliation underscores his commitment to fostering a favorable environment for creativity and innovation within the industry. Moreover, he is involved with Digital Howard Inc., which has received prestigious recognition by winning the Canadian Screen Award (CSA) for two consecutive years, showcasing his firm's prowess in digital production and management.
Education and Achievements
Thomas Walden’s educational foundation is rooted in his studies at McMaster University, where he honed his knowledge and skills relevant to his multifaceted career. As a Chartered Accountant (CA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Thomas possesses over 25 years of diverse experience in senior financial roles, audit, management consulting, finance, and tax planning services for large corporations across Canada and the USA.
His extensive background includes multi-faceted roles ranging from private consulting and audit responsibilities to serving as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for various organizations. His esteemed career journey includes significant experience working with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) as an auditor for billion-dollar corporations, effectively navigating regulatory frameworks and ensuring compliance while maximizing incentives for growth.
Throughout his illustrious career, Thomas has successfully leveraged his expertise to collect hundreds of millions in tax credits and incentives for his clients. His analytical eye has allowed him to review and optimize numerous corporate structures, policies, and procedural manuals. Further, he frequently offers innovative strategies and cost-effective solutions designed to enhance corporate performance and resource utilization.
Achievements
Thomas Walden's achievements in the film and media production industry and in the finance sector are notable for their breadth and impact. As a leader, he continues to strengthen infrastructure supporting creative talent and ensuring sustainable practices. His work at High Park Entertainment has resulted in significant contributions to popular culture through engaging television content and cinematic experiences that resonate with audiences.
The establishment of Century Studio Inc. is a significant milestone for Thomas, not only for its success but also for its aesthetic appeal and functionality, serving as an industry-leading studio space in Toronto. Under his leadership, the studio has become a go-to location for many production companies, fostering creativity and collaboration.
With Behind The Scenes Services Inc., Thomas has demonstrated a commitment to providing comprehensive financial and business services tailored to the unique needs of film productions. His success in managing over 500 productions illustrates his capability and the trust that clients place in his counsel.
Through his involvement with Lewis Birnberg Hanet, LLP, Thomas continues to advocate for legal frameworks that support creative enterprises, ensuring that artists and organizations receive the professional legal representation they deserve.
In recent years, the success of Digital Howard Inc., under Thomas's guidance, has been recognized with consecutive Canadian Screen Awards, highlighting the firm’s innovation in digital content creation. This accolade speaks to Thomas's strategic vision and understanding of the evolving landscape of media production.
Thomas Walden's multifaceted career is a testament to his resilience, creativity, and expertise in the fields of finance and film production. As he continues to lead and inspire in these industries, his innovative spirit and commitment to excellence remain at the forefront of his professional endeavors.
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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
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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.
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.
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.