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Tiffany Taylor
Chief People & Impact Officer at GSV Ventures and ASU+GSV Summit
Professional Background
Tiffany C. Taylor is an accomplished professional with a rich history of over fifteen years of transformative work in the spheres of education, non-profit initiatives, housing, and public sector governance. Her passion for education and community empowerment has significantly shaped her career trajectory. Most notably, Tiffany served as the Executive Director of Teach For America – Detroit, where her visionary leadership resulted in a compelling organizational direction that fostered growth across various fronts. Under her guidance, the regional fundraising base was expanded, and sustainable operational practices were established to ensure long-term viability and effectiveness. Now, she excels in her role as the Vice President and Deputy Chief People Officer at Teach For America, where she continues to influence educational policy and practice at a national level.
Tiffany's journey in education began in the classroom, where she worked as a Special Education Teacher for sixth grade through Teach For America. This initial experience ignited her passion for advocating for underrepresented communities in education. She later transitioned into building her expertise by diving into urban planning and housing through her roles as an Urban Planning Intern and Housing Development Officer with Prince George’s County Planning Department and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. Here, Tiffany honed her understanding of systemic issues impacting disadvantaged communities, informing her further endeavors in policy development.
In pursuit of advancing her knowledge, Tiffany made bold strides into the nation’s capital, contributing her talents as an educational policy consultant for the 21st Century School Fund and serving as a Housing Development Project Manager with The Community Builders Inc. Each role helped strengthen her commitment to education and community development, fueling her desire to return to her roots in Detroit—where she felt an intrinsic connection to the needs of her community.
Answering the call, Tiffany returned to Detroit in 2010 to join Teach For America’s staff as the Senior Managing Director for Teacher Leadership Development. Over her tenure, she has climbed the ranks, serving as Vice President for Regional Management, guiding teams toward achieving ambitious goals related to corps member placement, district partnerships, and alumni impact. Her leadership ensures that the Teach For America mission resonates profoundly within the community.
In addition to her illustrious career, Tiffany is committed to civic engagement. As a native Detroiter, she embodies a deep-rooted passion for supporting her city's growth and development. She sits on various boards and advisory committees where her insight and experience contribute to strategic initiatives designed to enhance the educational landscape in Detroit and beyond.
Education and Achievements
Tiffany holds an impressive academic background, having completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and African American Studies at the prestigious University of Michigan. This foundational knowledge provided her with insights into social dynamics and systemic inequalities that she would later address through her professional endeavors.
In her pursuit of leadership excellence, Tiffany complemented her undergraduate education with advanced studies, including a Master’s in Urban Planning and Real Estate Development from the University of Maryland College Park and a Master of Science in Education from Saint Joseph's University. Furthering her professional development, she underwent training in Leading Change and Organizational Renewal at Harvard Business School Executive Education, positioning her as a strategic leader poised to address and adapt to challenges in the evolving educational landscape.
Additionally, Tiffany has enhanced her expertise in human resources management through her studies in Advanced Employee Relations & Investigations at Cornell University. This unique blend of skills and knowledge ensures that she approaches workforce development with empathy, strategic insight, and a commitment to fostering inclusive environments.
Notable Achievements
Tiffany's professional journey is dotted with remarkable achievements across various organizations that exemplify her leadership skills and dedication to educational reform. Her work as Chief People & Impact Officer at GSV Ventures showcases her adeptness at aligning organizational processes with cutting-edge educational practices and innovative approaches to workforce development.
Tiffany previously served as an At-Large Commissioner appointed by Governor Whitmer at Huron-Clinton Metroparks, where she contributed to regional environmental policy while championing access and equity within public spaces. Additionally, she held the position of Economic Development Corporation Commissioner at Charter Township of Clinton, further proving her multifaceted expertise in navigating public service and economic enhancement initiatives.
Her invaluable contributions to Teach For America fostered substantial growth and development within the organization, particularly in her roles as Vice President, Regional Management, and Senior Managing Director for Teacher Leadership Development. Each position allowed her to implement stepping-stone strategies that propelled educational impact, corps member success, and regional partnerships.
Tiffany's involvement as a KIPP Leadership Design Fellow at KIPP Foundation reflects her ongoing commitment to refining instructional quality and educational equity in schools across the nation. Moreover, her earlier experiences, including her work as a Graduate Research/Teaching Assistant at the University of Maryland, helped her develop a strong research background that informs her educational philosophy and policy-making decisions.
In closing, Tiffany C. Taylor is a dedicated advocate for equity in education and community development. With her extensive experience in both academic and practical environments, alongside her impressive educational pedigree, she continues to carve out a pathway for future generations. Her unwavering dedication to her community and commitment to fostering inclusive educational systems make her one of Detroit's prominent leaders in advocating for sustainable change.
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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.