Kirk Clay Sr. is a Senior Advisor, Analyst, and Strategist. Currently, he leads multiple efforts and is responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of Capital View Advisors. His responsibilities include publicly representing the collaborative, overseeing the donor acquisition effort, and guiding the overall program implementation with institutional and individual contributors.
Mr. Clay was a Bernie 2016 state campaign manager. He was responsible for the administrative, political, and field leadership of the entire state effort. Kirk managed staff and volunteers, while representing the campaign in media outlets, and implementing a text messaging campaign strategy. He created a peer-to-peer social media component to connect, train, and maintain communications with local volunteers on the ground — this was in addition to a parallel paid operation. Later, he led a Secretary of State and a Congressional campaign in 2018.
Before that, Kirk Clay served as a Senior Advisor to PowerPAC+ where he built and led management systems, structures, and measures for the “start-up” business. Recently, he led an independent expenditure to elect U.S. Senator Cory Booker. Also, he served as the national field director during the 2008 primary season where he raised $10 million and led an effort that mobilized more than 500,000 voters in ten states that resulted in the election of President Barack Obama.
Between 2008 and 2011, Mr. Clay was the National Civic Engagement Director for the NAACP where he was responsible for developing and implementing political research, advocacy, and training agenda. Under his leadership, the NAACP executed three 4.0 style voter mobilization campaigns and a national census effort to increase civic participation rates in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
Kirk served as Vice Chair of the Census Information Center Steering Committee. Members of the Census Information Centers are official sources of demographic, economic, and social statistics produced by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Kirk Clay’s experience includes serving as the Director of Outreach at Common Cause, where he developed relationships with individual contributors and developed a diverse national coalition of strategic partners to support The National Popular Vote initiative. He also promoted election reform, ethics in government and government accountability.
Earlier, Mr. Clay was Deputy Director of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation where he managed day-to-day operations as well as participated in efforts to mobilize members, activists, community leaders, faith leaders, and state legislators in grassroots issue campaigns. In 2004, he served as the National Field Director of the Unity’04 Voter Empowerment Campaign.
Mr. Clay was a Deputy Director for People For the American Way’s field department where he helped to create the Election Protection project and managed the Partners for Public Education program and organized successful pro-public education coalitions and rallies in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Houston, Jackson, Jacksonville, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Richmond, and St. Louis. He also mobilized the Los Angeles community to oppose Proposition 38 and helped to mobilize activists in Detroit against proposal 209. While at PFAW, Mr. Clay developed the African American Ministers Leadership Council to build public support for public education with ministers from around the country.
Mr. Clay has been featured in many newspapers and magazines. He has written many articles, including “Redistricting Strategies for Civil Rights Organizations” for the State of Black America publication. He has also been a guest on numerous television and news programs across the nation.
Kirk began his career as a trainer and lead administrator for the Democratic National Committee Campaign Training Academy where he helped to train over 500 campaign staff and activists. He is a former White House intern and has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Kirk lives in Washington, DC and his hobbies include traveling, cooking, Jazz and treasurer for the PTA. Mr. Clay is a favorite political blogger and is active on twitter @kirkclay CapitolViewAdvisors.com.
KirkClay.com 