Clay joined Cypress International, Inc. in January 2025 where he serves as a strategic advisor and professional business development consultant.
Clay’s areas of subject matter expertise include strategy and policy development; the defense planning, programming, budget and execution process; organizational design and development; change management; integration; stakeholder engagement; and operations.
Clay served over 28 years in the United States Army, retiring as a Colonel serving as the Chief of Staff for and Acting Deputy Director of Force Development (FD) in the Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff, G-8 where he led the day-to-day operations of the over 250-person organization charged with oversight of both the Army’s requirements approval and equipment modernization programming processes.
Prior to his final assignment in G-8, Clay served as the Senior Army Advisor for Force Development to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where he co-authored the Defense Planning Guidance and served as the overall lead for developing and presenting Policy positions throughout the Department of Defense’s $800+ billion program and budget review process.
He previously served as the Chief of the Programs and Priorities Division in G-8 FD where he led the integration and prioritization of the $200 billion Army equipment modernization portfolio in the Future Year Defense Program (FYDP) across all phases of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process for senior leadership approval.
Clay served in multiple key roles in the Army G-3, Army G-8, U.S. Army Forces Command, and the Office of the Under Secretary of the Army. He spent the first ten years of his career as an Armored Cavalryman serving in Germany, Fort Stewart, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kuwait, Iraq and Fort Irwin.
