Talk to us Meet Clay
What do you enjoy most about wealth management?
Working as part of the team to help some great families achieve their wealth planning goals.
What's the biggest challenge?
Keeping their lives as simple as possible.
What do you love most about being part of Aspiriant?
Working alongside so many great people.
What professional accomplishments are you most proud of?
Helping develop innovative estate planning tools and techniques. Publishing articles on estate planning in the top industry journals.
What quality of yours makes you best suited to do what you do?
My ability to break down complicated situations and explain them to people with varied levels of understanding.
How should people think about their wealth?
Without a plan, you could be unknowingly sharing 40% of your hard earned wealth with the IRS – instead of your family or favorite charity.
What do you love to do outside of work?
Spend time with my wife watching my daughter’s soccer games and musical theater performances.
What would you be doing if you weren't working for Aspiriant?
I might be an estate planning professional.
What was the most influential book you've read and why?
Made to Stick helped me focus on breaking material down and explaining it an understandable way.
What personal accomplishments are you most proud of and why?
Raising two awesome daughters along with my wife over the past twenty years.
Bio
Clay has been serving ultra-affluent clients with complex estate planning, income tax, philanthropy, and insurance problems since 1995, and with Aspiriant since 2004. Clay has served as the primary estate planning advisor for clients nationwide with a net worth between $10 million and $500 million. Prior to joining Aspiriant, Clay spent several years as a tax attorney with the Orange County office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and more recently directed the estate and trust services department with myCFO for their Orange County office.
Clay has authored articles in various tax publications and has lectured on many estate planning subjects. Currently, he is an adjunct Professor of Law at Chapman University Law School and teaches a course on Estate Planning and a separate course on Estate Planning for High Net Worth Individuals.
An attorney, Clay received a BA degree in Economics from Occidental College, and earned a master’s degree in Tax Law from New York University School of Law. Clay received his JD degree from Pepperdine University School of Law, graduating magna cum laude, while serving as an editor on the Pepperdine Law Review.
