It’s been said that crisis doesn’t build character, crisis reveals character—especially among leaders.
During multiple times in his life, Derrick Clay has faced crises, both big and small, and they have revealed exactly what kind of leader he is—and why he was chosen to become president and CEO of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce in January 2025.
“If you were going to go in a laboratory and build someone perfectly suited to be the CEO of the Columbus Chamber, you would get Derrick,” says Steve Stivers, president and CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce. “He’s super engaged, he’s been on so many boards. He knows everyone in the business community.”
Clay’s journey began in Toledo, where his father was a factory worker for multiple companies, including Jeep. His mother was a schoolteacher who taught first grade for 30 years.
“Oh, man, people all the time would come up to me and say, ‘Is your mom Mrs. Clay?’ ” because they had been in her class, and because “she was a wonderful schoolteacher,” Clay says, chuckling. “I grew up on public education in Toledo public schools.”
That public education included Macomber-Whitney High School, a vocational high school. “We had different trades that we could take on,” he says. “I took on data processing.”
Heading to college at the University of Akron, he majored in business and organizational communication, “really studying how business and communication intersect.”
He also was very involved in student activities. “I was on the student government and ended up being president of Associated Student Government my senior year.”
But the year before Clay was to graduate, his father died.
“My mom was in Toledo by herself, and I was like, well, maybe I go home and help mom for a couple years and figure out what I’m doing. And that was going to be my plan.”
Clay decided he was “going to work at a radio station, and they had worked out a little deal for me that I could sell advertising during the day, and I could DJ at night, and so that’s what I was going to do, right?
“But God had a different plan for me.”
How Derrick Clay Got Involved in Politics
One of Clay’s fraternity brothers was working for Vernon Sykes, who at the time was the assistant majority floor leader in the Ohio House of Representatives. “My fraternity brother had just gotten a new job, and Representative Sykes asked him who would be a potential good replacement for him. He recommended me.”
Two weeks later, Clay had left all thoughts of working at a radio station far behind. “I was fortunate enough to get the job. So I worked in his office as his senior aide.”
Clay went on to work in other political positions, including as executive director of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, working with 18 African American legislators in the Ohio General Assembly.
“And then I got a big break: I was tapped to run Al Gore’s presidential campaign [in Ohio] in 2000. I worked on the Gore-Lieberman campaign, and my work took me to Florida for a month and a half with the Florida recount, and the hanging chads, all that stuff.”
A job as Midwest political director with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee came next, “and basically I helped run campaigns throughout the Midwest for various different candidates.”
At that point, Clay admits, “I got totally burnt out of politics, and went and sold copiers for a year.”
What could have been a year of drudgery turned out to be “a great experience, because I learned a lot about people, and I learned how to be nimble on your feet and be told ‘No’ and go back until you get a ‘Yes,’ or at least, ‘I’ll think about it.’ And so that helped me in my career, being in government relations. Those were some valuable skills that I took with me from that time working in sales.”
Refreshed from the experience, Clay realized he wanted to get back into public policy.
“I was approached by a guy by the name of Ed Hogan, who founded the first African American lobbying firm in the state.”
Clay, who had never even heard the term lobbyist “until I got to [the University of Akron] campus,” found himself in exactly the right spot once again.
“Derrick was mentored by Ed Hogan, principal of New Visions Group, who I adored,” says state Sen. Hearcel Craig, a veteran African American legislator both in the Statehouse and on Columbus City Council, who has known Clay for years. Hogan, who died in 2016, became a friend and mentor to Clay, and it was during the New Visions days that Clay truly came into his own, Craig says.
“He is so smart, so strategic and he is certainly collaborative.”
Clay remembers his time with Hogan fondly. “We worked with a number of different Fortune 500 companies,” Clay says. “I was brought on as a vice president and a partner to help him grow the business, and I ended up working there for 18 years.”
Clay bought the firm from Hogan in 2014 and grew the business some more.
But the journey was not without some bumps in the road.
“When I bought New Visions Group, there would be days where I would sit by the door, wait on the mailman to see if a check came in,” Clay says. “There were times when I paid my employees, and I did not pay myself.
“And that’s not just one time—that was several times.”
Clay’s determination and skills ultimately paid off, however, and Shumaker Loop and Kendrick law firm approached him to purchase New Visions. “They had a lobbying arm called Shumaker Advisors,” he says, and as senior vice president for that firm Clay not only helped business development but also worked with the firm’s team in Washington, D.C., on their lobbying needs.
Clay Commits Time to the Columbus Community
While all of that kept him busy, Clay somehow found time to be “always active in boards throughout the community.”
That’s putting it mildly. Clay has been a board member for the Athletic Club of Columbus, as well as the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, Action for Children and the Columbus Recreation and Parks Commission.
And he was also on one other, rather significant board: “I was on the chamber board for close to five years. Don DePerro had announced his retirement [as chamber president and CEO], and I was preparing to be the board chair, and I actually attended the very first search committee meeting,” to find DePerro’s replacement in 2024, Clay says.
“The search firm had a packet of information that had the job description, and they had this page with all these potential replacements for Don on the page. It was like 50 names on this page, and my name was on it, and I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Why is my name on this?’
“But I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured somebody put my name on there, and eventually it would come off. But somebody approached me about the position about a week later and said, ‘Have you ever thought about the chamber job? You would be good for that role.’ And I think I told the first person, ‘No, I’m concentrating on the board, and I have a good book of business at my firm. So I’m going to concentrate on that.’
“Then I had two or three other people approach me about the role, and I said, ‘OK, God is speaking to me about this, so I need to listen.’ And so I prayed on it, meditated on it, and decided to go after it.”
But fate once again stepped in to test Clay. He had been on the job only three days when DePerro died unexpectedly.
“Don was one of the most genuine people,” Clay says. “He loved this community, he loved the business community, and he did so many good things for the Columbus Chamber. He was just a solid human being.
“I really had to lean on my faith. I had to lean on my training, coming out of campaigns, to be quite honest. I wanted to grieve, but I didn’t have time to grieve. Because even though we had this tragedy over here, we still have to support and serve our 2,500-plus members.
“I had to put the responsibility that was before me, I had to think about how to support this team that has a new leader that they don’t even really know.”
Clay called an emergency meeting for the entire staff, “and that meeting was to do nothing but to just let people feel what they were feeling. We have a lot of staff members who are younger, and this was the first death that they had ever experienced, because they still have grandparents.”
A grief counselor was brought in, “and that really helped,” he says.
Several team dinner meetings have followed, “and I think it was at one of our staff meetings that we said, ‘Look, what’s done is done, but the way that we honor Don’s memory is to continue the work that he started and that we do it well.’ ”
New Columbus Chamber Initiatives
Even as Clay worked to help the Columbus Chamber recover from the death of his predecessor, he was developing three new initiatives for the organization.
One is called A Better Us. “This is really a mental health initiative,” he says. “When you think about the life of a business owner, business owners are good at what they do. But a lot of times, the mental health gets left on the shelf, and our team truly believes that you can’t be your best business self unless you’re your best physical, mental and spiritual self. So we want to incorporate some of that into all of our programming.”
The second big initiative is an executive relocation package, which the chamber plans to roll out in January 2026. “So if you are a new executive, if you’re a new business to our community, there should be a one-stop shop where you can just go and say, ‘Hey, I’m here. I don’t know anybody. What can you tell me about the community?’ We believe that the chamber should have a role in that. So if you need a barber, a veterinarian, a banking relationship, a Realtor, if you need a private jet, we want to help give you those resources.”
The third new chamber initiative is succession planning. “Business owners get caught up in day to day running the business and they’re not thinking about the end. But we should be servicing every single cycle of business, from the time you file your incorporation papers at the secretary of state’s office to the time you decide whether you want to retire or sell your business.”
The three initiatives are all “something that I’ve lived,” he says. “When you talk about the everyday challenges of a business owner and having more bank than money, I’ve lived that, so I understand the challenges of the small business owner.
“I’ve lived every single cycle that you can live as a business owner. I’ve had the lows of business. I’ve had the very highs of business. That’s the only reason why I say that I’m uniquely positioned for this role.”
Clay’s background is as a longtime Democratic official. But the CEO of the other chamber in Downtown, Stivers, who is a Republican, says he has no problem working hand-in-hand with Clay.
“He’s been a friend for a very, very long time—and a trusted partner,” Stivers says. “The great thing is, even if we disagreed on something, we can clear the air quickly. I’m so comfortable with Derrick as a leader and public official.”
Clay himself acknowledges that he is “very partisan, but I’m partisan for the business community. We have Democratic members that are members of our organization. We have Republicans, we have Libertarians, we have you name it. But the one thing that we all have in common is that we’re a business ecosystem.
“We are an organization that is the voice of the business community, so we have to advocate for them, and I have to put my partisan hat aside when we’re dealing with matters that are critical to the health of our businesses.”
Another one of Clay’s mentors isn’t surprised that the new chamber CEO is able to work with everyone in the business community.
“He’s always willing to listen and to learn,” says Michael B. Coleman, the former four-term Columbus mayor and, like Clay, the first African American to hold his position.
Coleman, a Toledo native like Clay, laughs when he says that he has known the younger man “since he was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
Even in the days when Clay was new to Columbus, “he had a strong interest in community affairs and civic engagement,” Coleman says, “and he always wanted to participate in one thing or other.
“He’s a great strategist, he understands government, he’s a terrific facilitator, he believes in the city, he’s a man of his word, and in my experience that’s very important in Columbus. His level of trustworthiness and people’s faith in him is real and justified.
“I think he’s the right person, at the right time, in the right position in this city.”
About Derrick Clay
President and CEO, Columbus Chamber of Commerce
Age: 54
Previous: Senior vice president, Shumaker Advisors; owner and principal, New Visions Group; Midwest political director, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; Ohio director, Gore-Lieberman 2000 presidential campaign; executive director, Ohio Legislative Black Caucus
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business and organizational communication, University of Akron
Involvement: Board member, the Athletic Club of Columbus, Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission, Action for Children and Columbus Recreation and Parks Commission
Tim Feran is a freelance writer.
This story appears in the November 2025 issue of Columbus CEO. Subscribe now.
This article originally appeared on Columbus CEO: Why Derrick Clay Is the Right Person at the Right Time at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce
Reporting by Tim Feran / Columbus CEO
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