Before his appointment as Executive Director, Walker served as the Chief Operating Officer of PrestoSports, the largest independent collegiate athletics software provider in the U.S. He led the successful sale of PrestoSports to Battery Ventures at the end of 2017. Prior to PrestoSports, he served as CEO of BigTeams, the largest high school athletics software platform in the U.S., where he led fundraising initiatives and the subsequent acquisition of Schedule Star, which had been owned by USA TODAY Sports.
Prior to joining BigTeams, Walker was VP of Business Development at USA TODAY Sports, where he was responsible for strategy, business development and managing a network of more 300 affiliate publishers, reaching an audience of more than 25 million monthly unique visitors. Before joining USA TODAY Sports, he was the Chief Affiliate Officer and one of the co-founders of Big Lead Sports, a digital sports marketing and media company that was acquired by USA Today. Clay also served as the Senior Vice President of the NFL Players Association’s licensing and marketing division for 13 years.
Walker has served as a panelist at SXSW, The World Congress of Sports, The Sports Marketing Symposium, and The Sports Media & Technology Conference, written articles for Athlon Sports Pro Football and Street & Smith’s Pro Football magazines and has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio and the New York Times on a variety of licensing, marketing and fantasy sports issues.
Walker served two terms on the Board of Directors of the East Carolina University Foundation and is currently a member of the East Carolina University Advancement Council. Walker received one of four Outstanding Alumni Awards from East Carolina University in 2005 for outstanding and uncommon achievement in his profession. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of USA Football and served as the treasurer of the National Council of Youth Sports. Walker also serves on the Advancement Council at Good Council High School. In 2005, he became the first person from a sports union to make the Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 list of most influential people in sports business.
Clay earned a B.A. in English from East Carolina University, an M.B.A. from Colorado State University and an M.S. in Labor Relations from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.