User Profile

CEO, Grubb Properties

Clay Grubb leads the long-term, strategic vision for Grubb Properties and plays an active role in all investment decisions. Under his leadership, Grubb Properties successfully transformed from a family-owned business to an employee- and board-owned company. Since 2002, when Clay became the CEO of Grubb Properties, the company has completed more than $1 billion in real estate investment transactions. The sum total of all transactions generated a compounded, net, weighted-average return in excess of 40%. Clay and Grubb Properties have been profiled in several leading publications, including The Wall Street Journal’s Deal of the Week and the cover of Business North Carolina. Clay has been involved in a number of initiatives to enhance the communities and environments where Grubb Properties operates. He serves as chairman of the Grubb Real Estate Preservation Foundation, which focuses on land preservation. Clay is an active board member of Aymira Technologies, a home healthcare software company. He is vice chair of the Young President Organization’s Helping Disadvantaged Kids Network and a past member of the Board of Trustees for the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., where he served as chair of the National Freedom School Advisory Committee for four years. Clay has served as past chairman of board of directors of Freedom School Partners, which provides after-school and summer programs to at-risk children. He is also a past chairman of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte Childress Klein Center for Real Estate. He is a past president of the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association, past chairman of the board for the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, and past member of the Mint Museum Board of Trustees. Clay has served on the Kenan-Flagler School of Business’ Real Estate Advisory Board, Queens University’s Presidential Advisory Board, Queen’s University’s Learning Society Executive Committee, North Carolina’s Environmental Defense Fund Board, and the NC Dance Theatre Board of Trustees. Clay was a fellow in the 2018 Aspen Institute’s Finance Leaders Fellowship. He received the Charlotte Apartment Association’s most prestigious award, the Lex Marsh Award, and the Young Bishop Award from Virginia Episcopal School as recognition for his accomplishments. Clay received his law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law and his Bachelor of Science in Management from the A. B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University, with a concentration in finance and a second major in economics.