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Gary Spence
Managing Director at Fyfe Pty Ltd
Professional Background
Gary Spence is a distinguished leader with over 20 years of experience in the Engineering, Infrastructure, and Urban Development consulting sector. His career trajectory showcases a remarkable blend of strategic leadership, business acumen, and a commitment to fostering high-performing teams. He was appointed as the Managing Director of Brown Consulting, which was later rebranded as Calibre Consulting, in 2001. Under his stewardship, the company experienced unprecedented growth, expanding its staff from a modest 40 employees in 2001 to approximately 650 by 2015.
His leadership was pivotal during a time of transformation for Brown Consulting, which saw the firm emerge as one of the largest professional services companies in Australia, with nine offices across Australia and seven in New Zealand, in addition to offices in Singapore and Indonesia. Gary’s strategic vision and ability to navigate the complexities of the consulting landscape made him an invaluable asset to the firm during this critical period.
In his role as Managing Director, Gary focused on the diversification of the services offered by the company. This included expanding into civil, structural, and environmental engineering, as well as town planning and land surveying. His strategic foresight included the identification and recruitment of targets for mergers and acquisitions, further solidifying the company's position in the market. Gary's emphasis on technical excellence and exceptional client service established a culture that led to the firm being recognized as Australia’s “leading urban development consultancy” by both clients and industry peers.
In October 2019, Gary took on the pivotal role of Managing Director at Fyfe Pty Ltd, a prominent professional services firm employing over 300 professionals. Fyfe specializes in engineering, town planning, surveying, and environmental services tailored to the resources, urban development, and infrastructure sectors. Under Gary's guidance, Fyfe continues to thrive, leveraging his wealth of experience and ambitious vision for growth.
Education and Achievements
Gary’s educational background is as impressive as his professional experience. He holds a Master of Applied Law and an MBA from The University of Queensland, which equipped him with a robust understanding of legal frameworks and business strategies critical in today’s competitive landscape. Additionally, he is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), reflecting his commitment to furthering his expertise and leadership capabilities.
Further augmenting his educational portfolio, Gary is a graduate of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) with a program completed at Harvard University, reinforcing his knowledge in executive leadership. He also studied at the prestigious London Business School, focusing on Business Administration and Management, which adds yet another layer of depth to his broad educational foundation.
Gary’s career has been complemented by active participation in various organizations and leadership roles that showcase his dedication to service and governance. He has held various positions, including Non-Executive Director and Executive Director at PEAKURBAN Pty Ltd, and he contributed as President and Vice President of the Liberal National Party in Queensland. His leadership also extended to roles such as Chairman of the EnviroDevelopment initiative at UDIA (Qld), where he championed sustainable development practices. Gary's involvement in Brisbane City Council as an Advisory Board Member for Brisbane City Works further illustrates his commitment to community development and public service.
Notable Contributions and Achievements
Gary Spence’s contributions to the engineering and infrastructure sector are immense and varied. His strategic leadership at Brown Consulting paved the way for innovations in urban development, making a lasting impact on cities and communities across Australia and beyond. One of his most noteworthy achievements was guiding the successful transition and sale of Brown Consulting to Calibre, ensuring the preservation of its legacy while enhancing its operational capabilities post-acquisition.
Under Gary's leadership, the company fostered an environment where technical excellence was paramount. The team quickly gained a reputation marked by an exceptional client service ethos, enabling the firm to build long-lasting relationships within the industry. His forward-thinking approach towards the merger and acquisition processes not only expanded the company's capabilities but also positioned it for sustainable growth and success.
At Fyfe Pty Ltd, Gary continues to implement a visionary strategy, focusing on the firm’s growth within the highly competitive professional services landscape. His leadership is characterized by a commitment to nurturing talent, promoting diversity within teams, and emphasizing customer-centric service. Gary’s influence extends beyond just the organizations he leads; his efforts resonate throughout the industry, as more professionals aspire to emulate his approach to leadership and business development.
His active participation in politics and community initiatives underscores his belief in giving back to society and enhancing the industry’s public perception. Gary’s various roles within the Liberal National Party and his involvement with organizations focused on sustainable development highlight a leader who is not only concerned about his companies but also about the broader implications of his work for society.
Conclusion
With a robust educational background, extensive leadership experience, and a passion for fostering growth within the industries of engineering and urban development, Gary Spence is a prominent figure in the consulting sector. His commitment to excellence, innovation, and sustainable practices ensures that he will continue to be a leading force in shaping the future of urban landscapes and infrastructure initiatives in Australia and beyond. Gary’s ability to nurture talent and lead significant transformations within organizations serves as an inspiration to many aspiring leaders in the industry.
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Clay works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Clay offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
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- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Clay is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Clay is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Clay as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Clay offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Clay takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Clay encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Clay work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Clay is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Clay is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Clay is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Clay offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Clay offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Clay for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Clay accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Clay offers extensive integration capabilities. Clay introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Clay supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Clay also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Clay's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Clay makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Clay's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Clay is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Clay stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Clay excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Clay is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Clay offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Clay's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Clay has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Clay is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Clay beneficial.
Clay offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Clay offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Clay's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Clay offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Clay focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Clay also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Clay offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Clay isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Clay instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Clay is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Clay can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Clay is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Clay helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Clay's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Clay has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Clay a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Clay's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Clay's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Clay has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Clay's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Clay as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Clay eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.