Suggestions
Peter Tay
The Beginner’s Black Belt
Professional Background
Peter Tay is a distinguished Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner and instructor, renowned for his expertise in No Gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Women's Self Defense. With over three decades of experience, he has solidified his reputation in the martial arts community as a dedicated educator and trainer. Holding impressive credentials including two black belts—one in Daito Ryu Aiki-Jiujitsu and another from the prestigious Renzo Gracie Academy—Tay combines traditional practices with modern fighting techniques, offering comprehensive education in self-defense.
Peter began his journey into the martial arts world in the early 1990s, where he first earned his 2nd degree black belt in Japanese Jiu Jitsu. His commitment to empowering others through self-defense led him to teach various programs at local colleges and universities, including SUNY Stonybrook, Dowling College, New York University (NYU), as well as organizations such as Blackrock Inc, Safe Horizon, Womenkind, the NYPD, and even the U.S. Department of Justice. His dedication and expertise caught the attention of local media, leading to features in notable outlets such as Eyewitness News and the New York Post, where he was highlighted as a leading women’s self defense instructor.
Recognizing the growing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and its effectiveness, Peter made a pivotal decision to join the Renzo Gracie Academy in Manhattan. Here, he refined his skills under the tutelage of the legendary John Danaher, training alongside world champion fighters like Georges St-Pierre, Garry Tonon, and Eddie Cummings. His experience at the Academy not only bolstered his fighting proficiency but also provided him with a platform to share his knowledge with others.
Upon being appointed one of the head instructors at Renzo Gracie Academy in Hoboken, Peter seized the opportunity to innovate within the field. He focused on developing comprehensive Women's Self Defense and Children’s programs, filling a crucial gap in martial arts training. His innovative approach led him to create a unique women’s self defense curriculum centered around ground fighting, significantly enhancing the safety skills of his students.
In addition to his work on women’s self-defense, Tay is passionate about teaching No Gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He developed a detailed one-on-one training program that caters to individuals at all experience levels. Novice students benefit from thorough explanations and a safe training environment, while more advanced practitioners appreciate the chance to grapple with one of the premier trainers in the field. Peter Tay's teaching philosophy emphasizes empowerment through martial arts, enabling his students to gain confidence and skill.
Education and Achievements
Peter Tay's educational background showcases his commitment to martial arts as well as a diverse professional journey. He earned his first degree black belt in No Gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu from the Renzo Gracie Academy, supplementing his black belt in Daito Ryu Aiki-Jiujitsu at American Jiu Jitsu Centers. His educational pursuits extend beyond martial arts into the world of fashion merchandising, where he studied at both Marist College and LIM College, earning foundational knowledge that complements his diverse career.
Peter has held multiple significant roles within the martial arts community, including serving as the Program Director at Gotham Jiu Jitsu. His previous roles as an instructor for No Gi Jiu Jitsu, Women’s Self Defense, as well as classes for children at Gotham Jiu Jitsu and Renzo Gracie Hoboken demonstrate his commitment to teaching and community engagement.
His extensive experience is also reflected in his past roles in the retail sector, where he cultivated strong interpersonal and management skills. His previous positions included working as a Sales Associate for Women’s Designer Shoes at Saks Fifth Avenue and a Commission Sales Associate at Ralph Lauren. These roles allowed him to develop robust leadership skills and a customer-oriented approach, which are invaluable in both his martial arts teaching and personal interactions.
Achievements
- Black Belts: Peter Tay holds a 1st degree black belt in No Gi Brazilian Jiu Jitsu from the Renzo Gracie Academy and a 2nd degree black belt in Daito Ryu Aiki-Jiujitsu from American Jiu Jitsu Centers, marking him as a highly qualified instructor.
- Media Recognition: His work in women's self-defense has gained significant media attention, being featured prominently in Eyewitness News and the New York Post, thereby increasing public awareness of self-defense education.
- Innovative Curriculum Development: Peter identified a gap in standard self-defense training focused on ground techniques and successfully developed an innovative women’s self-defense curriculum that addresses this need.
- Leadership and Instruction: As head instructor at the Renzo Gracie Academy in Hoboken, he successfully introduced programs that empower women and children through martial arts. His leadership fosters both skill development and self-confidence in his students.
Overall, Peter Tay is a pillar of knowledge and skill in the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu community, with a commitment to empowering individuals through martial arts education, particularly in Women's Self Defense. His unique combination of technical expertise, teaching prowess, and passion for community development makes him a sought-after instructor and mentor. Whether working with novices or seasoned competitors, his approach to training ensures that every participant leaves with valuable skills and newfound confidence.
Location
People also viewed
Related People
Clay is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Clay centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
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
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- 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.