Welcome to Common Sense Leadership
A purpose driven company with a mission to help communities and organizations implement impactful changes.
Our Team
Common Sense Leadership LLC is a purpose driven company with a mission to help communities enhance quality of life through partnerships and comprehensive public safety solutions, assist organizations with solutions to thrive financially and operationally, and create measurable impacts for our clients by applying decades of experience and proven expertise in a thoughtful, intentional, compassionate, inclusive and constructive way. Our company’s principals have over six decades of combined total experience transforming organizations, streamlining processes, leading strategic planning, recommending and implementing internal and community policies, developing fiscal sustainability strategies, implementing organizational excellence principles, effectively engaging with the community and businesses, creating public-private partnerships focusing on economic development and public safety, developing and implementing comprehensive public safety solutions to amplify sworn public safety resources with private security and modern surveillance technology as well as integrated data analysis, and assisting private and public entities in enhancing community safety and customer experience
Clay Burch, CEO
Clay Burch, CEO of Common Sense Leadership is a seasoned public safety professional with decades of experience in deployment based on emerging trends and real time data, crime data integration and analysis, technology integration, conflict resolution, homeless encampment management, organized event and protest strategies, staff development, and community and business relations. Clay spent most of his career in the Oakland Police Department, retiring as a Captain at the end of 2023. In this key leadership position with OPD, Clay was responsible for police operations including patrol, special unit enforcement and police training, with an emphasis on community engagement, covering the entire West Oakland area including Uptown, Downtown, Jack London Square, Chinatown, and the Port of Oakland. Clay has decades of experience planning, leading and managing small and large planned and unplanned events including First Amendment demonstrations, critical incidents, and large-scale operations such as reopening of the Port of Oakland in 2022 during the truckers’ protest of California Assembly Bill 5, the 2023 removal of the Wood Street mega homeless encampment, and the 2022 Oakland Police Department holiday season crime prevention deployment. Clay is passionate about bringing positive, measurable changes to communities, in partnership with businesses and community groups, government entities and institutions, utilizing the Five Pillars of public safety approach.
Our Services
Below are examples of available services. Contact us for additional details.