Austin is rich with talented people who could easily make their way on either coast of the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. The reason we live in Austin is almost spiritual. It involves more than a quantifiable checklist of pros and cons – it’s a feeling, a “vibe” that we plug into as we’re getting off the airplane at ABIA or driving back into the Austin metro area after we’ve been away.

Because of its unique attraction, Austin has an abundance of talented people who you might think are based in Silicon Valley or Boston if you had just met them. They purposefully choose Austin instead because we not only have plenty of other techies to work and socialize with, we also have a vibrant creative community that interacts socially and professionally with the tech community.

Sure, we have some big-name celebrities that are really well known, including Willie Nelson, Lance Armstrong, Sandra Bullock, and  Michael Dell. That’s great. What really makes Austin special, though, are the people who not only call Austin home, but are also fully integrated with the rest of the community and truly making it the creative capital.

Bill Leake, the CEO and Founder of Apogee Search, is one of those Austinites who can, and has, demonstrated that he could thrive anywhere but chooses to make Austin his home because of its unique character and creative mix. He’s not only a leader in our local community, he is known around the country as an expert in the interactive, space including search engine optimization, paid search advertising and website effectiveness.

A former McKinsey consultant and Dell veteran, Bill Leake draws on a deep expertise in both business and marketing to help increase revenues for a wide range of clients. He has been involved in driving provable revenues through internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing, he built the first company to sell $1 million of product over the internet. Bill has guided Apogee Search from inception to its current position as the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, and one of the 20 largest in North America.

I used that last paragraph from Bill’s official bio purposefully because I could easily write a few thousand words telling you his story, as I know it, and without even getting to the business side of his personality. Bill is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to online technologies and business and just about any other topic you feel like discussing. He’s also a great family man and member of the Central Texas community. As a leader of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, Bill is a major part of the conversation regarding the interactive community here. Most importantly to me, though, he’s a good friend to a huge number of us.

As the Austin Interactive Initiative takes shape, Bill will be a major resource and community leader in bringing attention to the interactive community of Central Texas. He is very available and is someone I would recommend anyone consult with if they want to know where search and technology in general is headed in the future. We’re lucky to have Bill, his family, and Apogee Search here in Austin.