Technology you never have to think about. People you know by name.
I grew up around my father's buildings. Gene Leedy was one of the founders of the Sarasota School of Architecture and one of the shapers of mid-century modernism. He built the places people lived, worked, and played: houses, doctors' offices, banks, schools, garden centers, city halls. Precast concrete and glass, long beams you could see, nothing hidden and nothing extra. Honesty in materials. But what people remembered was how it felt to be inside: the light, the openness, the sense that someone had thought about how you would live there before you ever walked in. I did not become an architect, but I took the idea with me. Show the structure. Waste nothing. Build it so it lasts. Make it an experience. Real. Human.
I have been running technology for Florida businesses since 1996, from the same block of downtown Winter Haven, and now from our own streets in downtown Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Miami, where our people live and work. Our clients are everywhere from Orange Avenue in Orlando to Bayshore in Tampa to Brickell in Miami, and everything in between, which is the Florida I have lived in all my life. It started as one of the region's first internet providers, in the dial-up days. Then it became secure email for people with a lot at stake, public companies and government agencies here and abroad, which taught me something I have never forgotten: the businesses that need technology most are the ones that least want to think about it.
In 2004 I started Protected Trust with one idea. I wanted to build the Four Seasons of IT: the experience Isadore Sharp built his hotels on, and the same feeling I grew up with in my father's buildings. Treat people the way you would want to be treated, know them by name, and be excellent at a few things without ever changing them. For a business, that means when something goes wrong, you should not have to figure out who to call, how we are organized, or explain yourself twice. You reach out, and someone who knows you takes care of it. And whatever you bring us is ours until it is finished.
Some of the people who answer that call have been with me since the dial-up days. That is on purpose. A client's team should be the same team five years later.
Off the clock I am a pilot, and I fly the way I work: checklist, preparation, instruments, and then the freedom to go anywhere. With my family, that usually means the real Florida, the places people drive past. I have spent most of my life on the Winter Haven Chain of Lakes, and some of it working to protect them. Ask me for a place. Better yet, tell me yours.
Ingram Leedy, Founder and CEO, Protected Trust. Winter Haven, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Miami.
What we hold to
- Ownership. It is ours until it is done. No blame, no handoffs.
- Anticipation. We call before you notice.
- Simplicity. Simple, on purpose. Technology should be invisible.
- Discretion. Your systems, your data, your business. Quietly.
And we are from here. We show up: for the Scouts, the Chamber, the trades, the schools. Where you will find us.
Who we are for
Medical practices, law firms, accounting and financial firms, and the businesses around them with enough at stake to want someone else worrying about this for them. Not everyone. We are not the least expensive option, and we are not trying to be. We would rather be the firm those practices mention to each other, because that is how we have grown for twenty-two years: someone had a good experience and told a friend.
For the record
Microsoft named us Surface Modern Deployment Partner of the Year in 2019 for setting every client up to one standard. We are a Microsoft Solutions Partner, and we are SOC 2 compliant.