From Small Town North Carolina to Leading Tech for 2.3 Million People with Bob Leek

Episode Information

Show Notes

What happens when you combine curiosity, willingness to take chances, and genuine interest in people? You get Bob Leek’s career story – a journey from a small town in North Carolina to becoming CIO of Clark County, Nevada.

Bob didn’t start with a master plan. He got an accounting degree, landed in retail finance, and complained about IT systems so much they moved him to technology. His path through retail (Egghead), pet healthcare (Banfield), Kaiser Permanente, and public sector roles taught him that relationships matter more than transactions, and that saying yes to opportunities often matters more than having all the credentials.

Now leading technology for one of America’s largest counties – serving 2.3 million residents and 40 million annual visitors – Bob brings an approachable leadership style that breaks down the intimidation factor many feel around executive titles. He’s proof that you don’t need to have it all figured out from day one.

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: Bob shares how growing up in Mount Airy, North Carolina (Andy Griffith’s hometown) shaped his values around community and connection. His entry into technology came from an accounting degree and working in finance at Egghead, where he complained about IT systems so much they moved him to the technology department.

The conversation covers his progression through retail technology, pet healthcare (Banfield), Kaiser Permanente, and Multnomah County before making the jump to Clark County. Bob explains what it means to manage technology infrastructure for millions of people while maintaining his commitment to accessibility and relationship-building.

You’ll hear about his philosophy on networking (hint: it’s not about collecting business cards), why he asks questions without worrying about looking uninformed, and how curiosity has been his career accelerator. Bob also opens up about being a “professional extrovert and social introvert” and what that means for how he shows up in his role.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Complaining about problems can lead to opportunities if you’re willing to help fix them
• Asking questions, even ones you think might sound basic, accelerates your learning
• Real networking is about genuine curiosity, not transactional exchanges
• Saying yes to opportunities matters more than waiting until you feel fully prepared
• Building relationships with people across industries creates career momentum
• Leadership roles don’t have to be intimidating – accessibility builds stronger teams

ABOUT THE GUEST: Bob Leek is the Chief Information Officer for Clark County, Nevada. His career began with an accounting degree and moved through retail technology (Egghead), pet healthcare (Banfield), Kaiser Permanente, and public sector leadership at Multnomah County. Bob’s approachable style and commitment to community-building have made him a respected figure in technology leadership.

CONNECT WITH BOB: Find Bob on LinkedIn or reach out through Clark County official channels. He genuinely means it when he says to come say hi at events.

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TranscriptionManuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. For each episode, I basically hit the refresh button and bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to really uncover any actionable advice that we can provide to you as you’re managing your own career. So I’m very excited today that I have with me Bob Leek. So he is the CIO for Clark County. For those of you that aren’t aware, and I’m sure Bob will bring us up to speed, but Clark County is one of the largest counties in the nation. So, you know, I’m interested to kind of get into how he eventually landed into that role and a lot of the things that he’s doing to kind of better not only, you know, his organization, but the community as a whole. So with that, I’ll go ahead and introduce Bob.

Bob: Thanks for having me here.

Manuel: I appreciate you, you know, taking the time to kind of go through and share your experiences. So you and I have had conversations, you know, outside of here. And I think one of the big things, and I think the reason that I’m excited to have you on here and kind of share your story is a lot of times people see a name or they see a title and they’re like, oh, Bob Leek, a CIO, or oh, a Rishma, our, you know, they see these titles and they think it’s almost intimidating to them. And one of the things that I’ve been fortunate enough is I know you all outside of here and I don’t have kind of that, okay, he’s a CIO, he’s a person, but now I want to give you the opportunity to kind of show that and show people like, okay, he’s just a regular person. So when I come across Bob at an event, which, you know, I’ve come across and, you know, we’ve seen each other at a lot of these, but to come and say, hey, I can come and say hi and, you know, and kind of introduce themselves.

Bob: Yeah, please do that. I’m a professional extrovert, I’m a social introvert. So I relish the opportunity for people to come up and talk with me. I love engaging with people.

Manuel: So if you kind of start off, if you can tell us, you know, where you grew up and then eventually what got you interested in kind of pursuing technology.

Bob: Yeah, so it’s an interesting story. So I was four years old when we moved to the United States. I was born in the Netherlands. My dad worked for a flower bulb export company and they decided that there was an opportunity to move some of their operations to the United States. And so he came home one day and said, we’re gonna move to North Carolina. And not just anywhere in North Carolina, but Mount Airy, North Carolina, which is Andy Griffith’s hometown. So that’s gonna be familiar to a lot of people from the Andy Griffith Show, right? It was in color when I was there. It wasn’t black and white, but growing up in a town with 20,000 people, what you saw in the Andy Griffith Show with Mayberry, that’s what I grew up in. A couple of stoplights, a very close knit community. I grew up in the early 70s, mid to late 70s, the formative years, playing Little League Baseball and playing soccer and being involved in the church and all the things that you could imagine in small town America. And it was a great place to grow up. I learned English from a good friend of mine, James. I lived in the neighborhood with me. He literally took me around and said, that’s a rock. That’s a squirrel. That’s a tree. So I learned English through Captain Kangaroo, Sesame Street, all of that, that was in that era. And so it was really formative to me to grow up in a small American community like that and really put a set of values and principles in place for me that I still carry forward to today. So my dad then had a second big influence on my life. In 1987, I was gonna be a senior in high school. I was gonna graduate second in the class. My good friend, Todd, was gonna graduate first. It’s the first time in the history of that high school that two boys were gonna graduate at the top of their class. My dad came home and said, guess what? We’re moving to Atlanta, Georgia. We’re moving to Lawrenceville. At that time, it was Gwinnett County, fastest growing county in the country for like five years. We were a family that moved into a neighborhood that had 70 homes in it. We were the second family that moved in. Within six months, the entire neighborhood was full of people. I went from a high school with 300 kids in it to a graduating class with 500 kids in it. And so culture shock, right? Giant high school, 2400 kids in a high school, six-story high school, big athletics, a 6A school. Here I was coming from this really small environment into this giant environment. And I walked in the door and I was second in the class in terms of academics. That caused some backlash from the people that had been going to school there for their entire lives, right? So took some AP classes, small-knit community, tanked my senior year. Just totally said, you know what? I’m not gonna be part of disrupting that group, that culture, those close-knit high school folks. And several of them became really good friends. So I tanked my senior year. I went from second in the class of 500 to fifth. And so, you know, I think I had a B, maybe two. And so it’s, again, another formulative time in my life in having been disrupted from moving from the Netherlands to the United States, then moving from small town to gigantic town. And that’s really formed the core of what I’ve done. Went to college in the North Georgia mountains, private school, got an accounting degree, worked for a couple of companies in Atlanta, met my wife, now my wif