When Dona and Charles Keating moved to Silverdale from Chicago six years ago, they took a big chance.

“It was literally one of those put-the-pin-in-the-map things,” laughs Dona, owner of Professional Options, a business, policy and Internet technology consulting firm. She helps agencies, organizations and corporations become more efficient, reorganize and put technology to better use.

Her husband, Charles, owns Keating Consulting Services, an IT consulting business. Because the pair occasionally team up on technology-related projects, people often think they work together in the same company.

“Sometimes people get confused,” says Dona. “It’s kind of like Bob and Libby Dole, who does what?”

Both of the Keatings’ clients are far-flung. Dona, who has lived in cities across the country and even overseas, has done work for organizations including the United Nations Environmental Program, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Research Committee, Quest, and AT&T. Professional Options has 11 employees, with satellite offices in New Jersey and Chicago. So it took the couple awhile to get to know the Puget Sound area.

“At least once a month we were leaving this area, if not the country,” recalls Dona, “and until 2000 we were really out of touch with this part of the world. We finally decided that it is too beautiful to spend so little time here.”

So they made a commitment to put down roots closer to home. And how. Dona’s many civic involvements include serving as vice chair of the Kitsap Regional Telecommunications Committee, chair of Subcommittee on Last Mile Private Sector Solutions, member of the Olympic College Business Management Advisory Committee, and board member of the West Sound Technology Professionals Association.

Though the welcome mat was initially out for a company with such impressive credentials as Professional Options, Dona says she ultimately encountered a stone wall in dealing with Kitsap County entities.

“When you come in as an outsider, you’re seen as more credible,” recounts Dona. “But familiarity breeds contempt. The inclination [of entities] here is to go to Seattle, because they really don’t understand the quality of the people they have here.

“They’ll take the information you provide for free, but when it comes to hiring, they’ll go somewhere else.”

Dona says she encountered this problem when dealing with various government agencies, chambers of commerce and municipalities in Kitsap County. Finally, the Keatings had had enough. They moved their home/headquarters in July from Silverdale to Gig Harbor, and in September opened an office in downtown Seattle.

But Dona says she will continue her efforts to get Kitsap County past its inferiority complex when it comes to recognizing its own talent and nurturing its existing small businesses. For example, she says, the Economic Development Council doesn’t include companies with fewer than 10 employees in its database. And the focus is on attracting large new firms.

“Why are you concerned about the big businesses coming here when it’s the small companies that really sustain the area?” she asks. “Bringing in large companies is an outdated idea. For one thing, we don’t have the real estate for large companies... If you’ve got people who are already here and you can’t take care of them, you’ll lose them.”

Dona would like to see a central database developed to showcase the amount of local talent and expertise available. She also urges county leaders to stop marketing Kitsap as a place to find cheap labor.

“I don’t think we do ourselves a favor by sending out the message that you can come and hire our people at $8 to $10 an hour and save money,” she says.

Right now, Dona is heading up a project that will bring the Seattle-based Washington Technology Alliance and the WSTPA together on Nov. 21 for a summit of technology, business and community leaders from seven counties around the Puget Sound and Olympic Peninsula.

Nancy Stump, president of the WSTPA, says she is delighted to have Dona on the group’s board.

“I think she’s an extreme asset to this community, and I’m grateful for the chance to work with her,” says Stump. “I appreciate the fact that they haven’t just walked away from Kitsap. She and her husband remain very active.”

Stump, herself an active civic volunteer, has worked on a variety of projects with Dona. One of those, in conjunction with Olympic College, involved soliciting computers from the community to be fixed and distributed to low-income families. Another time, Dona read a magazine article about a doctor in Alabama who treated impoverished fishermen, whose clinic was flooded out by a hurricane. The doctor, who couldn’t afford a computer, was pictured drying out patient files in the sun. Dona came to the physician’s aid, leading a fund-raising campaign and sending her a computer and medical-management software.

“She’s very professional, intelligent and compassionate, and very broad in her thinking,” says Stump.

Also very successful. Business is going well at her new locations, Dona reports.

“We’ve started to get more attention from local companies. And things are picking up much more for us than they have [overall] locally. Companies are really looking at technology as a major impetus for economic well-being.”

Despite the frustrations of running her business in Silverdale, she has no regrets about the decision to move West.

“I’m glad I’m came here. I think I’ve learned some things about myself that I probably wouldn’t have learned otherwise,” she muses. “But eventually, we’ll probably move on.”.