By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News
West Austin Chamber is celebrating its 15th anniversary this spring.
Local businessman Ray Freer founded the chamber and gave the keynote address to more than 100 attendees at the luncheon on April 17 at Golfinity.
“I am proud we made 15 years,” said Freer, a longtime Steiner Ranch resident, husband to Erica and dad to a daughter studying at Nottingham Trent University in the UK. “We would not have made it this long without our members who are the lifeblood of the organization. This year we are at about 175 members and growing.”
Freer started his RF Insurance Masters business in 2009 after 23 years working stints at Schlumberger, Hewlett-Packard Company and Wasabi Systems. He started looking for networking opportunities to grow his new business.
Tech guy turned entrepreneur, Freer helped form the Four Points Business Association in 2009. A year later that group evolved into the Four Points Chamber of Commerce in January 2010 and Freer raised his hand to lead the charge.
“We started out with the goal to provide meaningful opportunities to connect West Austin businesses to the community, providing support for our business community,” said Freer, who served as the first chairman of the organization.
The first luncheon was held on the 3rd Thursday in April 2010. Freer has only missed five of the 170+ luncheons in 15 years.
In June 2016, the Four Points Chamber encompassed a larger footprint and rebranded to the West Austin Chamber of Commerce. This is also when the chamber moved to a model with a paid executive director and Morgan Briscoe took that seat.
One major chamber milestone was helping to bring a YMCA to the area.
“In June 2015, we started working to bring a YMCA and library to West Austin. We pulled together key people in the community along with Concordia/City of Austin/Travis County,” Freer said.
Another milestone was to help alleviate traffic congestion.
“We were working with TxDOT and the city of Austin and Travis/Williamson County on addressing the traffic issues,” Freer said. “We helped drive the 2222 bypass.”
Through the past 15 years, the chamber has hosted many meaningful events including monthly luncheons, ribbon cuttings, Business After Hours, Coffee & Connections, and more.
“Our goal was to have exceptional events and we have not deviated from that concept,” Freer added.
Nicole Tomaszewski, the current executive director, shared that the Taste of West Austin (planned for October 8 in Steiner) and the West Austin Home Show (planned for March 8, 2026 at Balcones Country Club) are the two largest events of the year.
“We started a monthly Business Education series at the beginning of this year and also introduced the Best of West Austin contest in 2024 as a way to recognize our local area businesses and to bring more visibility to some of our lesser known businesses,” Tomaszewski shared.
“Our goal is to strengthen the overall community by encouraging the community and business professionals to support each other,” Tomaszewski added.
Freer agrees, these things have helped to build a “strong group of small businesses that want to learn about each other and help each other,” Freer said.
“We have some great executive directors that kept the chamber going throughout the years. We even survived the COVID period where things were shut down. This could not have happened without the drive and strength of our executive directors,” Freer said. Fran Bates was executive director before Tomaszewski.
Freer attributes business success – growing from a company of one to now having a team of seven – to relationships developed from the West Austin Chamber.
“Now we are looking at the next 15-years,” he said, “and what the West Austin Chamber can accomplish with our members.”
Photos by Anthony Johnson Photography
