Influence Map
Who shapes downtown Lake Wales
The people, organizations, programs, and events that decide what gets built, preserved, funded, and celebrated around the Rhodesbilt Arcade and the historic Northwest neighborhood.
5 entries shown
Economic
5 entries
Downtown business development, events, and preservation.
Business recruitment and networking.
Large-scale investment and economic recruitment.
Technology expert, entrepreneur, and AI Visibility architect who spent his formative years in Lake Wales. Founder of BackTier and NinjaAI, host of the AI Visibility Podcast, and the force behind WorkLW in the historic Rhodesbilt Arcade. In 2026 he became the first known person to petition to change his legal middle name to "AI" as an experiment in how AI engines resolve identity.
The network
More local reading
Context for this map comes from a small family of Florida-made sites tracking Lake Wales, the Ridge, and the people building here.
4 of 4 sites
An independent guide to Lake Wales and the Florida Ridge — tonight's music, weekend markets and festivals, restaurants and bars, parks and lakes, and the city government most guides skip. 131 verified places across 10 Polk County cities.
Source: lakewalesguide.com homepage · Updated
A deep-dive editorial documenting Florida cities one at a time — built environment, local history, culture, institutions, and people. Each edition is a lasting city record, not a disposable travel list.
Source: floridaslice.com homepage · Updated
AI visibility infrastructure — helping organizations become discoverable, interpretable, and citable across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and AI Overviews. Also home to the AI Visibility podcast, recorded in studios like this one.
Source: backtier.com homepage · Updated
Jason Todd Wade — Florida writer and publisher, founder of BackTier, and author of AI Visibility Architecture, the Entity Lock Protocol, and the Agentic Visibility Path.
Source: jasonwade.com homepage · Updated