Leadership

Brandon S. Lee, Chief Executive Officer

Brandon is responsible for all aspects of managing Terra Dotta’s business. His main interest lies in shaping the usability and accessibility of the company’s software. He has primary responsibility for the marketing and sales efforts for Terra Dotta’s four main products: StudioAbroad, i3s, RiskInfoSys, and ApplicationGateway.
Brandon's first study abroad experience, which was in Pornic, France during high school, inspired him to continue French studies. While at Chapel Hill, he led undergraduate students on a semester-long trip to France and taught courses in French language and literature as well as communication studies. He served on several University executive boards, including one that examined the role of technology in the future of the University, and he worked with the Carolina Computing Initiative, through which every student is provided a laptop computer. These experiences led him to start Terra Dotta with co-founder Garrett Christian.

Garrett Christian, Chief Technology Officer

Garrett is the Chief Technology Officer for Terra Dotta. His responsibilities include product development strategy, systems analysis, project management and software architecture. Prior to the formation of Terra Dotta, Garrett gained his database and software-engineering experience in the Credit Card Provisioning Division of AT&T.
Garrett pursued doctoral studies in the history of Romance languages at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his Master of Arts in Romance Philology in 1997, and passed his doctoral exams in 2002.  As a doctoral candidate, Garrett obtained a research fellowship to study in Pamplona, Spain, and spent a year at the Universidad de Navarra. He has also studied abroad in Granada, Spain.

Garrett met Brandon at UNC where they established a new assistantship for Technology Coordinators in the Department of Romance Languages, creating Web resources for instruction, training fellow instructors in using information technology, and providing technical support. The resulting web-database system that was launched in 1999 is still in use today and served as the proof of concept for what eventually became StudioAbroad.

Michael McKeown, Chief Operations Officer

Michael provides leadership for Terra Dotta’s business strategy, support operations, and financial and contract management. He has three decades of business management experience.
Michael joined Terra Dotta in 2006 after 23 years at Land O'Lakes, Inc., a Fortune 500 company, where he was Director of Production & Project Services in the Information Systems Division. At Land O'Lakes, Michael directed 85 operations, network and support staff. He was responsible for the operation of a data center with 420 Windows and Unix servers and a nationwide network connecting over 350 manufacturing plants and distribution centers. He directly led major technology projects, the integration of acquired businesses into the company's computing environment, and wrote strategy papers related to technology and system direction.

Michael was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic. He has extensive international consulting experience in business and leadership development. He has conducted training programs in free-enterprise business methods and consulted in rural business development in Paraguay, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Nepal, and Belize.