Garrett works closely with Brandon to chart the course for the company, guided by Terra Dotta's mission to provide unparalleled solutions to facilitate global education. Before there was Terra Dotta, Garrett gained his database- and software-engineering experience in the credit card division at AT&T, but then he took a detour. Having studied abroad in Granada, Spain, as an undergrad, Garrett decided to go back and pursue graduate studies in Romance Philology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his M.A. in 1997, and later obtained a fellowship for doctoral research at the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, where he and his wife spent a year, 1999-2000.


While at UNC, Garrett met Brandon, and with their common interest in instructional technology, the two established a new Technology Coordinator position for teaching assistants in the Department of Romance Languages, creating web resources for language instruction. This collaboration led them to pursue an ambitious effort in the Office of Study Abroad to create a virtually paperless office. The database/web system that was launched in 1999 served as the proof of concept for what eventually became Terra Dotta software.