Ernest E. "Lee" Keet is Vanguard Atlantic's CEO and chief investment officer. Mr. Keet co-founded Vanguard Atlantic Ltd. in 1984. 

Since 1985 Vanguard Atlantic has managed leveraged buyouts and private equity investments, including the creation of Mercator Software which went public in 1996 and was shortly thereafter acquired by Ascential Systems, which was in turn acquired by IBM in 2005.   From its purchase by Vanguard Atlantic in 1988 until its sale in 1990, Lee was Chairman and CEO of Information Science Inc. a public (NASDQ) company. 

Lee has also been responsible for the firms' managed start-ups  (Axolotl Corp., formed by Vanguard Atlantic in 1995 and sold to United Health Group in 2010, and ECsoft, formed in Europe by Vanguard Atlantic in 1990 and taken public (NASDQ) in 1996.  More recent investments include Atlas Connectivity (aka SLIC Networks),  Service Channel, and Clinithink.  Lee was a cofounder of the Adirondack-based startup fund, Point Positive, in which Vanguard Atlantic has made six investments,

Prior History

·        From 1979 to 1983, Lee was employed by National CSS and then by its parent, the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, as President of its Software Products Group. During this period, he built the group through acquisitions (including Program Products, Synergistics, and the McCormack & Dodge Corporation) and developed D&B's executive workstation, DunsPlus.

·       From 1976 to 1979, Lee was the President of Turnkey Systems, Inc., a company he co-founded in 1967.  Turnkey Systems developed and sold communications-support products to large IBM mainframe users throughout the U.S. and Europe. 

·        From 1962 to 1967, Mr. Keet served as a Systems Engineer, Marketing Representative, and Advanced Application Development Specialist in Manufacturing Industry Marketing at the IBM Corporation.

Mr. Keet holds a B.M.E. (a combined B.S. and M.S.) in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University and a M.S. (in Operations Research) from New York University. 

He is the co-author (with Vanguard's Jack Pendray) of Strategic Development for High-Technology Businesses, Value Publishing, 1988, and the author of Preventing Piracy, a Business Guide to Software Protection, Addison-Wesley, 1985.  His two oral history interviews are posted to the Computer History Museum and  Charles Babbage Institute web sites.  Two articles about his experiences in the early days of the software industry were published by the IEEE's Annals of the History of Computing. Both are linked to this site. The first appeared in December 2004 and the second in December 2005.  

In addition to Vanguard Atlantic Ltd.,  Lee's current for-profit boards include Point Positive and Clinithink.  He previously served on the Boards of Axolotl Corp., Information Science Inc., Decision Technologies Inc., Document Systems Inc., ALARA, Inc. and  Packaged Business Solutions Inc.

His not-for-profit boards have included the Adirondack Land Trust, (2009-2020), Adirondack Council 2007- present (where he was Vice Chair and Government Affairs Chair), the Adirondack Nature Conservancy (2009-2017), AdkAction.org (where he was co-founder and Chair) 2006-2017,  Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates (ARTA), 2000-present, the Lake Colby Association 1997-present, the Colby Foundation, 2001-2021, and the Cloudsplitter Foundation 1987-present. 

He previously served on the Boards of the Software Industry Association, ADAPSO (now ITAA), the Trudeau Institute, the IT History Society and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA).