MIS Alumnus Gives Back to Eller by Establishing New Scholarship

Keegan Brown ’17 MS MIS has always kept busy. Growing up in Mesa, Arizona, he loved school and sports. But he also had an entrepreneurial side.

“I was always trying to invent things,” he says. “I was trying to create a business at a very young age.”

Brown has carried that passion into adulthood. He currently serves as the founder and CEO of ATRA, a Tempe, Arizona-based paid media marketing agency. The company, which Brown launched in 2017, specializes in digital ads on Google, Meta and LinkedIn, as well as programmatic (TV) ads. ATRA combines advanced attribution, GA4 expertise and custom reporting to accurately track every lead, sale and dollar of revenue, giving its clients a clear view of which channels, campaigns and touchpoints are truly driving growth. Its clients span the nation and include healthcare companies, law firms and e-commerce companies.

But the road to overseeing ATRA wasn’t straightforward.

Brown earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from Northern Arizona University. Although he briefly worked as an accountant, he was more passionate about entrepreneurship.

“I launched two different apps that had some funding from a local incubator in Flagstaff,” he says.

He outsourced the technology aspect of the apps and simultaneously realized he needed to improve his marketing skills. So Brown secured an entry-level job at a marketing agency to improve his skills. While there, he discovered an interest in analytics and decided to seek a master’s degree. One of his coworkers attended the University of Arizona and spoke highly of the MIS program in the Eller College of Management.

Brown was convinced—he applied and pursued his master’s in MIS online at Eller. His favorite parts of the program included the expert instruction from professors, the case studies and the hands-on learning he did with tools like Tableau.

Today, he has chosen to give back to Eller via the ATRA Outlier Award, a scholarship that will be awarded for the first time in the 2026-2027 academic year. It will be open to junior or senior students studying MIS or marketing who maintain a 3.4 GPA and demonstrate financial need.

The name behind the award comes from ATRA’s belief in being an outlier—a person who goes above and beyond to innovate, inspire and improve every day. Brown wants to help undergraduates who are standout students.

“I needed financial support in my undergrad. Through NAU, I received a similar scholarship. It made a difference,” Brown says. He knew that someday, he wanted to give back in the same way.

As he reflects on his time at Eller, Brown offered a few tidbits of advice for current students.

It’s key to pay attention to the foundational concepts of your program, even if you don’t feel like you’re using what you learned.

 “So much of what I do comes back to the foundation of what I learned in undergrad and my program in Eller,” he says. “Without it, I don’t think I’d be where I’m at.”

He also advised students to push themselves to ask questions. Brown, who is also a part-time visiting professor at Arizona State University, noted that only a handful of students reach out to him for office hours. Those who do reach out “understand a lot better than the other students,” he says.

And while grades are important, they aren’t everything.

“I personally don’t ever look at grades or GPA,” he says. Instead, what stands out to him—and many other employers—is having real-world experience.

Though Brown’s journey has taken him through accounting, entrepreneurship, marketing and MIS, he remains committed to being an outlier and helping Eller students become one as well.