Meet the City Officials who Keep Peachtree Corners Humming: Brandon Branham Feature

Photos by George Hunter

Consider a high-performance vehicle — bright, shiny and powerful. It leaps ahead quickly when it needs to, but can also settle back to a comfortable cruising speed. It’s nimble, able to turn on a dime or smoothly reverse direction, if need be.

Ever wished for a vehicle like that? The good news is that if you live within the city limits of Peachtree Corners, you already have one.

Gwinnett County’s largest and newest city has a most efficient “vehicle” for governing its home turf — a staff helmed by experienced department heads who put their shoulders to the wheel, are adept at balancing the sometimes-clashing interests of residents, the business community and other constituencies and aren’t afraid to embrace unconventional approaches.

Assistant City Manager- Brandon Branham

In a twist on an old saw, it can be said that behind every city manager stands a good assistant city manager. But Brandon Branham does more than support his boss in running the city. He wears an additional major hat — chief technology officer.

It’s not the most frequent combination of duties for a municipal official, but Branham seems to thrive on it. His responsibilities are broad spectrum. He compares his role to private business, in which Johnson, the city manager, would be chief executive officer and Branham would have chief operating officer stripes.

His operational responsibilities include imbuing departments with strategy and efficiency updates, handling economic development with an emphasis on recruitment, overseeing Innovative and Smart Cities programs, managing facilities and doing partner engagement and management with the Curiosity Lab. Whew!

“We also make sure we’re up to speed, pushing the envelope on the latest cutting-edge technology,” Branham added for good measure.

In that vein, his proudest moment as a tech chief was when the city achieved NIST-171 compliance for the Curiosity Lab Network. He said that’s the highest level of data security for unclassified data an organization can achieve.

“We have a pretty robust security network that blocks intrusions. We get attempts all the time,” he shared.

No one day is the same as another, he said, and that’s part of what jazzes him as he begins his day. One day he might be immersed in some technical aspect of Curiosity Lab, the next he could be helping with long-range financial projections and the day after THAT might find him out of the building taking a gander at a public works project.

All in a day’s work, to be sure.

And, yes, there are roadblocks on occasions, but Branham said an easy-going personality helps navigate and smooth out any rough spots.

He seems to relish startups; he assisted in the birth of nearby Sandy Springs as a contract employee for CH2MHill. He came over to Peachtree Corners in the same capacity before landing on the city payroll.

“What we’ve been able to accomplish in nine years in Peachtree Corners has been pretty impressive,” he said.

On a personal note, Branham said that living in The Corners and going out to dinner usually brings him attention, with folks wanting to ask him about some facet of the city and its government