FORT COLLINS – CartoPac has hired a new CEO who it hopes will guide the geographic information systems company toward fresh growth in mobile technology.

Carl Lee, with CartoPac since 2001, was a management consulting partner at Ernst & Young, where his efforts centered on emerging and midsize technology companies. Lee is also chairman of CartoPac's board.

Lee is "stepping in as a CEO to help us focus on what we're doing with mobile solutions," said Glenn Vlass, founder and vice president of CartoPac. "He has a good consulting technology background that's going to be an asset for us."

Established in the early 2000s, CartoPac started out as a company called Mountain Trails. At the time, it created digital maps for CDs that accompanied outdoor guidebooks or were sold separately.

The company would scan printed maps from government agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management onto computers to make high-quality digital maps. It layered the maps with features such as photos and four-wheel drive trails as well as comment sections.

But Mountain Trails suffered from low margins, so Vlass and co-founder and Vice President Scott Crouch decided to make a change.

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