The members

Three practitioners. Equal seats.

Tierra Firme brings together commercial real estate, business and operations, and intelligence research. Each member runs an independent practice, and each view checks the other two.

The Ground · Commercial real estate

Murphy D. Cheatham II

Private Clients Director, CBRE · Dallas

Murphy D. Cheatham II is Private Clients Director at CBRE in Dallas, where he advises private families and high net worth individuals on commercial real estate. In more than two decades he has sourced and serviced debt and equity, optimized portfolios and managed properties, led strategic planning on more than $300 million in mixed-use projects in partnership with HDR, and served as Chief of Housing and Business Development for the City of Shreveport. He holds a B.S. in Accounting from Grambling State University and a Master of Real Estate Development from Arizona State University, and helped create the real estate partnership between the two schools.

On the show: The asset: what a property abroad is worth, what your income reaches there, and how to own it without getting burned.

The Build · Business and operations

Shawn Christopher Leamon

Founder and Managing Partner, LaGrande Global · Founder and CEO, Cielo.Travel · Bogotá

Shawn Christopher Leamon is founder and managing partner of LaGrande Global, the investment firm he started in 2013, which manages close to $100 million across private equity, startups, real estate and public markets, with a focus on Latin America. Before that he worked in investment banking and wealth management on portfolios of more than $1 billion. He also built and sold a marketing agency, and is founder and CEO of Cielo.Travel, one of Colombia's largest digital travel networks. Born in Dallas, he has lived in Bogotá since 2023. He holds degrees in Economics and Philosophy from Dartmouth College and an MBA from IE Business School.

On the show: The operation: the business or income stream you could run on the ground, what it costs to enter and what it takes to run.

The Research · Intelligence research

Todd Allyn

Founding Director, Sovereo Intelligence Research · Former Dean, College of Business, Chancellor University · Bogotá

Todd Allyn leads Tierra Firme research. He is Founding Director of Sovereo Intelligence Research, a systems intelligence firm that tracks how geopolitics, culture, technopolitics, astropolitics, rare earths and minerals change the options open to investors and families. Sovereo publishes a daily SITREP, the Sovereo Brief, Country Dossiers and the Decision Forecast, a public record of forecasts made with stated confidence and scored against what actually happened. Before Sovereo he was Dean of the College of Business at Chancellor University in Cleveland, where he helped build the Jack Welch Management Institute, and he spent 24 years teaching college economics, finance and business. He hosted The Todd Allyn Show on iHeartRadio and holds a finance degree and dual master's degrees in finance and international business from the University of Akron. He has lived in Bogotá since 2020.

On the show: The conditions: the macroeconomic, currency and country research that sets your real return, and what changes it.

Why three

Experience, access, research.

Valuation, operating experience and country research, from three people who work on the ground. Any one view alone misses something the other two catch.

The name

Why "Tierra Firme"

Tierra firme means solid ground. It was also the historic Spanish name for the South American mainland, a fit for a consortium built between North America and Latin America. Every episode is also produced in Spanish under the Despacho line.

Members' individual business activities are independent of one another and of Tierra Firme. Sovereo Intelligence Research provides research to Tierra Firme and takes no deal fees, advisory fees or carry.