Gunnar Branson, CEO at AFIRE, has published a memoir, Chasing Lights, that turns a remote Alaskan upbringing into a meditation on how investors should navigate disruption and uncertainty.
The book grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Branson describes as a forced reexamination of his life and career. Its central argument — that endings and failures are transitions rather than tragedies — carries directly into his message for the investment community.
In a video podcast with Geoffrey Dohrmann, chairman and CEO of Institutional Real Estate, Inc., Branson is blunt about the limits of forecasting. “There is no such thing as an accurate pro forma,” he said, arguing that real estate’s long hold periods make controlling outcomes impossible. What matters, in his view, is the risk-adjusted question: how a manager responds when the plan breaks. He urges investors to approach data and their own track records with a “beginner’s mind” — learning from
