2021 Winter Speaker Series

As CEO of AFIRE, Gunnar Branson brings nearly three decades of experience across commercial real estate, professional services, education, and association leadership.

Prior to joining AFIRE in 2018, he served as CEO of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers (NAREIM), and before that, he led strategy and marketing for Fortune 500 and other innovative mid-market companies.

As a recognized thought leader, Gunnar is a regular speaker, panelist, and spokesperson for the global real estate and investing community, focused on institutional investing, urbanism, sustainability, and future trends.

Kathleen S. Briscoe is the Partner, Chief Capital Officer of Dermody Properties and has primary responsibility for all aspects of the company’s business related to its capital strategy and execution. She is a member of the Company’s Executive Committee and Investment Committee and brings with her over 30 years of experience in the institutional real estate investment management business.

Prior to joining Dermody Properties in March 2018, Ms. Briscoe held senior consulting and management positions at a number of real estate investment companies, including Arixa Capital, Cordia Capital Management, LLC, Institutional Real Estate, Inc. and Crosswater Realty Advisors. Ms. Briscoe has also served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Investment Officer for real estate at Cordia Capital Management, overseeing approximately $100 million of commercial real estate investments per year throughout the Western U.S. (2013-2016), Chief Investment Officer for IDS Real Estate Group in Los Angeles (2009-2011), and Managing Director and the Head of the Los Angeles office for Buchanan Street Partners (2007-2008). From 1987 to 2007, Ms. Briscoe was a Shareholder at Lowe Enterprises, a real estate investment, asset management, and development company, where she managed the firm’s investment clients, was Key-Man on a value-add private REIT, managed several portfolios, and served on the Executive Committee and as a voting member of the Investment Committee.

Ms. Briscoe received a B.A. from Dartmouth College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Ms. Briscoe is an Independent Director for Griffin Capital, Resmark Equity Partners, LLC, Crescent Capital SPAC and BDC. Ms. Briscoe is a council member of the Urban Land Institute, an Editorial Advisory board member for Institutional Real Estate, Inc., a member of PREA and the Capital Markets Affinity Group, and a member of NAIOP, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers and AFIRE, for which she also serves as a mentor. She serves as Vice Chair of the NAREIM Membership Committee and is a member of the organization’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. She is also a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Martin Brühl has been a member of the Management Board of Union Investment Real Estate GmbH in Hamburg since 2016. As Chief Investment Officer, he oversees all transactions in Union Investment’s 22 national markets worldwide.

Byron Carlock leads PwC’s U.S. Real Estate Practice. With 28 years of experience serving the industry, Byron brings extensive knowledge of the full real estate life cycle including matters ranging from strategic planning and property transaction advisory to capital formation, and business plan execution. In addition, he has expertise in governance, board matters, mergers and acquisitions and corporate conflict matters. Byron has experience advising major clients including corporate owners and users, developers, hospitality organizations, investors and REITs.

Prior to assuming his current role, Byron served as the CEO and President of CNL Lifestyle Properties, Inc for seven years and served CNL as President of two other REITs over his 11-year tenure there. His resume also includes three years as Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of Post Properties and nine years as Managing Director for Crow Holdings International.

Byron is a CPA, currently a governor of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a member of Real Estate Roundtable, NAREIT and AFIRE. He is also a board member of Harvard Club of Dallas and a board member emeritus of Harvard Business School.

Byron earned his BBA at Harding University and also participated in the International Asian Studies Program at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was a Rotary Scholar. Byron also earned his MBA at Harvard Business School. Byron has been extensively featured in media such as Fox Business News, and The New York Times, and writes a regular monthly column for National Real Estate Investor.

Bradford H. Dockser is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Green Generation, which engineers and implements comprehensive integrated energy efficiency solutions that lower operating costs while improving sustainability on behalf of a diverse set of clients worldwide. Founded in 2011, GreenGen transforms the world’s built environment through innovation and solutions by integrating energy, real estate, technology, and capital markets to Operate in the Green.

GreenGen helps its clients use energy as a driver of value across all asset types in North America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. GreenGen’s turnkey approach to energy efficiency is implemented by a team that includes electrical, lighting, mechanical, and environmental engineers, PhDs, tradesmen, as well as real estate and finance experts.

During his more than two decades of real estate investing, Brad was a Principal with national real estate investment firm, MacFarlane Partners, overseeing activities of their mid-Atlantic business; and Founder and Managing Director for Starwood Capital Europe overseeing operations, direct investments, and operating joint ventures and financing activities throughout Europe. He earlier founded Starwood Capital Asia and was responsible for the firm’s Asian operations, which included making property investments in Japan and Hong Kong, as well as leading the recapitalization of Sansiri Property Corporation, a publicly listed property company in Thailand, for which he also served on both the executive committee and board of directors.

Brad began his career with JMB Realty, then the largest real estate firm in the United States, and later with CRI, Inc, the nation’s largest owner of multifamily residential properties at the time. While at CRI, he oversaw the creation and financing of Capital Apartment Properties REIT (CAPREIT), a privately-held real estate investment trust based in Washington, DC that focused on market-rate apartments in the eastern US.

Brad received an A.B. cum laude in Economics and a Master of Business Administration, both from Harvard University. Brad serves on the global advisory board for Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Center for Sustainability and Economic Performance. He serves as Co-Chair of ULI Washington Sustainability Initiative and Chair of ULI’s Redevelopment and Reuse Product Council. Brad serves on the Advisory Board for the WELL Advisory for Hotels and Resorts. He is a member of the US Green Building Council and the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP). Brad serves as a mentor for MetaProp (NY) and is a member of the CRETech Leadership Board. He also was Founding Director of the Greater Washington Exploratory Committee, DC’s bid committee for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities, and distinguished visiting fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate. His books include The Rise of the Creative Class and The New Urban Crisis.

Richard has held professorships at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. Florida earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His research provides unique, data-driven insight into the social, economic and demographic factors that drive the twenty-first century world economy.

Tracy Hadden Loh is a fellow with the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Brookings, Tracy was senior data scientist at the Center for Real Estate & Urban Analysis at the George Washington University School of Business. She was previously the director of research at the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. She is a graduate of DC public schools and holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to her research interest in placemaking, she served two years representing Ward 1 on the Mount Rainier City Council in Prince George’s County, Md. Dr. Loh is currently a member of the Transportation Research Board Standing Committee on Bicycle Transportation at the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Loh’s research focuses on commercial real estate and how place-level assets interact and affect the opportunities, prospects, and resilience of the people and enterprises that call a place home. She has recently written about the impact of COVID-19 on the retail sector and the need for governance reform to address the extreme and growing spatialization of inequality in U.S. metropolitan regions.

Karen Horstmann has worked to invest in more than $25 billion of unlisted institutional real estate over the past 20 years. The first half of her career was oriented toward closed-end value-add and opportunistic fund investments in office, retail and multi-family assets across continental Europe. Since 2011, Karen has primarily focused on core and core-plus commercial investments in US gateway markets. 

Karen joined Allianz in 2019 as head of its Equity Acquisitions team, and before that, she was Portfolio Manager for Norges Bank Real Estate Management (NBREM).

Prior to NBREM, Ms. Horstmann co-launched Meyer Bergman Capital Partners’ first European real estate private equity fund between 2006 and 2011. Previously, Karen worked with Dubai Investment Group to expand their US and European real estate portfolios. Ms. Horstmann began her career in 1999 at Goldman Sachs, focused on pan-European investments for the Real Estate Principal Investment Area. Karen earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and received a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Clyde Holland is the CEO of Holland Partner Group, which is active in developing, redeveloping, acquiring and managing multifamily communities in some of the Western U.S.’s most demanding markets. Recognized by the industry for excellence in urban planning and design, Clyde’s work has received numerous awards from the Urban Land Institute, the National Multi-Family Housing Council, and Multi-Family Executive. He has directed over 50,000 units of housing and $10 billion (USD) in transaction value.

Will McIntosh serves as Global Head of Research for USAA Real Estate. Will is responsible for developing the commercial real estate investment strategy and manages the firm’s global research platform that informs and enhances the real estate investment process. He is a member of the firm’s Investment and Executive Committees.

Prior to joining USAA Real Estate, Will was Head of Global Research for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s (ADIA) real estate department, where he was responsible for developing ADIA’s global real estate investment strategy and built and led their real estate research platform. Prior work also included serving as Chief Investment Officer for Fund Evaluation Group (FEG) and Professor of Finance and Dean of the College of Business at the University of Cincinnati.

Will received his Ph.D. in Finance and Real Estate from the University of North Texas, his MBA with a concentration in Real Estate from Eastern Kentucky University, and his BS in Business Education from the same institution. He is a graduate of the School of Mortgage Banking of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America and served as a Faculty Fellow. He also completed the Management and Leadership in Education Program, Harvard Institute for Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Will has served as President of the Real Estate Research Institute (RERI) and on the Board of Directors of the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), the American Real Estate Society (ARES), and the International Real Estate Society (IRES). He has served on the Investor Council of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT) and on the Advisory Boards of several university real estate centers. Will is a past President of the American Real Estate Society and is a Fellow of the Homer Hoyt Institute. He has served as a Co-Editor of the Journal of Real Estate Portfolio Management and has published numerous articles in leading real estate professional and academic journals.

Amy Price is president of BentallGreenOak (BGO). In her role, Amy also co-heads the firm’s U.S. Investment Management business and oversees its Canadian Investment Management and Real Estate Services businesses. Amy is a member of the Management Committee, chairs the U.S. Investment Committee for the firm’s core, core plus and separate account clients, and co-chairs the U.S. Management Committee. Amy also leads BGO’s equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives globally and chairs the firm’s EDI Leadership Council.

Prior to joining the firm in 2012, Amy was a managing director and head of real estate investing for the western U.S. at Morgan Stanley, where she was an Investment Committee member, and built the real estate investment management business in San Francisco. Amy also spent time in Morgan Stanley’s New York and Hong Kong offices.

Amy is a member of the Global Board of Directors of Urban Land Institute (ULI), a member of the Board of Directors and Chair Emeritus of NAREIM, and a member of the Board of Directors of AFIRE. She is also involved in philanthropic endeavors, as a member of the Board of Directors of the YMCA of San Francisco, the National Charity League with her daughter, and Service Corp with her son.

Amy holds an MBA with distinction from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and graduated magna cum laude from Colgate University.

In his current role, Edward Wagoner serves as global chief information officer of JLL’s corporate solutions business and is responsible for all aspects of JLL’s technology for corporate occupiers. He has served on JLL’s diversity and governance council since 1999 and is a board member of JLL’s Women’s Business Network. This year, Wagoner was also recognized by ChicagoCIO, a professional organization, as a finalist for a CIO of the Year Orbie Award in the super global category. He is a CPA.