FigureBrandon Fugal (b. 1972)

Born 1972, Salt Lake City. Chairman of Coldwell Banker Commercial — Cushman & Wakefield Utah operations; also chairman or principal of multiple Utah-based commercial real-estate firms. Acquired Skinwalker Ranch from Robert Bigelow’s NIDS in April 2016 via the deliberately-named entity Adamantium Real Estate. Has maintained continuous investigator access to the property since the acquisition, granted first to Erik Bard’s group and later to the History Channel show.

Fugal’s relationship to the phenomenon is publicly framed as investigative-skeptical-but-open: he funds the work, brings external experts, and on-camera adopts a posture of ‘I came in skeptical and the data has changed me.’ Off-show he has stated that he believes what is at the ranch deserves serious institutional investigation, though he has not endorsed any specific interpretive theory.

His acquisition is the corpus-relevant pivot for the modern era of Skinwalker research, separating the post-NIDS public-investigation period from the prior Bigelow-funded private one.