About

What is Telos?

Telos offers professional education programs, courses and related resources to lenders, developers, law firms and other commercial real estate professionals, tailoring our services to each team’s unique needs and goals.

The practical emphasis in professional education is changing, especially in commercial real estate. Technological modalities like AI grow increasingly sophisticated in performing due diligence review and analysis, risk assessment and document preparation. That frees your team to move towards ever higher level engagement, allowing them to add value in ways that weren’t previously possible.

But the promise of that opportunity underscores the need for truly foundational understanding. It’s no longer enough to simply learn the tools and techniques of the trade and how to apply them. You need to understand the essence of the underlying problems themselves that those tools and techniques were originally designed to solve for.

At Telos, that foundational understanding forms the central focus of our professional education programs and courses. Our goal is your goal: helping your team develop a rigorously interlinked understanding of both the principles and problems, and the tools and techniques, that underpin your practice.

When you understand what other don’t, you can achieve what others can’t. Let Telos empower your team to achieve its full potential with an array of training programs and courses that are:

Tailored

Your commercial real estate practice is distinctive and evolving. Your training programs should align with your team’s evolving needs and goals. In collaboration with you, Telos designs a carefully crafted program that meets those needs and goals without sacrificing the rigor of understanding your team demands. From core curricula to specialized courses, this approach equips them with the tools to tackle any challenge, particularly those inevitable challenges that don’t fit squarely within the four corners of what other programs typically cover.

Rigorous

No matter how many different training programs and seminars you offer your team, no matter how effective each may otherwise be, nothing can replace an experienced practitioner and educator to serve as your single point of contact to bring all those pieces together and assure that your team builds a deeply interlinked understanding of commercial real estate principles. The hands-on guidance that Telos provides is crucial for grounding your team’s knowledge and skills with seasoned perspective.

Complete

Whether as a complement to your existing training programs or as a standalone initiative, Telos seamlessly integrates into your overall strategy. If you already have a strong foundation in place, our program can enhance and round out what you’re already doing, filling in gaps and ensuring a more comprehensive learning experience. If you’re starting from scratch or looking to overhaul your current system, our program can serve as a robust, standalone solution that equips your team with the knowledge and skills to excel.

About the Founder

Robert Riva has been practicing, teaching, writing and speaking on commercial real estate law and economics for more than three decades. As an economist, Robert has worked for the National Academy of Sciences and the Office of Technology Assessment, and as a commercial real estate lawyer, he has worked at Akin Gump, DLA Piper and elsewhere. Telos was founded on the educational principles that Robert learned and developed at those firms.

Robert holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago, master’s degrees in literary studies from the University of Chicago (forthcoming) and political economy from the American University, and a law degree from Cornell University. He is a long-time member of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, currently serves on the Graham School Advisory Council of the University of Chicago, is a presidential appointee to the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Continuing Legal Education, and is a member of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Construction Lending Working Group and its Commercial/Multifamily Education Group. Robert was also a 2024 “top author” recipient of the JD Supra Readers’ Choice Award for his New York Building Loan blog and other articles on commercial real estate law and economics.

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