(Editor’s note: Paul V. Profeta, the founding donor of The Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center, is the publisher of Real Estate NJ)
By Joshua Burd
The Profeta Real Estate Technology, Design and Innovation Center will officially launch next week at New Jersey Institute of Technology, marking the start of what’s meant to be a pioneering cross-disciplinary program to produce the industry’s most well-rounded graduates.
Based on the NJIT campus in Newark, the center will combine real estate investment, finance, engineering, architecture and environmental skills in one graduate degree to provide training in all aspects of real estate development and management. The university will highlight those offerings and more on June 23 when it welcomes hundreds of industry professionals to the Naimoli Family Athletic Center for a special breakfast to celebrate the launch, as it looks to usher in the future of real estate education.
Paul V. Profeta, the publisher of Real Estate NJ, seeded the program in 2021 when he made the single-largest donation in NJIT’s history, a gift that also established a new center for minority entrepreneurs.
“Creating the Profeta Real Estate Center at NJIT is probably the most rewarding experience I have been involved in during my educational endeavors,” said Profeta, the owner of Roseland-based Paul V. Profeta & Associates LLC, a real estate development and investment firm. “I have taught at Harvard Business School and created and taught at the Columbia Business School Real Estate Center and the Rutgers Business School Real Estate Center. All of them have focused the curriculum on investment/financial analysis (like Argus analysis). They are ill-equipped to teach what is necessary today to be a successful developer.
“Deals can no longer be done on the back of a napkin. Today’s developers need to be renaissance men, well-schooled in engineering, architecture, environmental remediation, energy conservation, etc. NJIT is already an educational paradigm in these fields. Our graduates will be the most well-rounded applicants in the industry and the most sought after.”
Profeta will be on hand for the June 23 launch event alongside Michael Netta, the center’s newly named executive director, and a power-packed board that includes:
- Jeff Milanaik, partner, Northeast region, Kurv Industrial
- Gus Milano, president and chief operating officer, Hartz Mountain Industries
- Christopher Paladino, president, New Brunswick Development Corp. (Devco)
- John Saraceno Jr., co-founder and managing principal, Onyx Equities
- Francis J. Giantomasi, member, co-chair, executive committee, Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC
- Chris J. Murphy, partner, Murphy Schiller & Wilkes LLP
- Jose Cruz, senior managing director, JLL
Profeta said he hopes that the Board’s “insight and genius will steer the center in the best direction,” as the program looks to begin offering classes in the spring 2027 semester. He added that the Board members “have lots of hiring capacity and will be a likely job source for our grads when they start getting their diplomas,” noting that they’d also “make great references and recommenders.”
The center will look to serve as a hub of teaching, training and research related to the disruptive technologies, innovation and novel design and construction techniques that are actively transforming the real estate field. University officials expect the center to draw on the expertise, experience and interests of the Hillier College of Architecture and Design, Ying Wu College of Computing and the Newark College of Engineering.
To that end, the Profeta Real Estate Center will offer courses already being taught that are germane to its mission while adding new, specialized courses to create a rich curriculum that will uniquely prepare graduates for the complexities they will face in the industry. Profeta hopes that allows it to become “the nation’s most highly regarded real estate center,” he said, one that attracts recruiters from the country’s top real estate development companies.
Profeta, whose company recently marked its 50th anniversary, launched the Columbia and Rutgers real estate centers in 1980 and 2013, respectively. In 2008, he created the Profeta Urban Investment Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization created to help start or expand minority-owned businesses in Newark by providing expertise and interest-free funds, while funding the creation of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School to work in conjunction with his foundation.
Profeta highlights parents’ legacy of education, as NJIT unveils new real estate center
