2019 Woman of Influence: Rita Santamaria

Champions School of Real Estate founder and CEO

F1Rita Santamaria is the CEO and founder of Champions School of Real Estate, a real estate education provider.

Santamaria has grown her business from a single classroom to eight campuses throughout Texas, seven state-of-the-art ChampionsLive virtual classroom studios, independent curriculum development and online divisions and a loyal team of over 100 full-time or contract employees and instructors. Under Santamaria’s leadership and direction, Champions School of Real Estate has shaped the Texas and national real estate landscape in the education of thousands of real estate professionals–about 20,000 in the past year alone. Santamaria first launched Champions School of Real Estate out of a single-classroom building in Houston, Texas in 1983.

In the thirty-five years since she started the company, thousands of students have begun or continued their real estate careers walking through the doors of a Champions School of Real Estate campus. A few of these students may have even been with Champions since the beginning, watching as Champions School of Real Estate transformed from a single-classroom campus to the present eight-campus system located throughout Texas’ major metropolitan areas. Champions School of Real Estate offers pre-licensing and continuing education for the real estate, appraisal, loan origination, and home inspection career professions. In 2018, Champions School of Real Estate taught nearly 20,000 students, making it the education provider with the highest student count in the state of Texas. In 2018, Santamaria launched a monthly live broadcast Super Star Interview Series. This series, a free educational opportunity for students, features Santamaria as the host interviewer and guests, top-producing real estate professionals from across the state that provided the tips, strategies, and best practices that brought them success in their careers.

Based on the quality of the content received in the Super Star Interview series, Santamaria began work on the publication of a new nationally-distributed book series, Successful Tendencies of Real Estate Champions, published May 2019. In 2018, Santamaria launched Taking the Lead with Champions, a six-month leadership series in which she brought recognized motivational, entrepreneurial and business leaders to speak about several different topics with host Logan Stout.

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