Jeff Thielman became the Executive Director of the Cassin Educational Initiative Foundation in January of 2001. He was the Director of Development at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School from 1998 to 2000, overseeing the school's first capital campaign.  During Jeff's three years in Chicago, the school raised $18 million for capital construction, operating costs and endowment.

Jeff is a 1985 graduate of Boston College and a 1992 graduate of Boston College Law School.  He worked for two years as a trial attorney and for three years as an agent with Northwestern Mutual Life in Boston prior to joining the team at Cristo Rey.  From 1985 to 1989 he served as a Jesuit International Volunteer in Tacna, Peru , where he founded the Cristo Rey Center for the Working Child, which provides outreach services to 300 working street children and their families.  Jeff is the co-author of Volunteer: With the Poor in Peru, which chronicles the founding of the Center for the Working Child.

Jeff oversees all studies for new Cristo Rey schools and has worked with the organizers of each of the 18 schools that have replicated Cristo Rey Jesuit High School of Chicago.

Jeff, his wife, Christine, and their son Aidan live in Arlington, Massachusetts.  Since 2003, Jeff has served as an elected member of the Arlington School Committee, which oversees the town's nine public schools.