We sat down with CEO International Institute of New England (IINE) Jeff Thielman, to discuss his career and how IINE has grown in the past few years. With a long career in leading in mission-driven organizations, he shares his advice for other nonprofit leaders and newcomers. Watch the video or read the transcript below for interview highlights.
Tell us about your career path up through joining the International Institute of New England?
Thielman: So I have a lifelong interest in working with immigrants and refugees. I began my career, like, right out of college. I was a Jesuit international volunteer in Peru for three and a half years. So it became clear to me that all human beings are connected in some way, shape, or form, and that, you know, it is important to break down barriers. And, in Peru in particular, I learned more from them than they probably learned from me. And so I was there for a little over three years in Peru, and I came back and I went to law school.
I had an ambition, I think, to help people through the law and, you know, I ended up getting connected again with the Jesuits and working with them and a model of education where high school students work there and their tuition called the Crystal Ray schools.
After 18 years of setting up these schools across the United States, I got a recruitment call from somebody looking for a new CEO for the International Institute of New England. And it combined a lot of things that I’m interested in – an organization that is in the middle of perhaps one of the most important issues facing this country, which is immigration and doing direct service work. And, you know, when I get excited about a mission, I throw myself into it 100%. And I am thinking all the time, how do we grow this? How do we scale it? How do we make it bigger and better so it serves more people? And so I got the job in 2015 and came here and went to work.
IINE has grown significantly since you joined. How did you do it?
Thielman: I really worked with a great team and I worked with a great board. You know, one of the things that made this journey, this growth possible, is that I’ve always had the support here of a board of directors that had confidence in our team, that did its appropriate job of checking into management’s decisions and making sure that we were on the right path and gave great insights. And I walked into a great mission. We were already set up in three locations and we had a great program. You know, when I came into the place, I was impressed by the quality of services we were delivering to immigrants and refugees. And I realized where I could add value was extending our mission to more people, reaching out to more people, raising more funding, setting up a fundraising operation, which the the institute really didn’t have when I took over, they had a very small fundraising arm. And, you know, I inherited some good people.
So this was not, you know, Jeff alone. That doesn’t work that way. That’s not how leadership works.
What advice do you have for other nonprofit leaders or even newcomers?
Thielman: My advice is that it’s very meaningful work and that it’s wonderful work to do, and that it’s also work that can be challenging because you do not have all the resources and systems that you would have in a large corporation, for example.
Any leader has got to be willing to learn from mistakes. You’ve got to own that and just kind of reflect on how it happened, what you did wrong. It’s really important to be open to advice from all the people that are around you, both people that report directly to you and people that are above you and on the board of directors, because you’re only one person in the organization, you can’t possibly know what the entire organization thinks and feels without talking to people.
And I think you always have to be willing to learn and grow, be curious and creative. You know, are we doing things the right way? Am I asking the right questions about what the staff is doing and seeing and thinking? Am I understanding the client’s needs? And, you know, bottom line – the title is Chief Executive Officer. So at a certain point in time, you got to make the call and you got to go for it.
For more “At the Helm” interviews, click here.
