Claudia Jacobs is the Associate Director, Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University. Claudia Jacobs '70 has worked at the Heller School since 1997, first as Director of Development, Communications and Alumni Relations. In 2008 she joined the Sillerman Center. Prior to the Heller School, she worked as the Major Gifts Director and Associate Campaign Director at Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston. Prior to that she was senior associate at The Philanthropic Initiative, providing strategic philanthropic consulting services to high net worth individuals and corporations.
Jacobs spent the preceding 20 years as a social worker. Her career spanned program development for a Boston area anti-poverty agency, community mental health and youth development and later child abuse prevention and policy in Vermont. Later, she was the founding director of the New England Association of Child Welfare Commissioners (based at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston) and was on the faculty at the Boston University School of Social Work for a decade.
Jacobs earned her MSW in community practice at the University of Michigan. Her commitment to the not-for-profit sector and her work on both sides of the philanthropic landscape have led to her interest in advancing social justice philanthropy.