Creative Dining Services Names New President/CEO

Creative Dining Services has named Jim Eickhoff president and CEO, effective February 16, with previous president Steve Hiligan taking the title of founding partner. Hiligan will remain with Creative Dining in a consultative role until June 30, 2015, when he will retire.

Before joining Creative Dining, Eickhoff served as senior vice president of workforce solutions for private education provider Apollo Education Group, which numbers the online University of Phoenix among its subsidiaries. At Apollo, he led a national team that focused on partnering with businesses, school districts and community colleges around corporate education and professional development.

Eickhoff has also worked with ServiceMaster Co., where he introduced solutions in healthcare support management, and with Sallie Mae Co., where he managed several subsidiaries and helped guide companies acquired by Sallie Mae through the transition.

During a tenure at Help One Student To Succeed Corp. in Vancouver, Wash., Eickhoff built and sustained a national sales and marketing division focused on assisting K-12 schools to beat the cycle of academic failure for at-risk students, and as executive vice president and later president/CEO of Student Loan Funding in Cincinnati, he led innovative strategies and product development that significantly increased revenues prior to its merger/acquisition by Sallie Mae.

Creative Dining is a contract management firtm based in Zeeland, Mich., that operates dining services for clients across multiple segments, but mostly in colleges/universities and corporations. Most recent annual revenues are around $74 million.