Jeffrey C. Roth grew up in an extended working-class family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree at Temple University. He then served in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in England at RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk. He was informed after two years in England that he had not lost his Philadelphia accent. He then worked with teenagers and families as a social worker in Philadelphia where his accent was more common.

Jeff earned his doctor of philosophy in education at Temple University. During graduate school, he worked as a play therapist at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, and taught graduate courses at Arcadia University and at Jefferson Medical College. He also taught at an alternative school called Project Learn.

Jeff became a school psychologist, initiated a conflict resolution program and the district Crisis Response Team, and was named School Psychologist of the Year for the state of Delaware. He served as adjunct professor at Wilmington University, and as an American Red Cross Disaster Mental Health volunteer.

Jeff expressed his love of writing through powerful narrative stories that combined an intellectual understanding of how to do school crisis response with an emotional understanding of how it feels to do it. He authored School Crisis Response: Reflections of a Team Leader (Hickory Run Press, 2015), authored “The Importance of Consultation in Supporting Bereaved Students” (contributed chapter in Supporting Bereaved Students at School, Brown & Jimerson, Oxford University Press, 2017), co-edited Perspectives on School Crisis Response: Reflections from the Field (Roth & Fernandez, Routledge, 2018), co-authored Developing Comprehensive School Safety and Mental Health Programs: An Integrated Approach (Roth & Erbacher, Routledge, 2022), and authored the second edition of School Crisis Response: Reflections of a Team Leader (Routledge, 2023).

Jeff has enjoyed writing in a different genre, the fictional novella Ebenezer Transformed: Scrooge After A Christmas Carol.