Zac Townsend is an affiliate of the Berkman Center and co-founder of Standard Treasury, a Y Combinator backed startup focused on building a more open banking system. Zac focuses on how large bureaucracies -- whether governments or financial institutions -- can build technology platforms that enable others to innovate. At Berkman he studies how open government data and big data come together in the new field of civic analytics.
Previously, Zac worked at Stripe, a company that makes it easy for software developers to accept credit cards on the web. Before Stripe, he was Senior Technology Policy Adviser to Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker, and conducted civic and social sector management consulting as an Associate and Senior Associate at Bennett Midland LLC. His clients included the NYC Administration of Children’s Services, the NYPD, the NYC Mayor’s Office, the Atlantic Philanthropies. and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
He is a published statistician and a co-founder of DataKind, a not-for-profit that matches pro bono data scientists with other not-for-profits. He received an MPA from NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, where he focused on public financial and statistical methods, and an AB from Brown where he concentrated in Applied Math–Economics and Public Policy.