Zachary Townsend

Zachary "Zac" Townsend (born 1986) is an American financial technology entrepreneur and government administrator who is the inaugural Chief Data Officer of the state of California.
Education
Townsend attended Brown University earning an AB in applied math, economics, and public policy. He subsequently graduated from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University in 2012 with a Master of Public Administration degree. He has been an affiliate of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Early career
Townsend was a civic and social sector management consultant at Bennett Midland and was subsequently Senior Technology Policy Advisor to Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. While working in Newark, Townsend worked on and advocated focusing "attention on addressing fundamental inequities found in bad business process and cemented in bad civic technology". He also proposed an open-source software suite for core city services.
Standard Treasury
Townsend cofounded Standard Treasury along with Daniel Kimerling in 2014 Standard Treasury was backed by Y Combinator, RRE Ventures, Index Ventures, SV Angel, Paul Buchheit and others. The firm attempted to build an API-driven bank and was ultimately acquired by Silicon Valley Bank. Townsend joined Silicon Valley Bank as a director after the acquisition of Standard Treasury.
For his work at Standard Treasury, Townsend was named a 2014 Bank Innovator to Watch and placed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for enterprise technology in 2015.
Chief Data Officer of California
In July 2016, Jerry Brown named Townsend to be the Chief Data Officer of California. Townsend is the first person to hold the CDO title in the state and is working to improve how the state uses, organizes and shares "open" data with the public and "closed" data internally among state agencies and departments. As part of the California Government Operations Agency, he has wide responsibilities around improving transparency, efficiency and accountability in state operations. Soon after his start in California, Townsend relaunched the California open data portal using open-source software CKAN.

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