Zach Wade is Vice President, Data Science, at LightBox. Some of his projects include utilizing data science to expand LightBox’s position as a leader in estimating the impact of climate change on commercial real estate, introducing alternative data sets to the industry to resolve data asymmetries, such as quantifying the digital divide by creating a proxy for internet connectivity. He also leads technology innovations, such as leveraging natural language processing to make use of unstructured commercial real estate data pulled from PDFs and other documents, and creating models on GPS data to help increase real estate understanding beyond the typical—and sometimes incomplete—property sources.

Zach holds an MSc. In Economics and Management from the London School of Economics, with Distinction, including an Award for Best Dissertation. He has also held several research positions, including at the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia University where he contributed to financial economics research on the mortgage crisis of 2008. Additionally, he held research positions at Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management and BuildFax, and co-founded a real estate data startup that was acquired by Vista Equity Partners.