Zack is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He has collaborated with Priceonomics, Grammarly, The Daily Galaxy, Harmony Central, and Guitar Player magazine, among other publications and blogs.
He was one of ten employees at early stage start-up, Hyperink (YC ’11). As a content marketplace, they sought out topic experts and paired them with writers to create books. He managed a web-based team of 150 freelance writers and aided the publication of 300 products per month. He also monitored editing quality from first markup to KDP, and contributed to high-profile books with Forbes, 7×7, and Alexis Ohanian. It was his responsibility to source expert writers on niche topics and develop editorial processes to scale writer acquisition. As a liaison between the editorial, marketing, and engineering teams, he compiled analytics and tracked author performance to influence the product direction.
Before this, he worked in traditional publishing as an assistant editor at National Geographic Ed./Cengage. Collaborating closely with a pool of brilliant professors, he was tasked with finding the best freelancers on the market to write supplemental materials. As such, he fostered relationships with hundreds of editors, authors, and professionals in a variety of disciplines. His extended responsibilities included owning the editorial calendar, creating writer handbooks to streamline our publication process, and assisting with data and sales analysis.
Recently, he spent nine months in South America and Mexico. Interested in cultural preservation, he hitchhiked through eight countries, interviewing traditional artisans and musicians and learning their crafts. His experiences inspired him to publish a book of travel narratives (sample here), which is currently being curated for an editorial series with HuffPost Travel.
Outside of work, Zack is an avid explorer and mountaineer, a multi-instrumentalist, and an instigator of uncomfortable situations. He is a competitive runner and cyclist and can often be found deep in the Skyline hills.
