Zachary Tumin

Zach Tumin is Deputy Commissioner for Strategic Initiatives at the New York Police Department, and a member of the faculty (adjunct) at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

As a member of NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton’s executive team, Zach is responsible for the NYPD’s social media and citizen engagement strategy and operations; it research, evaluation, and analytics portfolio; and its project management of department-wide initiatives arising from the NYPD’s recently completed re-engineering effort.

Zach joined the NYPD after nearly a decade at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. There, he served as Special Assistant to the director and faculty chair of the Belfer Center’s Science, Technology, and Public Policy program, leading the Project on Technology, Security, and Conflict in the Cyber Age, a joint Harvard/MIT cybersecurity initiative. Previously, at the Kennedy School, Zach was Associate Director for Programs in Technology, Networks and Governance at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation; Executive Director, Leadership for a Networked World Program; and a Fellow with the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management.

Zach’s experience spans three decades of service in industry and government. In the 1970s he served with Boston Mayor Kevin H. White in the Office of Management and Budget and helped bring Boston through fiscal crisis. In New York in the 1980s Zach served as Special Assistant to District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman in Brooklyn, developing that office’s information, communications, and analytics platforms and operations. Through the 1990s he led the Information Services Division for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force; and led public safety for two New York City schools Chancellors as director of the city’s Division of School Safety, the nation’s seventh largest police force. He is past executive director of the Financial Services Technology Consortium, formed by Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and other leading financial institutions and technology companies.

Zach has written extensively about the strategic management of collaboration, and is the author of numerous teaching cases, working papers, reports, and essays.  With William Bratton, Zach is the co-author of COLLABORATE OR PERISH! REACHING ACROSS BOUNDARIES IN A NETWORKED WORLD, published by Broadway Business/Random House in 2012. He is the lead author on numerous articles, white papers, and reports, including Harvard Business Review’s “Viral By Design: Teams in the Networked World” (2102), and the Kennedy School’s “From Government 2.0 to Society 2.0: Pathways to Engagement, Collaboration and Transformation.”

Zach earned his B.A. in philosophy cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, his Master''s in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and his Master''s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School.

Education

• MPP, Harvard Kennedy School.
• EdM, Harvard Graduate School of Education
• BA in Philosophy cum laude, University of Pennsylvania