Zach Zarnow has focused his career on increasing access to justice. After graduating from Brandeis University, Zach spent two years in Eastern Ukraine as a Peace Corps Community Development Volunteer, where he developed civil society networks, established social enterprises and created anti-corruption initiatives. This experience drove him to enroll at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he focused his studies on access to justice, human rights and legal empowerment. Both during and after law school he held fellowships and positions with the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative, the Open Society Foundations, Public Justice, the American Association for Justice and the Council for Court Excellence.
As the Deputy Managing Director of NCSC's Access to Justice team, Zach is working on national level initiatives to increase access to justice, including working with various court systems to improve the experience of self-represented litigants through process improvement, technological innovation and system change. At NCSC, Zach is the co-creator and a co-host of Tiny Chats—offering free, digestible and creative short-form educational videos on topics about access to justice. He was also instrumental in securing $11 million in funding to support the Eviction Diversion Initiative and in its design, staffs the CCJ/COSCA Policy Committee and has authored numerous reports and resources on access to justice topics, including several interactive tools.
Prior to joining NCSC, Zach was the Program Director at the Illinois Equal Justice Foundation, where he ran the statewide grantmaking and program evaluation of legal aid organizations and was responsible for the development and management of the Illinois Armed Forces Legal Aid Network.
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