Zachary Zieleniewski '26

Biography

Zachary (Zach) Zieleniewski ’26 is an economics major with a minor in marketing. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, he serves as a Distinguished Leader in the Sheedy Family Program, where he helps shape programming and mentorship opportunities for students. Through the Student Policy Network (SPN) on campus, Zach has contributed to research on Indiana landlord policies and their impact on tenant health, root causes of eviction in Indianapolis, and has also developed policy recommendations balancing wetland conservation and economic development with various policy partners, and now serves as a Project Manager.

His professional experiences include serving as a Research Operations and Policy and Impact Intern with the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities (LEO) in the summers of 2024 and 2025. There, he cleaned and analyzed large-scale administrative datasets using Stata and R to estimate program impacts and produce policy-relevant visualizations, while also synthesizing academic literature on Indigenous language instruction, conducting descriptive analysis of SNAP program data, and collaborating with nonprofits to document service models and bridge legal, policy, and economic analysis. During this school year, he has continued his work with LEO and is writing a thesis on the effect payday loans have on eviction rates.

Driven by his summers of service with André House in Phoenix, Arizona, where he worked directly with the unhoused population, he has carried this commitment into the South Bend community. He works to educate tenants on legal defense and tenant protections through the South Bend Tenants Association, where he assisted in the launch of an Eviction Defense Program. He is passionate about applying economics and policy to impact-driven research to address the causal effects of social programs and improve policy implementation and intends to go to law school.