Speaker Profile

A lifelong Celtics fan and season ticket holder, Michael Zarren is now the Celtics’ VP of Basketball Operations and Team Counsel. Now in his 21st year with the team after starting as an unpaid intern, Mike is widely recognized as one of the leaders in the field of advanced statistical analysis of basketball players and teams, and is an important part of the team’s strategic planning and player personnel evaluation processes. Mike is also the team’s lead salary cap expert and lead in-house counsel for basketball issues, and is responsible for leading the group that develops new technologies for team use, including the team’s statistical database and video archive/delivery system. Mike was previously a law clerk on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and a management consultant, during which time he performed econometric and other quantitative analyses for Fortune 500 firms across a wide variety of industries. Mike is a graduate of Harvard Law School (where he served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology) and of the University of Chicago (where he worked as a research assistant for Freakonomics author Steven Levitt). Mike also serves on the Board of Voter Choice MA and the Advisory Board of Rank The Vote, and is a cofounder of the Campaign for Final Five Voting, all of which are non-partisan groups working to improve our nation’s governance by ensuring that the outcomes of any election accurately reflect the preferences of the majority of voters.