Zach Nies (CompSci’95)
2025 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award recipient
One question has driven Zach Nies’ work for the last 25 years: What enables teams to solve the hardest problems facing humanity while doing the best work of their careers? Nies has explored this question from inside startups, large companies, universities, and non-profits as a founder, C-level executive, investor, instructor, individual contributor, and executive coach.
Currently, Nies is an entrepreneur in residence at the Nature Conservancy and the founder of Lift The Curve, where he helps teams working on planet- and society-scale problems adopt entrepreneurial mindsets and high-performance habits that are proven to improve time to impact, decrease risk, and foster team wellbeing. Before putting his founder hat back on, Nies was a managing director for the Techstars Sustainability Accelerator in partnership with the Nature Conservancy and the Techstars Boulder accelerator. Before Techstars, Nies joined the executive team at Rally Software pre-revenue and, along the journey to a successful IPO, had many roles, including CTO. As a founder of five companies, Nies loves working with entrepreneurs from high-level strategy to the internal management of the ups and downs of the experience. Over the years, the products guided by Nies’ technical and product leadership have accumulated over $1 billion in revenue.
In accounting Nies’ commitment to Boulder and Engineering, a nominator said, “Zach served as a member of the advisory board of the Silicon Venture Entrepreneurship Initiative for its entire existence from 2009-16. He also has been a devoted member of the Computer Science Advisory Board for over 10 years and is a great advisor and resource regarding student preparation as well as entrepreneurship. Finally and very importantly, Zach co-founded and for five years co-taught the Department of Computer Science’s entrepreneurial capstone course, where students work in teams for an entire academic year to learn about the startup process by going through the initial stages of forming a company of their design; some of these companies have gone on to commercial success.” Additionally, “Zach played an integral role in the early years of the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which has now become a hallmark of Boulder’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. Zach’s contributions included providing strategic advice to the competition organizers and offering educational workshops that empowered numerous participants. Further, as a mentor to some NVC teams, Zach guided emerging entrepreneurs, helping them refine their ideas and navigate the complexities of launching a business.”
Nies graduated with distinction from Boulder with a computer science degree and extensive studies in psychology. When he’s not working, you can find Nies spending time with his family or looking through a camera.