Zach Belton

Zach has more than twenty years of higher education consulting experience for more than 50 clients, including premier universities, academic health centers and research institutes. He specializes in the transformation of research administration operations, federal compensation compliance, and effort reporting and planning for animal operations and service centers.

About Zach

As a founding member of Huron, Zach has more than two decades of experience performing research administration transformation reviews for dozens of universities, institutes and hospitals, targeting operational efficiency, cost reduction, compliance and customer service. He has specific expertise in assisting institutions with the evaluation and planning of sponsored research administration, sponsored research financial controls, animal facilities and service centers by developing innovative, industry-leading solutions.

Throughout his career, Zach has:

• Led a project to improve service delivery at a large academic health center, where he developed a future-state vision and plan for an innovative service model to customize the individualized researcher experience across systems and support.
• Co-led a four-year initiative to assist a national primate center in the improvement of financial controls, documentation of records and selection of a new animal operations system, to identify potential improvements in customer service, process controls, facility utilization, personnel management and cost recovery.
• Conducted a planning project to determine the financial impact of establishing service centers for a new state-of-the-art research institute, including a 20,000-cage animal facility.
• Collaborated with members of a multi-institutional cohort to explore and advise on the methodology and application of a model policy for adhering to compensation reforms under the Uniform Guidance.

Zach is a collaborator with the Cohort for Efficiencies in Research Administration (CERA) and is a frequent speaker at the National Council of University Research Administrators (NCURA) and other national conferences.

Zach holds a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.