Skylar Olsen

Dr. Skylar Olsen is the chief economist at Zillow. A Ph.D. housing economist with more than ten years of experience figuring out how, why, and what’s next, Skylar is passionate about ensuring policymakers, journalists, housing professionals, and her colleagues have the data and understanding they need to make better decisions. Skylar has testified before Congress about fair housing issues and regularly shares her housing-market expertise on stage, in print, and on local and national television and radio stations. She also teaches Real Estate Evolution and Disruption at the University of Washington. Before becoming Zillow’s chief economist in July 2022, Skylar was a foundational member of Zillow’s public-facing economics team, bringing her radical transparency and talent for humanizing data and economics back to bear on the largest housing market dataset in the world. She also has built and supported public-facing economics and data programs in Prop/FinTech through Reimagine Economics, a consultancy she founded, and was head of economics at Tomo, a digital mortgage start-up.