Zach was born and raised in Bozeman, Montana, and grew up working for his family’s main street businesses. His folks, Jim and Lynda Brown, sold Old Main Gallery and Framing in 2017 after 30-plus years in Downtown Bozeman. They also owned and operated Artifacts Gallery and Old Main Furnishings and Design over the years, and Zach was an employee of all those family businesses. (His brother, Elliot Frith, is co-owner of Greater Rocky Moutain Stone, and Zach also worked as a hod carrier and mason during college summers. His sister, Carly Olsson, was co-owner of Conover Insurance during his adolescence as well. Small business ownership is a family condition, apparently, and Zach has learned so much watching his family grind through the challenges of owning and operating their own businesses!)

Zach attended Hawthorne Elementary, Sacajawea Middle School, and Bozeman High School. He later graduated from the University of Montana with High Honors as a Presidential Leadership Scholar in 2013.

After graduating from UM, he spent a year working in Washington, DC as a Truman Albright Fellow. He worked on trade policy for the U.S. Trade Representative, led a research program on U.S. immigration policy for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and served as an Associate for MT Senator Max Baucus.

From 2014-20, Zach worked as a Program Manager for the nonprofit One Montana, in addition to serving in the Montana House of Representatives. In the Capitol, his committee assignments were Taxation, Natural Resources, Fish, Wildlife & Parks, and the Water Policy Interim Committee. In 2016 and again in 2018, Governor Bullock appointed him to the Private Lands Public Wildlife Council, and he was also a founding Co-Chair of the MT Legislative Sportsman's Caucus. He concluded his service in Helena as the Chairman of the Water Policy Interim Committee, in addition to serving on the Revenue Interim Committee as the ranking minority member from the House dealing with tax policy and state revenue monitoring.

Zach was a founder of the “Montana Master Hunter” program; contributed to the first ever Montana Claimte Assessment; is a Harry S. Truman Scholar, a Morris K. and Stewart L. Udall Scholar, a Newman Civic Fellows award winner, an Adjunct Professor at MSU, and a board member of the Burton K. Wheeler Center and HRDC. He is also a MOA “master” high school basketball official, an avid big game hunter and fly fisherman, a former CAP mentor and current BBBS “big brother”, a former Human Resource Development Council and Montana Nonprofit Association employee, the proud uncle of five, and dog dad to Beans and Wanda. He is also currently enrolled in a PhD program at MSU, and is working on a book project about Montana political history.

Most of all, Zach is proud to serve the people of Gallatin County!