I am beyond thrilled to announce the promotion of Dr. Svenja Gudell to the Chief Economist role for Zillow.

When I started at Zillow in 2005, the goal of my small team was to shine a light on previously guarded or unavailable data, allowing consumers to harness the power of that data to answer difficult questions and make informed decisions more easily. But the more lights we turned on, the more difficult those questions became. I first stepped into Zillow’s Chief Economist role to help tackle these difficult questions and provide context to the broader housing discussion. In passing the baton to Svenja, I’m confident that discussion is in thoughtful, capable hands.

When Svenja joined Zillow in the summer of 2011, I first tasked her with thinking about negative equity, one of housing’s most difficult challenges. With Svenja leading the way, Zillow’s economic research team completely re-imagined how negative equity was measured and discussed. The innovation, creativity and zeal with which she approached the work continues to characterize her efforts.

Svenja’s work has ranged from the extremely wonky to the decidedly light-hearted. Over the years, she has helped us create new metrics beyond negative equity, including our mortgage and rent affordability measures. And along the way, she’s built a world-class team of economists, data scientists and analysts. As chief economist, she and her team will continue to use the power of data to help tell the real story of housing in America, objectively and impartially.

I will still be keeping my hat in the chief economist ring, and will continue watching the housing market and regularly commenting on emerging developments. In my new primary role as Chief Analytics Officer for Zillow Group, I will be increasing my involvement in corporate strategy, planning and analysis for our rapidly growing company. I remain actively involved with our many data science and analytic teams, including the economic research team, helping to create unique, consumer-relevant content.

As I look ahead, I can’t help but be excited by the opportunity we have in front of us. We’ve only scratched the surface of what big, smart data can tell us about housing specifically and the economy in general. But we’ve got a lot of work to do. And even though I am moving to a new role, the goal of our economic research team under Svenja will remain the same as it was a decade ago: To help consumers make better decisions, more easily.