Raise Your Hand
Zachary Salem has spent his career showing up early. Early to online gaming, early to social casino, early to the U.S. iGaming boom—and in each case, doing whatever had to be done to get something new off the ground.
In 2008, after graduating from Louisiana State University with a degree in mathematics, Salem made his first leap, trading Louisiana for Chicago to join WMS Gaming as a QA mathematician working on land-based slot games. It was a harder transition than his math background might have suggested.
“I remember the first three months at WMS trying to understand what was going on in slot math,” he recalls. “I felt quite over my head—questioning my knowledge.” He pushed through, and the experience shaped the way he approached the new challenges that followed. When WMS ventured into the online gaming space in 2012 with the creation of Williams Interactive, Salem joined the team to bring the known land-based WMS content to European online casino markets.
From there, an opportunity arose to join a social casino startup. Starting with a team of five, Salem helped develop more than 120 people across multiple continents, and eventually rose to vice president of game design.
The startup years were formative in ways that went well beyond his job title. “I was building Facebook Flash games and making the classic artwork for the sevens and the bars—I’m not an artist,” he laughs. “But you do what you have to do.” That willingness to raise his hand for whatever needed doing became a defining feature of how he works.
Salem credits two mentors with helping him get there. Josh Jacobs, his first boss at WMS, was a steadying presence during those early months in slot math, passing on much of his knowledge. Damon Gura, who brought Salem into both the interactive business and the social casino venture, pushed him further still—broadening his horizons beyond math into product management, analytics and finance. “He gave me the tools and opportunities to do much more than I would have otherwise,” Salem says.
In 2019, Salem joined Rush Street Interactive, a leading online casino and sports betting company that operates the BetRivers brand, drawn by the chance to help build out the casino side of a fast-growing business. When he joined, RSI had three live markets. Today it has more than 20, and the casino business has grown roughly twentyfold over that period.
Last month, Salem transitioned into a new role as senior vice president of product management, overseeing product management across RSI’s gaming products. “We’ve done really well on the operations side of RSI these years, and now I’m excited to lead our product teams through this next phase of growth,” he says.
For younger professionals looking to make their own mark, his advice draws directly on the startup mentality he never quite left behind: take on new challenges. “When teams and people outside your standard area need assistance, step up and help,” he says. “It gets you exposed to other parts of the business and opens up opportunities you wouldn’t otherwise have.”
In a market with the growth runway that U.S. iGaming still has ahead, he argues, the opportunities are there for anyone willing to reach for them.
