For Tim Zue, Boston Red Sox executive vice president and chief financial officer, the career path has been continually defined by the road less traveled.

A native Bostonian, Zue grew up in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology legacy family and became the fifth member of his family to work or study there, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. But even after winning an elite robot-building competition while at MIT, Zue shunned hard-core science after graduation, and instead began management consulting for Bain & Co.

Zue quickly gave that up, too, to teach eighth-grade math at an inner-city middle school. With his summers off and his beloved Red Sox being led by owners John Henry and Tom Werner, an idea of working for the club began to ferment. Nowhere near the sports industry and without connections, Zue blind-emailed then-team president Larry Lucchino in 2003, offering himself as an unpaid intern and touting his background in business analytics and consulting.

Lucchino took the bait, but initially on just a one-month basis that offered no guarantees beyond that. But Zue quickly forged a niche in analyzing business operations across Fenway Sports Group, years before such practices became commonplace in the industry. The internship soon led to a part-time job, and ultimately a full-time role as Zue left his teaching position.

Now, the former mechanical engineer and robot builder oversees the club’s finance department following a late 2015 reorganization of the Red Sox front office, and Zue played a significant role in industry-moving developments such as the creation last year of the Red Sox Replay ticket resale marketplace.

“For many years, sports was behind a lot of other industries in the use of data and analytics,” Zue said. “But now, it’s really caught up, and that in turn has opened up a lot of new possibilities. I thought I knew a lot about our business before, but this last year I’ve really enjoyed the deeper dive into what we do.”

— Eric Fisher