Careers Blog
Not your typical career path
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From leading scrum teams that develop digital client experience technologies to overseeing the pricing and economics for all our enterprise mutual funds and ETFs. That’s not your typical career trajectory but is emblematic of Vanguard’s culture to provide unique experiences to leaders in unorthodox ways. Although many of my career experiences have seemingly little in common, each role offered learnings, insights, and perspectives that can shape how I approach decision-making in subsequent roles. Within Finance, I’ve quickly realized both the opportunity that this division provides in being able to drive significant enterprise impact as well as the unique and indirect preparedness that prior experiences have provided to help me contribute to that impact.
One part of my unique journey is that I left Vanguard for about five years. I first departed to pursue business school for two years, and then upon graduation, spent a few years as a management consultant. The consulting experience had three primary benefits for me: 1) the pace of work and the approach to problem solving developed my managerial abilities; 2) rotating to a different engagement every few months with a new client, team, and project, taught me to quickly synthesize the complex; and, 3) being away from Vanguard allowed me to fully appreciate the power of this company’s mission, purpose, and culture.
Although the first and second benefits have been instrumental in helping me add value across various parts of the organization, the last benefit is the most important. It’s easy to take for granted what this company stands for and why it is different. We hear the buzzwords often (e.g., investor-owned), but those words’ meanings resonated most powerfully for me while having the opportunity to work at and with other companies in the industry. I was able to experience first-hand how ownership conflicts can trickle down into impacting all facets of an organization – from culture to decision-making. Counterintuitively, being away from Vanguard made it apparent how special Vanguard is – the people that comprise this organization and the purpose on which it rests. As Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley has said, “helping people achieve a better financial future is not a secondary goal for us. It is the only goal.”
In my current role within Finance, I am able to directly witness how our unique ownership structure mechanically works from a fund expense and price standpoint, and in turn understand how we are able to return so much value to investors. The “Vanguard effect” did not happen by accident, and I now own this process for all of our funds. These decisions have wide-spanning implications on our enterprise revenue, investor savings, brand, competitive positioning, among other factors – it’s both an awesome and humbling responsibility. I’m excited about the opportunity that I have to help investors as a crew member within Finance, and I encourage you to reflect on how your own diverse experiences knit together in a way that makes you a more capable agent in delivering Vanguard’s mission to our investors.
– Brian D.
