Thriving in the dynamic world of Data Science

One of my favorite aspects of being a senior data scientist at Vanguard is that every day brings an interesting challenge to my desk. Whether it is fine-tuning a marketing mix model or partnering with investment marketing to design a new experiment to promote our investment products for our retail clients, I love working within a lab environment focused on marketing sciences. In my current role, I am part of a lab that provides analytics and modeling support for marketing campaigns throughout the enterprise. Every day is filled with interesting projects to hone my skills in building data pipelines, designing attribution models, and optimizing existing processes.

Within the Center for Analytics and Insights (CAI), my fellow data scientists and I work collaboratively with machine learning engineers, behavioral scientists, market researchers, and data analysts to support the artificial intelligence/machine learning initiatives at Vanguard. From fraud detection to large-language models and chatbots, AI programs are definitely well-supported within IT. Attendance at our annual unlimiTED conference is highly sought after by both IT and non-IT partners, because it hosts a hackathon and “shark tank” competition, where the winning teams have an opportunity to pitch their ideas to senior leaders.

Another reason I love working at Vanguard is that the company provides so many opportunities to apply my interests and expertise to different aspects of the business. For instance, I have had the privilege of serving as a project manager of our Lifting and Empowering Asian Professionals crew resource group (also known as LEAP), helping them analyze and present their bi-annual membership survey results to senior leaders. I have also served as the captain of a Green Team which supported corporate sustainability goals in five buildings on the Malvern campus.

There are also many affiliate organizations to join for further professional development, such as the McKinsey Leadership Academy for Asian Professionals, International Toastmasters, IT Women’s Initiative for Leadership Success (IT WILS), and Women in Data Sciences (WiDS). Even though I started out at Vanguard as a data and analytics people manager in our Financial Advisor Services division, the company’s rotational culture allowed me to merge my passions in data and marketing, and weave in my career aspirations as a marketing data scientist in a way that contributes to our business goals. I feel very fortunate to be so amply supported in my analytics career at Vanguard.

-Amy B.

Interested in Data Science? Find your next opportunity.