The power of transferable skills

Like many before her, Rachel C. began her career at Vanguard in client relations, working on the phones. However, it didn’t take long for her to begin pursuing opportunities beyond this role. With a strong blend of passion, curiosity, and adaptability, Rachel carved a career path that fostered both personal and professional development.

Keep reading to learn how Rachel’s transferable skills supported her in building a successful career in fixed income.

Discovering her place in finance

Like many recent graduates, I had no idea what I wanted in terms of long-term career aspirations. I joined Vanguard shortly after graduation, admittedly just happy to have a job lined up. At the time, my familiarity with Vanguard came through friends and family who invested with them and saw it as a respected financial institution.

That quickly changed. My first few months proved to be a deep dive into Vanguard’s philosophy and mission, and how they brought that to the everyday retail investor. Working in our retail division, engaging with clients and educating investors, not only deepened my understanding of Vanguard’s investment principles but helped me refine my relationship management skills.

Ready for a new challenge, I transitioned those relationship management skills over to Vanguard Financial Advisor Services (FAS), where I worked with a different subset of clients—financial advisors.

In this role, I consulted with external advisors on Vanguard products, provided insights into market and economic outlooks, and engaged in deeper investment conversations. These aspects of the role led me to discover my passion for the investments space and laid the groundwork for my career transition.

With this realization, I worked with my manager at the time to continue to refine my investment skills until I had the opportunity to join the Portfolio Analytics and Consulting (PA&C) team. In this new role, I continued working with these external advisors, but in a new capacity. I analyzed external financial advisor portfolios, offering comprehensive asset allocation, portfolio construction, and product analyses.

While I loved my time in PA&C, I was presented with an opportunity to help launch a new sister team of product analysts. This role would still support the FAS sales team, but with a deeper focus on product level insights compared to the more holistic portfolio analyses I had been doing. Excited by the chance to help shape the new Product Insights team and define its offering, I jumped at the offer.

Building expertise through experience

My time on the Product Insights team, like many of my previous roles, built upon work I was already doing, allowing me to deepen and expand my expertise. I leveraged my product knowledge, sales experience, and insights from market trends to deliver timely, actionable content to our sales team.

In early 2025, I had the opportunity to dive even deeper into investments and specialize in a specific asset class by joining the Portfolio Review Department (PRD) on the Index Fixed Income team. In this role, I serve as a proxy for portfolio managers, engaging directly with clients to deliver deep dives on our product lineup and broad fixed income landscape. Together, the team and I are responsible for ensuring the health, quality, and completeness of Vanguard’s fixed income product line, while driving thought leadership around the product category.

The role marries technical expertise in fixed income markets with deep acumen on clients, the industry, and the competition.

Why fixed income?

Vanguard, already overseeing about $2 trillion in fixed income assets, has been expanding its fixed income offer. Working so closely with a talented team on this enterprise-wide initiative allows me to make a meaningful impact, gain exposure to senior leaders, and collaborate across Vanguard on cross-enterprise initiatives.

I want to acknowledge that the fixed income market can be complex—but that shouldn’t deter anyone who’s genuinely interested. Like many others, I’ve wrestled with self-doubt. Fortunately, Vanguard has provided me the access to the tools, guidance, and mentorship that have helped me grow—from starting in that entry-level phone role, unsure of what I wanted to do, to where I am today.

-Rachel C.

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