In early July, as the European Union and the world’s financial markets teetered, worried about Greece’s possible default, Bill McNabb, CEO & Chairman of Vanguard, spoke with VISTA Today.

Vanguard manages over $3.3 trillion dollars of wealth and owns at least 5 percent of every public company in the United States.

Bill shared his memories of growing up in Rochester, his first job delivering newspapers, the impact rowing had on his life, his first job out of college teaching high school Latin and how following his passions and values lured him from Wall Street to Vanguard in 1986.

Where did you grow up, Bill.

I grew up in Rochester, NY until I was 14 when my family moved to Boston.  Both my parents went to the University of Rochester, so I grew up going to events on campus at the University. I attended grade school through 7th grade in the Brighton School District before transferring to McQuaid Jesuit High School for 8th-grade.  Then my parents moved to Boston where I finished high school.

Rochester was an important corporate center when you were growing up there.

That’s true.  The classic financial advice of that period was you needed to own three stocks; Xerox, Kodak and Polaroid.  Two of the three were in my back yard.  At that time, Gannett Newspapers was also headquartered in Rochester. Delivering Times-Unions, an afternoon newspaper published by Gannett, was my first job.

You delivered newspapers in the afternoon rather than the morning?

Yes, delivering papers in the afternoon was easier to do with a school schedule. It was a great first job.  I did it for a couple of years until we moved to Boston. I liked everything about delivering papers except collecting at the end of the week.

What else did you do to earn money when you were younger?

I also caddied. I remember the first time I did double bag duty in a member-guest tournament at Oak Hill Country Club, one of several world-class golf courses in Rochester.  I was only 12 at the time and one of the youngest guys doing double bags.  The first day of the tournament my guys did great, and I thought I was the king of the world. The second day didn’t go quite as well for my team, and I learned I didn’t really know that much about golf.

What lessons did you take from either of those early jobs that still serve you today?

I learned working hard and smart matters.  My paper route was so large that I usually shared daily responsibility for the route with a neighborhood friend.  When my friend went away for a block of time, I enlisted my two younger brothers to help me.  With their help, we rethought how to do the route. Instead of doing the route from my bike as I had always done, we put all the papers in a wheel barrel and I ran the wheel barrel up the sidewalk while my brothers ran the papers to each customer’s door. By working a little harder and smarter we cut the delivery time in half and made the route a lot more fun.

Did you play any sports in high school?

Growing up in Rochester I was an avid baseball and basketball player.  I played both sports in summer and community leagues and then played basketball all through high school.  I thought I would continue to play in college, but a knee injury and advice from a coach changed those plans.

I ended up taking up rowing in college, and, as it turned out, rowing was the key to the way a lot of things went in my life.  Before college, I had never seen a shell.  I was very lucky to literally walk into a shell sitting in the middle of campus my first week of college.  Someone standing by the shell invited me to a learn to row session.  After that, I knew I would be rowing, not playing basketball, in college.

Why did you decide to go to Dartmouth?

I looked at several schools including the University of Rochester since both my parents had gone there.  I loved Rochester and I thought I could play basketball there, but  I ended up looking mostly at schools in New England because I liked the area.  I fell in love with Dartmouth’s campus, that and the school’s emphasis on undergraduate education.  Teaching actually mattered at Dartmouth.

You mentioned the impact rowing had on your life. 

After going to the rowing sessions that first week, I joined Dartmouth’s rowing team.  I was very lucky to be teamed up with several guys with deep high school experience, two of whom went on to be on the United States’ Olympics team.  We enjoyed a lot of success together. The friendships we formed were amazing.  We were all in each others weddings and just last month had the opportunity to row with six of the eight members of the team at a reunion in Hannover, New Hampshire.

I was the least-good athlete of the group, but again, hard work matters.  To be part of a Top 5 team in a Division 1 Intercollegiate sport while I was getting the type of education in the classroom was really special.

So you finish college, what now?

I was still very interested in rowing and continuing to compete at a high level.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the money to take time off and train. The impression a lot of good teachers had on my life, combined with my athletic experience, led me to consider teaching and coaching as a first career out of college.

I had been doing a lot of interviewing with Wall Street banks, but during the spring of my senior year I spoke to an educational headhunter who did placements into private schools.  He suggested I let him put a dossier together and see what happened.  What did I have to lose?

Within a couple of weeks, I had 15 letters from schools inviting me to apply for different teaching positions.  There were a couple of really good options in Boston and one from a school in Philadelphia, The Haverford School. The only catch was the Haverford School wanted me to teach first year Latin. I had five years of Latin in high school and some Greek in college but I wasn’t a Classics major, and I hadn’t taken Latin since high school.  Haverford School’s approach was to hire teachers who could do a lot of different things, so the fact I could both teach and coach several sports was a big plus.

The Haverford School hired me, and I ended up teaching first year Latin and being assistant varsity rowing coach and the middle school soccer and basketball coach.

Was The Haverford School a good fit for you?

The time I spent at Haverford was magical.  I was surrounded by wonderful teachers who were incredibly supportive and taught me a lot about teaching.  I met my wife at Haverford as well.

What about rowing?  Did the teaching position afford you the opportunity to train?

The teaching position at Haverford allowed me to keep competing nationally in rowing in the summers as a member of one of the houses on Boat House Row.

I was both an assistant coach and an athlete for an iconic coach named Jim Barker.  Over the course of a couple of years, Jim Barker became like a second father to me and was influential on how I taught and lived my life.

How long did you stay at The Haverford School?

I left The Haverford School after a couple of years to go to grad school at Wharton and then did a couple of years on Wall Street.  One day an acquaintance I knew from my time at Wharton called and said he had just been hired by this little mutual fund company. He suggested I would like working for the company and urged me to apply for a job.

Did you follow his advice?

The company I was with at the time had 50,000 employees and thousands of locations.  The little mutual fund company, which turned out to be Vanguard, of course, had a Valley Forge post office box, less than 1,000 employees, and $20 billion under management.  The title of the job my friend wanted me to apply for was a “Guaranteed Investment Contract Product Manager.”  A Guaranteed Investment Contract was a fixed income instrument that was prevalent in 401K plans in the early days.  Here I was doing leveraged buyouts and sophisticated transactions in New York, why would I want to be a GIC manager for a tiny company in Valley Forge?

I came down over three different weekends and interviewed with practically everyone in the company including Vanguard’s nascent 401K team and top management.  I loved what I saw culturally, but I didn’t know if I was willing to leave my New York City job on Wall Street to do this.

What did you do?

I reached out to Jim Barker, my rowing friend, and over a couple of Dalessandro’s cheese steaks and a six pack of beer, we talked about life in the backyard of his Roxborough house.  Several times over the course of the conversation in his back yard, he urged me to forget about the name of the company on the business card, to go where my passion was and where my values matched up.  After that conversation, it was clear that Vanguard s where I wanted to be.

Finally Bill, what was the best piece of advice you ever received?

The advice Jim gave me about following my passions has to rank right up there for sure.  But another piece of advice that comes to mind was something my second boss at Vanguard told me.  Reflecting on success one day in his office, he commented that people make success more difficult than it needs to be.  He told me just to work really hard and do a great job in my current role and success would take care of itself.  His advice reinforced lessons I had learned as a paperboy, rowing on the river and in my first job teaching.  After that, I never worried about my career path.

Editor’s Note: Check out our companion piece to this interview, where Bill McNabb explains the strategic advantages Vanguard enjoys being based in Chester County