William McNabb

President and CEO of Vanguard, Years in Securities Business: 25

I grew up in Rochester, N.Y., and moved to Boston at 14 when my father changed jobs. My mother, who stayed at home to raise my four siblings and me, loves following the markets and got me interested in securities.

In 1979, after I graduated from Dartmouth with a B.A. in government, I taught Latin at the Haverford School in Philadelphia. In teaching you have to be "on" every day or the kids will devour you. That lesson has stayed with me.

Later, after earning an MBA at Wharton, I worked as a credit analyst at Chase Manhattan Bank. I helped teach the credit program on how to analyze companies. Then I moved to a group that was charged with working out some deals that had been highly leveraged in the early 1980s after the oil crisis. In 1986, I joined Vanguard to manage an instrument known as a guaranteed investment contract that was similar to a CD, issued by insurance companies to 401(k) investors.

One day I approached Jack Brennan, who was then chief financial officer, with a budgeting mistake—a systems change hadn't actually received approval. I walked into his office with great trepidation, but the first thing he asked was whether I had learned anything. It's a small incident and Jack probably wouldn't even remember it, but I sure do.

I shifted from managing director of Vanguard's Institutional Investment Group to the CEO role last August. This particular period is challenging on two fronts: Investors are questioning everything and employees are anxious because they see the carnage. But there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Every season I coach a sport for one of my children. I have three boys and one girl so I've been busy. In what little free time I have, I like endurance sports. I rowed in high school and college, and coached rowing when I taught. I also sign up for one or two bike rides a year to raise money for cancer. The rides have special meaning for me because one of my best friends in college lost his wife to cancer.

As Told to Pat Olsen