Vanguard has a new chief strategy officer, hired from Boston Consulting Group

Brent Beardsley, a former partner at Boston Consulting Group, has joined Vanguard.

“Brent Beardsley joined Vanguard at the beginning of the year to lead our Corporate Strategy department. The team is responsible for supporting Vanguard’s corporate and business line strategy, and includes Vanguard’s Innovation Studio. The previous head of Corporate Strategy was Ann Combs, who retired at the end of 2018,” Vanguard spokesperson Emily Farrell said.

Combs worked for just under a year as head of Corporate Strategy & Innovation before retiring. Before that she was principal and a longtime head of government relations at Vanguard from 2007 to March 2018.

Vanguard manages about $5.3 trillion in global assets, as of September 30, 2018.

Beardsley previously worked as a partner at Boston Consulting in asset management and wealth businesses. He was the public face of BCG in that business.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Beardsley spent the bulk of his career at Boston Consulting Group, and his most recent position was listed as Senior Partner, Boston Consulting Group, New York, between 2001 and 2019. His duties included global head of BCG’s asset and wealth management practice and expert for marketing, sales and pricing in financial institutions.

Prior to BCG, he worked as an engineer at automaker Ford. Beardsley received his MBA from the University of Michigan, masters in engineering from Northwestern University and B.S. from Texas A&M University in 1993.