Joseph Ferrari, ’01

Joseph Ferrari, an Economics major, who was presented with multiple opportunities to intern while at La Salle, found that internships were the key that led to him being hired at Vanguard.

After graduating La Salle he went on to be an Internal Auditor in the investment management area at Vanguard. After working in Internal Audit for 3 years, he had the opportunity to be part of the Fixed Income Portfolio Management group as a trader, where he worked on Vanguard’s Bond Index mutual funds. He worked directly with the Portfolio Managers for 3 and 1/2 years, and finds this invaluable experience has taught him a lot about the financial community.

He recently moved from Vanguard to TIAA-CREF trading Investment Grade Corporate bonds. He is currently completing his MBA in Finance at Villanova.

A background in Economics gave him perspective in his current job, allowing him to not just look at each individual trade but to look at the big picture, at what is really going on in the economy. Economics to Ferrrari is the thinking man’s finance, putting the numbers of finance into perspective of the overall big picture. Also, the individual attention that he received from the professors in the department made it easy for him to enjoy the material.

Ferrari explains, that without Dr. Ratkus he would not have decided to come to La Salle, let alone decide to become an Economics major. He considers Dr. Ratkus a great advisor, teacher and person.