La Salle’s strong liberal arts curriculum prepared this alumna for a multi-faceted career.  

Pauline Scalvino was deep into her second decade at Vanguard when an opportunity to change lanes emerged. 

She had spent 10 years in the asset management company’s legal department and another eight as its Chief Compliance Officer. She felt she had a grasp of the inner workings of the company, enough to make the jump to become the Head of Corporate Strategy in 2014. Once she got there, she quickly appreciated that the job demanded a different mindset.  

In legal and compliance, Scalvino said, tasks are bounded by clear guardrails. Corporate strategy is much more open-ended in the scope of subject matter and the breadth of possibilities. She quickly recognized that the new job needed not just “resilience and flexibility” to defer to and synthesize the findings of subject-matter experts on her team. It also emphasized a certain humility in the face of new information—a trait that had long been part of her trajectory at Vanguard, but one that now became even more pronounced.

“It required a willingness to ground myself not only in the way we’ve always done things but a need to be flexible, adaptable, and open-minded, which are things that I really learned from attending La Salle,” Scalvino said. “That liberal arts education, the willingness to learn, the thirst for knowledge, it was very important.”

Scalvino spent four years at Vanguard, leading corporate strategy and then moved to the Global Risk & Security Division, retiring at the end of 2021. She was instrumental in many aspects of the organization, both from its core business to various community initiatives.

Scalvino’s journey to the Malvern, Pa.,-based company started at La Salle. She was drawn to the University Honors Program, with its promise of small class sizes and its delivery of a broad knowledge base. An accounting major, her interest in the law was piqued as an undergrad by a business law course. While she contemplated switching majors for the possibility of being better prepared for law school, she stuck with her interest (and a career fallback plan) in accounting. It was a choice that would pay off down the road. She earned acceptance to Harvard Law School, graduating in 1990, and her background in business eased her transition to the corporate world.

“I found it very attractive to get a really broad education in the liberal arts at La Salle that prepared me for anything and taught me critical thinking skills,” Scalvino said. “… I never felt disadvantaged at all in law school by being a business major. I also, frankly, never felt any disadvantages that I hadn’t gone to an Ivy League undergrad program. I thought La Salle prepared me extremely well for law school.”

Scalvino spent six years at the law firm Stradley Ronon before joining Vanguard in 1996. The ability to grow with Vanguard incentivized her to stay. She was drawn to the mission of Vanguard, which is owned by its investors. The company’s belief in her as she changed roles showed its emphasis on personal growth, something Scalvino used as a guide in her hiring and mentorship of others. “The ability to grow and do different things and not be put in a box was incredibly attractive and, really, just gratifying,” she said. 

Scalvino maintained activity with the firm’s philanthropic arm, the Vanguard Foundation, and its Strong Start for Kids initiative. On that “extracurricular” side, Scalvino took an early leadership position in the Women’s Initiative for Leadership Success—a program that sought to support women within the organization. Despite proactive hiring practices, the firm saw a drop in women at the higher levels of management and sought to shed light on the cultural obstacles that led to that. Creating space for women to talk about challenges and discuss the factors that led to them opened the door for changes to occur. “It was one of the most rewarding things I was involved in,” Scalvino said, “and probably equally as rewarding as the actual substantive work I did.” 

As much as Scalvino was a product of Vanguard’s culture, she also helped shape it through the years, both by the employees she hired and the way in which she ran her teams. 

“I am incredibly grateful for the opportunities I had at Vanguard,” she said. “But I also am grateful that I was in roles that could help shape the future of the company, even if it was just planting the seed of an idea, that someone else could take and run with.”