48 Kellogg Insight Over time, the popularity of index-fund investing has skyrocketed, and today Vanguard is the largest provider of mutual funds in the world. But all this success has come with some unexpected consequences for the firm’s strategy for reaching clients, says Jing Wang, Head of the Center of Analytics and Insights at Vanguard. “The low-cost index fund—it used to be the underdog. It took us thirty years, but now it’s mainstream. Now everybody is copying,” she says. This, combined with other trends, such as ever-increasing expectations around the customer experience, prompted Vanguard to rethink how it finds and serves its clients. So three years ago, Vanguard gave Wang a new mandate: develop the company’s consumer-analytics capabilities from the ground up. Wang recently sat down with Insight to discuss the team she built: how it is structured, her strategy for hiring and retaining data scientists, and how her team gained a reputation for solving some of the company’s thorniest problems. She also explains why having support from senior leadership is critical—but no substitute for the power of actually show - ing people what analytics and AI can do. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. KELLOGG INSIGHT: Please start off by explaining what, exactly, your team has been charged with doing. JING WANG: My team is called the Center of Analytics and Insights. We have three functions. One is a market-research function that I inher - ited from the previous organization. The next is our data-science and machine-learning group. And then the third is the analytic-enablement Based on insights from Jing Wang