Episode summary
Tafadzwa Chanakira shares her path into finance and her work on an equity index team.
Key takeaways
- Curiosity and asking questions can help students explore finance.
- Challenging opportunities can support professional growth.
- Students do not need to know everything before they begin.
About this episode
In this episode, Rock The Street, Wall Street CEO Ashley Leftwich speaks with Tafadzwa Chanakira, Assistant Portfolio Manager and Trader at Vanguard, about her path into finance and what a day in her life looks like on the equity index team.
Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tafadzwa was first inspired by her uncle, who founded a bank and hosted a financial literacy program on TV. After studying economics and moving to England, she built a career in asset management and today helps oversee portfolios across global markets.
Tafadzwa shares career insights:
Be curious and keep asking questions
Step into spaces that challenge you
You do not need to know everything to begin, just start
Ashley Leftwich closes with why stories like Tafadzwa’s matter to RTSWS students: finance becomes a visible and attainable career path.
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Learn more about Rock The Street, Wall Street and our mission to bring the M in STEM to life: https://rockthestreetwallstreet.com
Disclaimer: All financial and investment information contained in this podcast is merely for educational and informational purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Should you decide to act upon any information in this podcast, you do so at your own risk.
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Transcript
Transcript supplied by Riverside; it may contain transcription errors.
speaker-0: Welcome to Rocking Finance, the Rock the Street Wall Street podcast. Real stories, real access, real passion to finance. Join us for candid, high impact conversations with industry leaders sharing the insights, experiences, career pivots and journeys that can help young women advance through the financial industry with great confidence. Rock the Street Wall Street equips high school and university students, especially young women, by bringing the ⁓ in STEM to life through financial and investment fundamentals. We provide direct industry access and guidance supporting students and young professionals on their journeys from classrooms to careers while expanding participation in the capital markets. Through cohort-based learning, mentorship, and individual career connection, we help students build confidence, capabilities, and networks that open doors. Our goal is clear. Expand participation in the capital markets and strengthen the future of finance one cohort at a time. Today I'm your host Ashley Leftwich, CEO of Rock the Street Wall Street. Now let's rock finance. Thank you so much for being here. You're part of one of the world's most well-known asset managers, Vanguard, and our students are eager to hear your story. Let's start with your background. How did you first become interested in finance and what led you to Vanguard?
speaker-1: Well, thank you, Ashley. I'm really glad to be here and, you know, share a bit more about my story. So I'm actually originally from Zimbabwe. I was born and raised there for the most part of the formative years of my life. And as a young girl, I obviously was thinking about maybe going into your more traditional roles like medicine, maybe a pilot, an engineer, an accountant. ⁓ I never quite really knew what it would be that I want to pursue as a career. So financial services was something that I never really heard much about. But ⁓ as a teenager, one of my uncles actually ended up going into financial services and he later on started his own bank and actually a brokerage service company. And so he would have a program on TV every Thursday. And I remember seeing him doing his program called Making Money Make Sense. And I think at that point in my life, that's when a seed was sort of like planted in me that, ⁓ this is quite interesting. I'd love to have a bit more understanding around money and finances. And so I literally just copied what he did. So I went to university and I did an economics undergrad. And then after that, I did a ⁓ master's to sort of like to top up my education. And at that point, I then moved to England. And I really didn't know what I wanted to do. So I of like stumbled into asset management really. It wasn't something that I knew about. I just sort of like happened to have a friend who then said, hey, I know this company they are hiring. Would you be interested? Gave him my resume. long story later, I've sort of like still been in the industry. And so I've only ever worked for asset management, only ever been on the buy side. And I started off doing various kinds of roles, predominantly in distribution. then I, know, slightly early on in my career, I was quite certain and sure that I really wanted to be in the front office, but I wasn't really, you know, knowledgeable about how to maneuver that career move and find myself in the space that I wanted to be in. But I was very clear that I knew what it was that I wanted to do. I wanted to either be a portfolio manager or be a trader. And so fast forward, I then ended up being a product specialist ⁓ in specializing in fixed income. And I did that for a few years. And then I found myself at Vanguard. And earlier on in my career, I'd worked for Wellington Asset Management, which is a firm that's based out of Boston. And it so happens that Wellington and Vanguard have history. And so when I joined Vanguard, I could see the similarities and I was just like, oh, this reminds me of my life at Wellington. And so it was really an easy decision for me to make to join Vanguard. And it's been really great. I've done a few roles here. One of those was working as a chief of staff for the CIO of our European division. And essentially having a good insight into what our investment management group does and After that, I then had the opportunity to join the desk. And now I actually work with the equity index group as a assistant portfolio manager trader.
speaker-0: Well, and you know, not knowing about finance is something that our students say all the time. They had no idea about this profession. When you started out, I'm curious what surprised you about working in asset management, maybe compared to what you had imagined whenever you were in school.
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, I might have to think back a little bit here because obviously it's been a while since I've been out of school, but I do know that my thoughts around what the corporate world would look like and my experiences were quite different. I think one thing that you don't really get a grasp of or a good appreciation is, you know, a business is run and is made up of multiple departments. And I think because a lot of people, when they think about say investment banking or asset management, they tend to think about front office and trading. But then when you actually start working for these companies, you realize that they are really made up of multiple individual parts that make the whole of which is the business. And then I think maybe when I look at the trade floor and what my expectations were, Probably if I was still in high school and university, I would be thinking of what you see on TV, what you see in films and pop culture, trade laws to you appear as a very fast paced, you've got people shouting down phones, scrambling across the floor with papers, waving things in the air. ⁓ And it's quite an ⁓ interesting observation when you eventually actually sit in the desk and it's very different. And so here at Vanguard, I feel like we have a very collegiate environment. It's definitely not as noisy as I thought it would be. But at the same time, you still have that humdrum of, you know, the chit-chatter. And, you know, when I have an idea, whether it's ideas for the portfolios or if it's a trade idea, you, you know, shuttle across to your teammates and you have conversations around your thoughts and they can come up with what they think. because to some extent what we do is not really black and white. Sometimes there's gray areas and it's a bit of an art sometimes, a bit of an art and science as well. And so you can have the same problem and have three people look at it and they all come up with three different ways of approaching it. And so that was quite an interesting observation for me to say, ⁓ actually, you can have really honest and open candid conversations. You never have to sort of like feel afraid to ask questions on things that you don't understand or you don't know. ⁓ And even though it's still fast paced, it's fast paced in a way that is not overwhelming. So I would say probably those are sort of like my initial observations of what my expectations were and ⁓ what it's actually like in real life.
speaker-0: Well, I like that you shared that it's both an art and a science and that there's so much collaboration in the role So you are a trader and an assistant portfolio manager What does a day in a life actually look like for you at Vanguard?
speaker-1: So that's quite interesting because we do a lot. ⁓ And maybe I might just give a bit of ⁓ context in terms of what we do. And so ⁓ we, as a portfolio management team, we ⁓ look after our client portfolios and we are an indexing team. And so we manage portfolios in line with the guidance that we get from the benchmark providers or the indices. And I'm part of a global team. So we have a team in Australia who look after everything that's Asia Pacific. And we also have two desks in the US. So one in Arizona and one in Malvern where our head office is. And they look after everything that's North America. And then for us here in the UK, we look after everything that is EMEA. So everything that's Europe, Middle Eastern Africa. And in the European team, we are also split into three teams. So we have a pod that looks after all our sort of like UK funds. So if you think of funds like a FTSE 100, which is a very single currency UK fund, our UK pod would look after that. And then we also have a team that looks after everything that's developed world. And they look after everything that's outside of the UK, but is in developed markets within Europe. And then we have a third part, which is the emerging markets team, which is the one that I'm part of. And we would be covering all markets that are within Europe, ⁓ as well as ⁓ MENA, so all your Middle East and North Africa countries. as well as the rest of ⁓ Africa. So if you think of countries like South Africa, those would fall under your emerging markets, ⁓ sort of like ⁓ remit. And so if I think of how the day would start, ⁓ I tend to start my day pretty early. I'm an early riser and I like to get a bit of workout in the morning. So sometimes I go to the gym or I sometimes go running. At the moment I'm training for a marathon and so I try and put in at least two, three days during the week and then also like a really long run of the weekend. So that helps to just set my day for me nicely. And then if, you know, coming in, I'll be checking the portfolios. So we'll look at all the risk allocation and make sure that the portfolios are in line with wherever I would have left them the day before. If there's been any… actions and index changes. I just need to make sure that the liquidity of the portfolio looks good and I'm happy with all the risk allocations that we have. So that tends to take quite a bit of time first thing in the morning as part of your start of day. If I am looking after all our portfolio, sorry, trading responsibilities, then I would spend some time ⁓ looking through all the broker chats, making sure that I'm on top of all any micro events that are happening. on the day or in the week, just also being on top of any index changes, any corporate actions. As you can imagine, as an index manager, we own a lot of companies. And so if you think of S &P 500, because we follow that index, we would own all those 500 companies that are in the index. And so think of that now when you look at MSCI Global. or FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE All Share, we would own all these various companies. And on any given day, these companies either are going out to market trying to raise capital or potentially they're doing some kind of M &A, which is gonna impact their capital structure. And so that could then impact their weighting in the index. And we need to make sure that our portfolios are in line with that. And so our days are pretty full. The days are the same. Yeah, exactly. They're the same, but not quite the same. So every day brings you something different. ⁓ It could be the same corporate action, but then the capital structure of the company could be completely different, different sector, different market. And every market has its own nuances. So it's working collaboratively with our compliance teams, working very closely with our corporate actions team. who then help us to walk through all the investor relations documents or any sort of like regulatory issues that we need to be on top of when we are thinking about how we think about making changes on the back of these corporate actions. So quite a lot. then, to add on top of that, I need to make sure that I'm keeping up and in touch with everything that's happening, of like market structure related. From a trading perspective, there's always different things that are coming up that you need to make sure that you're on top of. ⁓ I need to make sure that I'm on top of all the regulatory changes that are coming up or in the pipeline. So that could mean interactions with brokers. We work very closely with the sell side and we rely on each other. We're a very happy coexisting ecosystem. They rely on us. We rely on them.
speaker-0: of our students have asked about strong career foundations. What habits or practices have helped keep you grounded and growing both personally and professionally?
speaker-1: Yeah, that's a really good question. And it's quite interesting because at the moment we have some interns that are actually working with us for the first time we have an internship program. And it's been wonderful to see how they've just joined the company and joined our various teams in the investment management group and been able to just fit in. And if I then look back and think of, you know, when I started my career and the things that have helped me, one of the things that I also see in the interns is that they're very curious. So curiosity really takes you very far. It goes such a long way. And I always want to whenever I'm in a room to make sure that, you know, I'm not the person who knows the most. Ideally, you always want to be in environments where you're always learning.
speaker-0: That's great advice, not even just for you during your education, but also at any point in your career. What's one step that students can take today to move forward and build momentum?
speaker-1: So momentum is an interesting thing because I've always thought that, you know, fortune favors the bold. And so always be someone who's comfortable to put yourself in uncomfortable spaces. Don't always feel like you need to know everything for you to belong in some of these spaces because sometimes no one will really offer you, you know, to sit on the table. Sometimes you just have to take the seat and put yourself on the table. And so always feel comfortable to go even into environments where you think maybe, ⁓ how am I going to fit in here? ⁓ You you have to take that first step to try and discover and find out things that you potentially might end up doing really well in and that could potentially end up being your whole career by you just putting your hand up and saying, you know what, I'm going to try and give this a go. And so as a younger person, I knew I wanted to be a portfolio manager and I wanted to be a trader. And I was extremely intimidated by these roles. They really felt like, you know, absolute rocket science. And I kept thinking to myself, would I actually ever be able to do this, like realistically? And, you know, there was a lot of self doubt and I think that's quite normal. Everyone goes through that, but you know, you don't really go to school and learn to be a trader and neither do you go to school to learn to be a portfolio manager. Everyone has really learned how to do these roles in the seat. And so the only way you can learn is to be in the seat. And to be in the seat, you have to put your hand up and say, hey, I want to be in that seat.
speaker-0: I think that's great. Tapp, thank you so much for sharing your journey and advice with us. I know our students are just greatly benefiting from this advice. conversation. Visit rockthestreetwallstreet.com to learn more. Make sure to follow and join us for the next episode. Until next time, let's keep rocking finance.
