Everywhere you look at Vanguard headquarters, the nation’s second-largest money manager, you see memorials to underdogs who won improbable victories. Vanguard’s verdant office park sits close to the historic Valley Forge site in Pennsylvania, where George Washington turned a disparate group of colonists into a force that would win American independence from the better-equipped British army.
Many of the office buildings are named after daring British ships that defeated larger enemies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Front and center is a statue of Vanguard’s founder, the late Jack Bogle, who is credited with leading a financial revolution by popularizing index funds and driving down investing costs to effectively transfer billions of dollars from Wall Street to Main Street investors.
