Tim Thornton Consulting

my work history

Until my recent three year engagement at Phila.gov, most of my career, 1982 to 2014 was with the Vanguard Group of Investments. I was lucky to be one of the first technology hires back in 1982. Vanguard's assets under management were around 5 billion, with a significant concentration in money markets paying over 15 percent. When I left in 2014, assets were close to 3 trillion, almost a 600 fold change. Along with that growth came amazing opportunities for me to lead amazing teams of talented dedicated employees, and together we implemented technology projects that improved the service experience for millions of clients and enabled the organization to grow.

My last job, before deciding to retire early, was in the Retail Division leading a large infrastructure project—changing the customer record keeping system from a mutual fund system to a more traditional brokerage system. The (5) five year, multi-million dollar project is now operational and will eventually support millions of retail clients. The project was a massive undertaking. Thousands of employees had to take and pass FINRA exams, almost every business process needed to be redesigned, and a completely new technology infrastructure needed to be implemented. At times over 1000 employees were involved with the project--over 30 separate projects needed to be managed simultaneously. All of this was done in a highly regulated environment. Most proudly, client satisfaction scores did not diminish in spite of all the change and the team morale stayed high during a hard five year run.

Prior to that I spent (10) ten years building and maintaining Vanguard.com. In early 2000 I was given the opportunity to leave the data center and join the team that eventually built Vanguard's first high net worth site. From there my responsibilities grew to leading the retail web site team, and eventually all of Vanguard.com. Vanguard.com is a complex system supporting millions of retail investors, millions of 401k participants, 401k plan sponsors, advisors, investment professionals and endowments/foundations. Over the (10) ten year period the web teams at Vanguard introduced many innovations, significant efficiency ( most accounts and transactions were processed straight through by investors and participants ), and industry leading online security.

Before the web job I spent (17) seventeen years in the Vanguard data center primarily doing telcom work. My first job in 1982 was to install Vanguard's first automatic call distribution system. The system grew from 50 to over 5000 agents, before the internet changed everything. My teams implemented the first voice response system, the first connection to the internet, the first routers, the first computer telephony systems and maintained the early web infrastructure.

From 1978 to 1982 I worked for Burlington Industries doing call center work. Burlington's Lee's carpet division implemented one of the first early automatic call distributors—the ROLM system.

My undergraduate degree ( BA in business with a computer science concentration ) was obtained from Ursinus via ten years at night school. In 2014 I volunteered to take the 63 and 7 FINRA exams as a sign of support for all the change my team introduced. My belief was that I shouldn't be forcing 1000's of employees to take and exam that I did not have to take.

Although technology project management “is in my wheelhouse”, I am most proud of my efforts trying to be a good leader of people. I love leading and working with large teams. My last team was over 500 “members”. No matter what was going on I spent a couple hours everyday learning names, writing notes, and sitting with folks discussing their work. There really is nothing more important than making a team feel valued. It is a basic need we all have, regardless of income or salary--everyone wants to feel their contributions are appreciated. Although this is common sense, in the corporate world common sense is not always common action.