Vijay Sankaran is the CIO at TD Ameritrade and leads the company’s 60 team members at its innovation center in Ann Arbor. He’s responsible for incubating new capabilities, introduction and management of these capabilities, and the strategy and implementation for the data and analytics ecosystem, including client personalization. Vijay is also responsible for two major technology programs at TD Ameritrade – the Digital Guidance program which transforms the long-term investor experience to address the threat posed by “robo advisors”, and the think-or-swim program, focused on building an internal capability to support this advanced trading platform.
During his conversation with Paul Krutko, president and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK, Vijay explains his background, from starting to code at a young age, finishing school at MIT, joining Ford’s leadership team, then being recruited by a mentor to TD Ameritrade. Vijay speaks in depth about TD Ameritrade’s talent strategy and how its focus on innovation, data, and analytics has proven successful.
Before locating to Ann Arbor, TD Ameritrade was considering multiple locations for its growth. Vijay explains why the company chose Ann Arbor to expand to and how his thoughts on the future of Ann Arbor.
Listen to the podcast on SoundCloud.
