From the Community: Why this Winner Stands Out

“Layne Piccolo approaches her work in leading Verizon’s Campus Experience team with both focus and a sense of levity, genuinely prioritizing the student experience, and fostering an environment where interns and employees feel supported, valued, and empowered to take meaningful risks and make a positive impact. Layne’s work impacts Gen Z talent not only during their internship experience, and also well before they might even think of themselves as Verizon interns.

The hallmark of Layne’s work is our annual, in-person intern marquee event. Wrapping in an average of nearly 300 interns and 100 Verizon team members, Layne leads her team in creating and executing on every aspect of this weeklong summer event. In order to coordinate every aspect of this multi-day event, Layne builds and maintains strong relationships with Verizon’s entire corporate leadership committee, engaging in strong stakeholding and relationship management in ways that create excitement about the program.

In the year leading up to each marquee internship event, Layne and her team are working behind the scenes in ways that smooth the way for Gen Z talent to join us not only for internships, but for full-time careers after college. Throughout the year, Layne stays in close contact with our Campus Recruiting leads to provide input on how our team creates and manages our workforce plan. With these relationships in hand, Layne consistently reports out to the business on activities throughout the year, and has built contacts across Verizon’s entirely corporate organization that she utilizes to build and maintain trust.

Interns likely first become aware of Layne and her team through their innovative keep warm strategy, which creates multiple touchpoints for Verizon and our interns from the moment of their acceptance to the first day of the internship. Layne and her team utilize emerging programs such as Abode to foster ongoing conversations and create a sense of community and belonging in our incoming class. She becomes the lead touchpoint for student questions, and creates a variety of avenues to keep interns engaged and informed, including - but not limited to - newsletters, good-luck-with-finals gifts, and webinars that showcase full time Verizon team members who have come through the internship process. When interns arrive on our campus - through a travel process that Layne and her team have coordinated - for our marquee event, Layne and her team work with our broader Campus team to make sure all interns have an offer in hand for the following year. 

Layne’s background and career experience makes her the perfect person to not only understand Gen Z talent, but also help them in their own career evolutions. Layne joined Verizon as a Campus Recruiter in 2017, and built the foundation of her expertise by taking roles in recruiting analysis and strategy. Her team members agree that she is absolutely a career catalyst for the talent we work with, calling her “a source of strength and motivation for all who have had the privilege of working alongside her.” Her team notes that “her passion and care for the growth of early in career talent is evident in the creative way she approaches blending their natural talents with building industry knowledge in a fun and engaging way.””