Verizon Quietly Folds Adfellows Program

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Verizon is ending its annual adfellows program, ADWEEK has learned.

Founded in 2017 by the telco’s former CMO Diego Scotti, adfellows’ nine-month fellowship provided career growth opportunities for diverse candidates.

Adfellows will now be integrated across Verizon’s early talent programs, according to Christina Schelling, svp and chief talent and diversity officer. These include collegiate internships, military fellowships, and apprenticeships for people from underserved communities looking to switch careers.

One person was laid off as a result of the program’s closing, she said.

Schelling said the decision to sunset adfellows was because the telco’s “strategy for talent has evolved.”

She said BIPOC talent have a better opportunity in Verizon’s early talent programs, as opposed to something standalone. “It’s really about integration, not isolation,” she said.

Adfellows’ final cohort is slated to graduate in May 2025. The adfellows name will be sunset, and its previous website URL reroutes to the Verizon careers home page.

Schelling claimed Verizon will continue cultivating diverse talent.

“We will still be just as direct and clear as far as making sure that we are advancing underrepresented and diverse employees, candidates, [and] people for the advertising and marketing sector,” she said.

According to its 2023 environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report, 60.3% of its U.S.-based workforce identify as women and minorities.

Unlike Verizon’s other early talent programs, adfellows was designed to shepherd diverse talent into the marketing and advertising industry through rotational programs and career acceleration opportunities. Fellows have gone to work at major agencies, consultancies, and brands, including R/GA, Accenture, and Walmart.

During the program, fellows rotated through various roles at partner brands and agencies, such as Publicis New York, McCann New York, and Disney Advertising, to better understand what a career in the industry might look like. After four rotations across nine months, the cohort graduates, and many are offered full-time positions, either at the companies where they rotated or at Verizon.

A version of the adfellows website from July 2024 touted that 97% of graduates were offered full-time roles upon completion of the program.

The fellowship is fully paid and required eligible candidates to have a bachelor’s degree, over a 3.0 grade point average, and to be able to work in the U.S.

Schelling confirmed this pipeline “won’t exist in the way that it had with adfellows,” and that the company is shifting its resources toward internal recruiting efforts.

“This is really about us investing and hopefully having these folks work at Verizon,” she said.

The decision to sunset the program comes 18 months after Scotti departed Verizon, though a Verizon spokesperson said changes to the program were “well underway” before new CMO Leslie Berland’s arrival in December.

But in May 2022, Verizon had planned to expand the program by increasing each cohort from 30 fellows to 250 fellows by 2026.

Schelling maintained that DEI is still a priority for Verizon, especially as many large companies retreat from commitments to underrepresented groups.

In 2025, Verizon plans to create a marketing track for its Verizon Leadership Development Program, a two-year rotational program for early-career employees transitioning into full-time roles at the company. Verizon said it plans to use learnings from adfellows for the new marketing track.

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“The intent is to continue to focus on this space and grow it bigger,” Schelling said. “We are not abandoning the goals [or] the investment in diverse talent in advertising and marketing.”

Cydney Lee is ADWEEK's advertising news reporter based out of NYC. Prior to joining in Aug. 2024, she was editorial assistant at Billboard. Her work has also appeared in W Magazine, GRAMMY.com, Pigeons & Planes, Vulture and more.