As a seasoned executive and leader in the telecommunications industry, Nancy Clark currently leads an extensive portfolio of prepaid brands including Straight Talk, Total Wireless, Visible, Tracfone, Verizon Prepaid and Simple Mobile as President of the Verizon Value Markets. In her role, she oversees the portfolio of brands serving more than 21 million value-conscious customers. Nancy’s career at Verizon spans over two decades, successfully overseeing significant transformations in customer experience and service delivery.
John Shegerian:  Do you have a suggestion for a Rockstar Impact podcast guest? Go to impactpodcast.com and just click, Be a Guest, to recommend someone today. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit. eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts and impact partners. Closed loops platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies. To scale the circular economy. To find closed loop partners please go to www.closelooppartners.com.
John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today, Nancy Clark. She’s the president of Verizon Value at Verizon Wireless. Welcome, Nancy to the Impact Podcast.
Nancy Clark: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
John: Well, we’re excited to have you and we are big fans of Verizon here. We’ve had your colleague Jim Gowan on at least twice in the last couple of years. He’s been on many more times than that. Can you share a little bit about the Nancy Clark story before we get talking about all the important work you’re doing at Verizon Value?
Nancy: Sure. Let me tell you a little bit about me. I grew up here on the East coast in Maryland, moved to Michigan and I guess shortly after college, I went to Michigan State. I joined one of our legacy companies, GTE, got my start in the mobile business there a long, long time ago. We won’t talk about how long ago. But anyways, GTE ultimately became Verizon. I’ve been with Verizon since the beginning of Verizon, and I’ve had the pleasure of moving all around the country, I’ve worked in Texas and California, the Midwest and right now I am in lovely New Jersey. And have been here for about the last 15 years and have done lots of things within the company along that journey.
John: I love it. Talk a little bit about Verizon values. It’s not a brand that’s typically talked about a lot. What is Verizon value and what specifically is your role and primary mission there?
Nancy: Sure. So first of all, I think most consumers are familiar with the big brand of Verizon. It’s iconic, everybody knows the brand. It really serves a mass market overall. What we have within the Verizon value portfolio is about eight different brands that serve the more value conscious customer. In some cases, those brands serve customers that are value by need. Their budget simply says, okay, I need to be a little bit more prudent in terms of how much I spend on mobility. We’ll talk about some of the programs we have to support them. Other consumers are valued by choice as they’re looking to allocate their budget and saying, what do I want to spend money on and where might I want to again, be a little bit more economical? Some of those brands serve them, but we have eight different brands in the value portfolio. Brands that many know like Straight Talk I think a lot of consumers are familiar with Straight Talk, Total Wireless, which is a really rapidly growing brand, Visible, which is one of our digital only brands, Simple Mobile. And again, there’s a variety of them. But they all serve different unique segments. But the commonality is a little bit more value conscious customer.
John: How does having a broad portfolio of these eight wonderful brands benefit the consumer and allow them different entry points? How does it really work and if for you, as the president, is it difficult managing eight brands instead of one core brand? Or how does that work from your perspective? So give me both the top down and the bottom up perspectives.
Nancy: Sure. So I think from a consumer perspective, what it allows us to do is be really targeted to what a particular consumer needs. So if you think about Visible, Visible, again being a digital only brand. It is geared towards consumers that say, I kind of know how to do a little bit of mobile on my own. I can take on some of the work myself. But as an exchange for that, perhaps I get a little bit more discounted price in doing that. Total Wireless, which as I mentioned is growing is really geared towards that up and comer. We’re opening stores very, very rapidly in a lot of our urban markets. We’re really focused on bringing premium data to those customers at an affordable price, but they need connectivity. Then brands like Simple Mobile, in many cases, are serving people that are new to the United States, so that we offer really attractive international calling packages and travel packages on that brand. So again, what it allows us to do from a consumer perspective is deeply understand a particular segment and build a brand around that customer segment. From my perspective, it’s been fascinating because my career was really all with the big brand called Verizon. I was used to leading different aspects of the business, whether in marketing or service or operations across one big brand that serves a hundred million customers. Really what we look to do within Value is to offer that unique value proposition I talked about but do it in a scalable way. Because you can’t do you’ve gotta make sure that you’re efficient in building the platforms for these customers, but that’s what we’re looking to do. But it’s been fascinating for me.
John: For our listeners and viewers, just for a little perspective, Verizon does over 134 billion a year in revenue, has over 99,000 employees and serves over 150 countries. So Nancy what you do at Verizon value wherever Verizon is, does Verizon value also reside? Is that how it works?
Nancy: Yes, we serve the whole United States. So we’re not international, but we do serve every place across the US. We have about 20 million customers on our value brands.
John: That’s a lot of customers.
Nancy: It is.
John: That’s a lot of customers. We’re going into the back to school season right now. Talk a little bit about prepaid brands and how does that support students and people that are going into this new transition period of back to school.
Nancy: Sure. So specifically with Total Wireless, this is a real group of individuals that we are very focused on. As I talked about, we’re really trying to support that individual who’s an up and comer. One of the programs we focused on with Total was working students. So if you think about students that are juggling it all, they’re trying to improve their education but also have a job at the same time managing a complex life and getting ready to take on a new school load for the upcoming year. We thought we could do some unique things for them. We just launched a program, it’s called Total Spark. We just had our very first big event in the Chicago land area. We brought in a variety of nonprofits that help working students be able to understand how they look for new jobs and get certifications and can do some resume building. We had people in doing headshot. We’re just looking to make sure that we can support people who are trying to juggle it all.
John: Is that how you do it? You launch it in specific community or region and then once you fine tune it there, then you socialize it across the United States?
Nancy: Yes. So we’ve focused on three markets to begin with Chicago, Detroit, and Dallas. That’s where we’ve got our big scale programs where we’re bringing some of these partners in. But if you think about also the, I talked about the stores that we’re building in Total Wireless. We now have about 1600 stores, we’ll have 2000 by the end of the year. What we are also looking to do, and those are owned and operated by small business owners. Is to bring some of these resources into those stores. So things like headshots, professional headshots. If you’re somebody, you’re working, you’re a student, you’re also trying to get a job you may not have access to professional photographers. But we can bring professional photographer into our stores help get your LinkedIn profile perfect and snazzy and looking fabulous. That’s what we want to do is leverage our footprint of stores. But we do start in some of the bigger communities, make sure we have it right, and then we’ll scale across the US.
John: That makes so much sense. For our listeners and viewers, if you’re driving or working out or walking your dog right now, you don’t have to write any of this down. It will be in the show notes. But to find Verizon Value and Nancy and her colleagues and all the great work they’re doing for the 20 million or so users, please go to totalwireless.com/total-spark, or you could also go to verizon.com/about/responsibility. Those will be in the show notes. So Nancy and her team will be very findable. Nancy, take us back a little bit. You mean you’ve been at Verizon literally your whole career and have seen the whole rise of this now iconic worldwide brand. How long ago was Verizon Value created and how long have you been running it?
Nancy: Verizon Value was really the formation of, as I said these multiple brands. We have had for a long time Verizon prepaid service. We launched our visible brand, I’m going to say about five years ago. About four years ago, we had the acquisition of a company called TracFone. TracFone was a partner of Verizon, but we pulled all of those different business units together into Verizon Value about two years ago, I had the pleasure of taking on this assignment, at the beginning of 2024. It’s been really exciting and we’ve been able to add to our customer base which is great. We’ve got four consecutive quarters of growth that we have been reporting. So we’re seeing that whatever we’re doing is attracting consumers, and the brands are resonating in the market.
John: Nancy, you’re the president. So how big is this division? Like if you have a thousand employees, 500 employees, 10,000 employees, how many employees are actually engaged with this user base of 20 million or so users?
Nancy: We have a thousand direct employees in Verizon. So out of the 99,000 that you talked about, a thousand are fully dedicated to Verizon value.
John: That’s great.
Nancy: But we’ve got lots of different partners. Again, as I mentioned all of the small business owners that run Total Wireless stores, we sell through some other stores that are, again, local in the community and those small business owners. There’s a much broader reach of individuals that support our customers, but about a thousand are directly supporting Verizon Value brands.
John: Really what you’re doing is you’re democratizing connectivity for people.
You’re making sure you’re really making a bigger tent so everyone can actually enjoy all the great things about being interconnected that Verizon offers.
Nancy: We are. The great thing about our value brands within the portfolio is they all are on the Verizon network. You’ve got access to the very best network out there. They’re also historically some of the value or prepaid brands have had throttling or some things that don’t allow consumers to have full access to that great network. We’ve been able to launch new plans that now pull some of those restrictions off of what consumers have been feeling and really open up the full power of the Verizon network on our value brand.
So we’re really excited about that. We think that the value customer deserves, they deserve great connectivity and they deserve great service.
John: Was this paradigm that you’ve created it’s actually brilliant and fascinating. Is this being done in the competitive marketplace by your competitors, or are you really the leader in this and you’ve led the way on this one?
Nancy: What I would say is we have more brands than others do.
John: Got it.
Nancy: I’ll leave the competitive environment to [crosstalk] my competitors out there.
John: Got it.
Nancy: But we do have more brands and what we think is as a market becomes more mature, that segmentation is really important. Really being able to deeply understand consumers and build propositions that are unique to them allows us to attract the consumer and for that consumer to feel like this is the brand for me, and I’m never going to leave this brand. This is the brand I want to be part of forever.
John: That makes so total sense, because on one hand, as a business enterprise, you think, Nancy’s gotta manage these eight brands. But the bottom line is, as we know this country is a very diverse and one of the great things about this country is our diversity. So you’re really trying to help really cater to each of these different diverse groups that that and or make different offerings to them so to have the most engagement possible.
Nancy: We are. Again, you think about again, a brand like Straight Talk. I haven’t talked as much about Straight Talk, but it’s sold in Walmart. It’s more rural or suburban brand and appeals towards those consumers. Total Wireless, which is a little bit more of an urban brand. So again, we can cater to different consumers and different places where consumers shop.
John: Let’s talk about Total wireless for a section. You have a new social impact program there called Total Spark. Explain why that’s important, why you launched that, and how does that align with Total Wireless’s business objectives that you already were running.
Nancy: Absolutely. So it sits under a platform called Value Care. So Value Cares is our overall platform. What we’re looking to do is for each of the brands make sure we have an appropriate social responsibility program. For Total Wireless, that’s Total Spark Program is geared towards that working student. We just think perfect for the consumer that we overall want to serve, which is the up and comer, they’re juggling a lot, they need access to connectivity. We think a working student is someone who fits that group as well. So that’s what we’re looking to do. We think it’s the right consumer. What we’re working to do is, as I talked about in the three cities, but also leveraging our distribution footprint. Bring access to resources, to the working student to help them be successful in this like super complicated life that they’re working to juggle. In some cases that’s how do I have time management? How do I make sure that I’m doing my budgeting appropriately? How do I get access to job opportunities? How do I make sure that I’m best prepared should a job opportunity come available? So that’s really the overall platform. We’ve got a lot of partners. Empower Work is a partner who is helping us overall with the program, but lots of different partners at the local level that are coming to these events overall.
John: Once you support the student, the working student during their really challenging time in life. The goal is now as they evolve and become very successful themselves and become the next generation of leaders, they’re going to bring Verizon along with them to the businesses they create and all the other impacts that they make, positive impacts they make as adults in their careers. Verizon will be traveling with them hopefully throughout the journey of their career after you’ve supported them during this really very challenging time. That being a working student can be for any of us.
Nancy: Yes. So we hope to serve them through Total Wireless. As I said, we want them to stay with total forever. By the way, if they want to graduate and move to Verizon postpaid service they could do that as well. Within Verizon and you probably know we’ve got great small business programs also. But there’s an overall portfolio for us to support someone who begins as a working student and is going to do fabulous things in their life. As I talked about that first event that we had in Chicago, it was so exciting. First of all, we pulled up, there was this big long line outside of the event. I was just incredibly impressed. Then you look at these young people just, I don’t know, all the prospects that they have in their eyes, all of the ambition that they have it’s just exciting to be part of their journey.
John: It’s a good feeling to support the next generation of leaders in this country.
Nancy: Absolutely. It’s super, super rewarding.
John: When you put together, when you curate, and I know you carefully do these things because it makes sense to carefully do it. This event in Chicago, you create partnerships and collaborations with nonprofit organizations and community leaders. How does that better even enrich Total Spark and Total Wireless and every, all of your efforts that you’re doing to, again, make a bigger tent and invite more in in every community you serve, so you could make the greatest impact possible?
Nancy: It makes it just that much more powerful. So again, if I think back to the event that we had in Chicago. We had several local aldermen that were there. So we’ve got the support of the local government officials, we had several local nonprofits that were had resume building skills that had access to manufacturing jobs, that had access to resources on how do you manage and juggle this dynamic life that someone might be having, and again some of the professional photography resources. So we just bring it all together in a way that has us as a corporation there, but also local government and local nonprofits all on behalf of the individual. So I think just a great way that it pulls all together.
John: Nancy, for someone to come and work for a brand that’s really an old school way of doing things, which I’m old school as well. Came to work for the predecessor company to Verizon. You stayed with it throughout and now you’ve risen to one of the leaders at Verizon. Can you share with our audience because we have a huge audience of young people. They’re going to be leaders one day, hopefully. They want to be leaders and they want to be someone like you who not only is a leader, but someone who not only makes a paycheck to pay the bills, which we all have to do, but also you make an impact. What are some of your favorite tips when young men or women reach out to you for some leadership advice, what’s your best advice you could give now that you’ve had this very story career which led to this very important position as the president of Verizon Value, that you can share with the next generation coming up behind us.
Nancy: Well, I’d probably share two things. One is, first of all, do your job really well. That’s first and foremost. Everyone wants to know how do I get the next job? How do I network or mentor? First and foremost, focus on the role that you have and make sure that you are exceptional in it. Because when you deliver great work, then the people around you want to give you a leg up and they also want you to be with them as they’re going along their journey. So, number one, focus on the job that you have. But secondly, I would say be curious. Really make sure that you are a student of the business, a student of the people around you. Those are the two pieces of advice that I would give.
John: All great leaders have to find ways to remain inspired themselves. What inspires you now and who inspires you today?
Nancy: The people that inspire me are the people that I work with. I’m just amazed every day. Business isn’t easy. It really isn’t these days and probably never was. You always look back and they’re like, the good old days. That was easy. It wasn’t that either. But I look at the teams that I have, the people, that’s part of the reason when you talk about, why does somebody like me stay with Verizon for as long as I have? Number one, I’m inspired by the fact that I think Verizon is the best there. I like to work for a company that I truly believe is the best at what we do. But it’s always the people that I work with, and whether it be people that I’ve worked with for years and years and years or people that you know have just recently joined Verizon and I have the opportunity to share my experience with, I’m inspired by the people.
John: Well, Nancy, you’re amazing. For our listeners and viewers, this has been an interview with Nancy Clark, the president of Verizon Value at over at Verizon Wireless, and to find Nancy and her colleagues you can go to totalwireless.com/total-spark and all the other places you can find Nancy we’ll put in the show notes to make it really easy. Nancy, the work that you’re doing is not only just important just to further democratize communication in the United States. But it really does make a huge social impact. So that’s why we had you on the Impact podcast today.
Nancy: Thank you.
John: I just want to tell you I’m grateful, finale, the generosity of your time to share this and very important brand and story and all the work that you’re doing. But thank you for also making the world a better place.
Nancy: Well, thank you so much and thank you for your support and partnership with Verizon. I appreciate myself being on, I know you’ve had some of my colleagues on, but appreciate you being a good partner as well.
John: This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform, revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders Engage is the go-to spot. For booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of The Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy. Is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices please visit eridirect.com.
– One of our earliest social impact initiatives was Visible’s award-winning Connection Protection program, which launched in 2023.
– Through Connection Protection, individuals who experience job loss receive a Visible activation code that grants them access to three months of service with costs covered by Visible.
– Since launching in 2023, the program has seen positive results including: 28,500+ months of service provided to participants to-date, with 2 in 5 users accepting a new job offer.
Total Spark is the latest programming to launch as part of Value Cares, aimed at supporting working students. We remain committed to harnessing Verizon’s connectivity to empower people with the reliable connectivity they need to thrive. Throughout the year, there will be announcements of new programming from each of the brands in the value portfolio.
– In the coming months, we have Total Spark events planned in several Total retail stores through the summer including an:
– August 20 event in Dallas with the Wilkinson Center
– September 1 event in Chicago with LIFT-Chicago
– September 24 event in Dallas with the Wilkinson Center
– October 27 event in Detroit with TechTown