⏱️2-Minute Break with … Yenal Kucuker
Yenal Kucuker spends his days thinking about the Verizon of tomorrow. Learn about the unique role that helps shape the technology — and the techs— of the future.
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When opportunities come knocking on Yenal Kucuker’s door, he answers. His willingness to say yes to new experiences has led him to teach at community college, to Capitol Hill for a government internship, to the world of non-profit government relations and for the past six years, to work at Verizon.
⏱️Take 2 minutes and get Up To Speed on what makes Yenal tick.
📦 When did you move to the United States?
In 12th grade. My family and I moved from Türkiye to Rochester, New York.
✈️ How did you end up in Rochester, specifically?
This was before the internet, so we literally knew one other person from our hometown who moved there. We made a couple of long-distance calls to him and we were on our way!
🪡 You eventually found community?
We were happy to find a thriving Türkish community. As an undergraduate, I took a class in ethnic geography and learned that after World War II, there were two prominent textile factories in Rochester that needed skilled tailors. So, from the 1960s - 1980s, they heavily recruited from Türkiye, Greece and Northern Africa.
💼 I understand you had some interesting jobs prior to Verizon.
I once taught at a community college without intending to do so. They had a faculty member leave and an urgent need for someone to teach. It was supposed to be temporary and part-time, but I worked full-time for almost four years.
🧳And then you did some traveling?
Yes, I went to Michigan to get a Master’s Degree in Public Policy, did an internship on The Hill, and that opened up a whole new role to me with the Türkish-American community. I traveled all over the country, in government and non-profit roles. But when we decided to start a family, my wife and I decided I needed a job with regular hours and a friend suggested Verizon.
🎒 You have a very cool job.
I work for the Tech Ambassadors Office. We partner with select universities for several years at a time to create engineering programs tailored to Verizon’s needs. We also work closely with our talent acquisition teams, who eventually recruit the graduates.
📚 Is it the same program in each university?
No, we tackle specific business needs for different departments. For example, at the University of Puerto Rico, we are building two RF (radio frequency) labs. At the University of Michigan, we are sponsoring a class on wireless antenna design and provide Verizon engineers to mentor the students. They don’t just learn about the technology, they learn about the culture.
🕑 So they work on business issues in real time?
Sometimes we get a challenge that we’re having trouble solving internally, and we can have a group of students work it through. It requires a lot of coordination internally and externally, but I like to think of us like talent scouts. We work with recruits throughout their academic careers to make them into top-tier engineers who can move quickly through the pipeline and hit the ground running at Verizon when they graduate.
📅 What are you most looking forward to in 2025?
Graduating in May with my Executive MBA!
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