A group photo of Quad’s 2025 corporate trainees and interns during Trainee University in Sussex, Wisc.
As a marketing solutions company that works with 2,100 clients across nearly every conceivable industry, providing services ranging from digital branding and in-store retail media to commercial printing and postal logistics, Quad has many moving parts.
“It’s remarkable all the different things we do, all the different functions we have, all the different ways we support our clients,” says Bryce Branson, Quad’s Senior Talent Management Consultant, who’s been with the company for nearly two decades — a period of rapid growth and transformation.
This degree of scale and complexity presents an opportunity: cultivating leaders with the transferable skills and cross-functional fluency to help push the business forward. Hence, the Corporate Trainee Program (CTP), created by Quad’s founder Harry Quadracci in the mid-1980s. Through this initiative, CTP participants get the chance to rotate through entry-level positions in various departments across the organization, typically in three-to-six-month intervals, for a total of 18 to 36 months.
During that time, they can tap into company culture (book clubs, summer sports leagues) and experience different areas of the country where Quad maintains an office presence (Wisconsin, Illinois, North Carolina and South Carolina, Minnesota, Texas and New York). Moving between roles, trainees get the unique opportunity to burnish their skills while maintaining flexibility in their career path. They’re also able to build strong working relationships — with peers, mentors and even executives — that break down silos as the company continues to expand.
“The point of the Corporate Trainee Program is to develop future leaders of the business, but it also helps form the connective tissue of Quad, pulling various parts of the business together to solve problems and make things happen,” Branson says. “You don’t have to know everything about the business, but the ability to pick up the phone and call the person who does know is incredibly valuable.”
He’s speaking from experience here: Branson was a corporate trainee from January 2008 to September 2010, completing rotations in manufacturing, imaging, customer service, mailing, engineering, recruiting and purchasing. His journey is representative of the program, which currently has around 60 active trainees. Rotation assignments are based on a mix of business needs and personal interest; talent coordinators facilitate check-ins to discuss career development and potential opportunities. The CTP offers structure but isn’t rigid, meaning high achievers can accelerate their progress.
The approach is a boon for self-starters like Ezekiel Harris, who earned his business marketing degree from Morehouse College in 2021. Harris started in postal logistics but excelled during his second rotation, as a photo production assistant, and fast-tracked to a role at Quad’s creative agency, Betty.
“I learned there are so many different roles within a photo studio, and kind of found my own way,” Harris says. “I’m a certified crane operator. I can operate a forklift. But then I can also work on Excel to make schedules. I can work with a team and get into the photography side a little bit. I love it.”
Along the way, there are plenty of opportunities for trainees to receive (and give) feedback, an important facet of the CTP’s mutually beneficial framework.
“You have this image of what corporate work and life means, what it looks like — this very hierarchical thing. I was so surprised by the level of interest and curiosity that leadership had in the trainee program,” says Pallavi Sridhar, who completed four rotations between January 2022 and May 2024 and now works as a data analyst at Quad headquarters in Sussex, Wisconsin. “They were reaching out to us, saying ‘You can come to us. The door’s open. Please talk to us. We want to hear what you have to say.’”
Ultimately, the goal of the program is graduating trainees into permanent positions at Quad. To that end, the CTP’s success is self-evident. So are the long-term impacts. Today, over 150 employees at the company count themselves as trainee alumni — including the CEO, Joel Quadracci.
