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Stephen Spinelli, Jr.

Stephen Spinelli, Jr. started his career working for a nursing home company owned by Jim Hindman, an entrepreneur and the football coach at Western Maryland College. Hindman made a practice of picking out students to work in his businesses and Spinelli was one of those students.  After a couple of years, Hindman decided his entrepreneurship team was ready. It was time for them to find the right deal and make the most of it. What they found was a mom-and-pop, seven-store, auto-service chain called Jiffy Lube. Spinelli helped to franchise the concept across the country. By 1981 there were about 100 Jiffy Lube stores nationwide.

Spinelli then founded his own firm: American Oil Change Corporations, a franchisee of Jiffy Lube based in Western Massachusetts. After nine years he had 47 stores and $31 million in annual sales.  In July of 1991, he sold the business and decided not to start another business of his own.  "What I really believed in was entrepreneurship," he says. "I believe entrepreneurship is the horse that will take us to the promised land - individually and as a society."

What Spinelli wanted to do was to teach students to become entrepreneurial. He went to the Imperial College, University of London, to earn his Ph.D. then returned to Massachusetts to teach entrepreneurship at Babson College.  In his role as director of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Spinelli spearheaded the creation of a revolutionary curriculum for a select group of second-year graduate students taking their MBAs in entrepreneurship. Dr. Spinelli has been an important advisor to STCC as we developed the Scibelli Enterprise Center and the college’s entrepreneurship education programs.  

Spinelli is keen on investing in entrepreneurial start-ups. Entrepreneurs create wealth, for themselves, their colleagues, and the national economy, since big businesses grow from small businesses.  Once successful, many accumulate great personal resources and seek avenues to return some of their good fortune to the community.

Stephen Spinelli believes that entrepreneurs are taught, not born, and seeks innovative and effective ways of instilling this education.  It is entirely appropriate that, with thanks for his advice and assistance to entrepreneurs in Massachusetts, we induct him into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.