Honorary degree recipients and speakers at the 139th Commencement include Ferenc Somogyi, Ambassador of the Republic of Hungary to the U.S., and Stephen Spinelli, Jr., class of 1977, and president of Philadelphia University.

Foreign service diplomat and member of the College’s governing board since 1994, Ferenc Somogyi was appointed the Hungarian ambassador in 2007. His career spans over 30 years, travel to more than 50 countries and ambassador postings in Rangoon, Burma, between 1969 and 1971, and to Lagos, Nigeria, between 1971 and 1973. He has witnessed and participated in world events of profound historic significance. He was a member of the small group of Hungarian political leaders who chose to allow East German tourists to cross the Hungarian border into Western Europe. Thus began a chain of extraordinary events that ultimately led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Somogyi also helped in the reshaping of Eastern and Central Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union and played a key role in negotiating the withdrawal of Russian troops from Hungary. In 1997, he led the Hungarian delegation in the talks of Hungary’s NATO accession.

In the private sector, Somogyi was director of Integration at Matav Rt., the Hungarian telecommunications firm, from 1998, and CEO of Stonebridge Communications AD in Skopje, Macedonia, from 2001 to 2004. He was instrumental in the creation of the College’s Budapest campus in 1994, the first accredited American undergraduate college established in Hungary.

Somogyi earned two degrees in International Relations from the University of Economics in Budapest and from the College of Political Sciences in Budapest. He also completed his Ph.D. in World Economics from the University of Economics in Budapest. He is married to Andrea Bors, and they have one daughter and two sons and currently reside in Washington, D.C.

Spinelli was selected president of Philadelphia University after a 14-year career at Babson College where he earned his M.B.A. and held various positions in the entrepreneurship division, most recently vice provost for Entrepreneurship and Global Management. His success as a professor and academic leader comes, in part, after earning his real-world expertise as a founder, director and franchisee of Jiffy Lube International.

Before he sold his empire and turned to teaching, Spinelli owned the largest group of Jiffy Lube franchises. Former Green Terror football coach Jim Hindman was the driving force behind the business and Spinelli—at the tender age of 24—was one of the first to be recruited for Hindman’s new team.

“Jiffy Lube is really a McDaniel College company,” Spinelli says, referring to the fact that most of its original executives were discovered on the Hill.

Twelve years later, Spinelli headed to the University of London where he completed a Ph.D. in economics from Imperial College. His work has appeared in numerous academic journals, and he has co-authored nine books, one which was just published in Portuguese.

Spinelli earned his Ph.D. in Economics from The Management School, Imperial College, University of London. He is married to Carol Fulton ’77, and they have two grown children.