About Spence & Company

Matthew Spence, president of Spence & Company since 2005, has spent two decades helping individuals and groups think more clearly, communicate more effectively, and work more cooperatively.

From 1998 to 2005, Matthew worked in Brazil as a management consultant, designing and leading strategy retreats. He also taught executive development programs in Portuguese on the design and implementation of large-scale organizational change.

Matthew Spence spent the preceding fifteen years as a writer, speaker, educator, and facilitator in the nonprofit sector. Additionally, Matthew has worked in banking, IT services, and litigation support.

Matthew Spence received a B.A. with honors from Harvard University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

The work of Spence & Company today builds on an approach to business communication developed by Matthew’s father, Lewis Spence, who founded the company in 1953. At that time, no one had thought to teach writing to people in business. Now, over 50 years later, Spence & Company instruction in business communication is still unsurpassed. Yet it all began somewhat by chance.

Having worked as a journalist for Time magazine, Lewis Spence had decided to offer his services to corporations to write their annual reports and other business communications. Through an acquaintance, he got an interview with McKinsey & Company CEO, Marvin Bower. But Bower was not interested in Spence's services as a writer. If Spence could teach McKinsey consultants how to write, however, he had a contract.

Lewis Spence had a little over two weeks to develop his course on business writing and make a proposal. Drawing on a book that taught the principles of classical rhetoric as the foundation of good writing, Spence adapted the principles in the treatise to the requirements of business and technical writing.

Thus was born the unique, structured approach to business writing that has been the signature of Spence & Company training programs for over 50 years. No other training on business communication teaches so explicitly how to structure your message for clarity and persuasiveness.

Lewis Spence retired from teaching Spence & Company seminars in 1995. He passed away at his home in Cranbury, N.J. on May 12, 1998.

Padraic Spence, Lewis’s eldest son, joined Spence & Company in 1978. He brought to the Spence & Company approach to business writing the benefits of modern training techniques, turning his father’s lecture course into a hands-on workshop in which participants learn by doing. He saw, furthermore, that the company’s structured approach to writing could be translated into a unique set of worksheets. To that end, he developed the Worksheets for Organizing Ideas, the Reader Profile Form, and the Write Smart Guide.

Padraic Spence retired as Spence & Company president in 2005.