Stoneham Company Grows Despite Economic Adversity

Despite current economic conditions, one Stoneham-based company is quickly growing and aims to become the nation’s premier private tutoring provider.

Throughout a severe recession and subsequent period of economic uncertainty, StudyPoint has been recognized over the past several years by publications like the New York Times, Bloomberg’s Businessweek, and Entrepreneur Magazine for its commercial success and for the services it provides.

When StudyPoint was founded in 1999 by current CEO Rich Enos and current President Greg Zumas, the business was housed in a small Woburn office space.

StudyPoint has since expanded to include business operations in 23 U.S. cities, dozens of full-time staff members and a small army of part-time tutors.

StudyPoint has been recognized for five consecutive years as one of the country’s fast-growing companies by Inc. Magazine and as having one of the country’s 50 most engaged workplaces by I Love Rewards.

Enos seemed particularly proud of the latter accolade and attributed a lot of StudyPoint’s success to the support staff that surrounds him.

“We’ve worked really hard to create a fantastic team and a strong corporate culture,” Enos said. “That more than anything else has been at the heart of our success.

“We’ve got a great mission — we help kids be successful and get on the path to college — so we’ve got great people who are excited about what they do each day and that tends to get good results."

When Enos co-founded StudyPoint, the former Kaplan employee wanted to provide students with an alternative to the impersonal learning centers where other leading tutoring providers normally conduct teaching.

What makes StudyPoint different from its competitors is that its tutors go to students homes to conduct tutoring sessions.

“Typically we meet the students in their homes, so there’s a very high level of personalization and convenience,” Enos said. “They’re so busy with sports, extracurriculars, heavy course loads, and those sorts of things, so we try to make it as easy as we can for the family.”

According to Enos, StudyPoint employs approximately 700 tutors who work with students in approximately 20 states.

To keep up with growing demands, StudyPoint has continued hiring new employees nationally and at its Stoneham corporate headquarters.

“In this kind of economy, the good news is we’re creating jobs,” Enos said. “We’re definitely a local employer and we’re growing.”

According to Enos, two staff members were hired to work in the Stoneham office in May and he hopes that several more staff members are hired by the end of October.

Despite the strides that StudyPoint has made during its 12-year history, it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.

“We’ve got a long way to go, but I think we can safely say that at this point we’ve also come a long way,” Enos said. “We’ve got pretty big goals for what we plan to do organizationally.

“Looking ahead, what we’ve always been focused on is becoming the national leader in private tutoring. There isn’t really anyone that you’d say currently fills that space. We’re getting to be the bigger, more successful organization in that particular part of the education market.”

While the company is growing and is more widely recognized across the country than it was several years ago, Enos said he’s happy to have StudyPoint’s headquarters in town.

“We’ve really enjoyed being in Stoneham,” Enos said. “It’s a great location for us. It has everything we could need in terms of amenities and accessibility.”

“The only thing I want is for people in Boston to realize just how convenient Stoneham is,” he added.