Valvoline Instant Oil Change jobs among the "coolest" in nation for young women, according to Top Teen Media

Working at a Valvoline Instant Oil Change (VIOC) service center is one of the coolest jobs in the nation for young women, according to recent issues of Seventeen and Teen People magazines.

Young female VIOC employees have received recent attention from media outlets profiling women in typically male roles. The exposure has allowed VIOC to promote its emphasis on equal-opportunity employment and quality of life for all employees, and the many opportunities it has provided for women throughout its store-level and corporate ranks.

Both articles discuss opportunities for women in the automotive service business, despite its image as a male-dominated industry, and describe how female auto technicians are received by co-workers and customers.

In the Teen People article, a 19-year-old senior technician from Pittsburgh, Becky Lewis, served as the embodiment of the story. Lewis appeared in a full-page photo opposite the story's opening page, standing in a service bay dressed in a navy blue VIOC jumpsuit. Male customers and male co-workers are "intimidated because I know what I'm talking about," Lewis said.

Female customers also tend to be surprised to see a young woman working on their cars, but most are supportive and interested to learn about their cars from other women, says Nicole Kruckman, a VIOC service center manager from Minnesota who was featured in the Seventeen article.

"Women say to me, 'I know nothing about cars,'" said Kruckman in the article. "So I give them knowledge to take elsewhere."

As a result of her appearance in the Seventeen article, Kruckman was invited to appear on the "Debra Duncan Show," a women's daytime talk show that appears on the ABC Houston affiliate, KTRK-TV. On the show, scheduled to run in early October, she discussed her experience working in a man's world and talked about how VIOC has encouraged and supported her growth within the company. The program featured an otherwise illustrious panel of headline-making women working in traditionally male jobs, including a NASA employee, a former FBI agent and the governor of Massachusetts.

"This recognition has been exciting," said Kruckman. "I never imagined that this job would lead to all this attention, let alone an expense-paid trip to Houston to appear on TV."

VIOC and its parent companies, The Valvoline Company and Ashland Inc., have a strong heritage of promoting the advancement of women in the automotive industry and within the company. Valerie Schirmer, VIOC's group marketing manager, originally joined Ashland in 1980 as a systems analyst and since then has completed numerous company programs in executive development and training, including Ashland's Executive Development Program at Indiana University. As the highest-ranking woman at VIOC, she now oversees marketing for VIOC's corporate service centers across the country.

Another long-time employee, Cheryl Zimbrick, started in 1990 as a manager trainee for Ashland's SuperAmerica and gradually progressed to her current position as VIOC's Director of Organizational Development.

"We encourage all employees to grow at VIOC," said VIOC President John Wesley. "Our focus is on people, cars and greatness, and we wouldn't be able to achieve greatness without supporting all our people."

About VIOC

With nearly 700 locations nationwide, Lexington, Ky.-based VIOC is one of the nation's largest providers of "do-it-for-me" automotive fluid maintenance services. Each service center offers a complete selection of oil changes, preventive maintenance checks, free fluid top-offs and other services and products, presented in an environment with the highest emphasis on customer service.